MORAL and physical decay was a preoccupation consuming the minds of Victorians in the late 19th century. Many Britons harboured nagging doubts that the world’s foremost empire might be in decline? The fear manifested itself in the art and literature of the day, especially in Gothic novels such as Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Contemporary commentators, social campaigners, liberal imperialists and advocates of ”national efficiency” proffered a raft of varied explanations for the alleged condition of society. Blame was attributed to the rising crime rate, insanity, poverty, unemployment, immigration, radicalism, sexual deviance, feminism, VD, the transformation away from rural life to the disease-ridden towns and the very stresses of modern civilisation (labelled “the dark side of progress”) (‘Deviance, disorder and the self’, www7.bbk.ac.uk).
The Second Boer War in South Africa, breaking out in 1899, did nothing to ease concerns that, maybe, British manhood was not made of “the right stuff” after all…Imperial Britain’s early sub-par performance in the conflict against a “rag-tag” army of Afrikaner farmers fed into the rising tide of British fears of the degeneration of its racial stock. The first portends emerged even before the hostilities began – in the recruitment halls of Britain. The early Boer victories required British reinforcements from home leading to a manpower dilemma – the unhealthy British cities and slums churned out recruits from the working class who were “narrow-chested, knock-kneed, wheezing, rickety specimens” of men. At the time of the Boer War the average British soldier was of diminished stature, shorter than that of 1845…40% of those volunteering in Manchester recruitment halls were rejected as unfit for military service. By 1901 the percentage had increased even moreⓐ.
Once the fighting began, the lacklustre efforts of the British soldiers struggling to gain the upper hand left their Australian and New Zealand counterparts with a negative impression of the home country’s martial capability. While British soldiery laboured, the Australasian contingents of soldiers equipped themselves quite well. Colonial troops from Australia and New Zealand possessed natural ability to shoot and ride, equipping them to perform well in the open war on the veldt…this plus their ‘bushman’ capacity to live off the land, meant that they clearly adapted to the South African conditions better than the British soldiersⓑ.
The Australian and NZ dominion soldiers’ take-home message from the South Africa affair was that the “old Britons” were in decline, and that they, the “new Britons”, represented the “coming man”. This view fed into earlier established myths and assumptions – Australia benefitted, it was said, from a climate infinitely better than Britain, a lavish land … making for a vigorous and healthy ‘race’. WK Hancock described the Australian ‘type’ of man as a harmonious blending of all the British types, nourished by a “generous sufficiency of food (good diet) …breathing space (vast countryside) and sunshine”. At the same time British voices were ominously warning of “racial suicide” and the waning of the nation’s “racial energy”, the self-styled “Better Britons” of Australia and New Zealand were talking up their own supposed “racial vigour”.
Footnote: “Degeneracy” out of vogue As Victorian Britain evolved into Edwardian Britain, the fears of racial deterioration didn’t diminish, birth-rates which were already in decline going back decades had plummeted dramatically since the Victorians. However, by the time of World War I degeneration theory had lost favour, advances in the understanding of genetics and the vogue for psychoanalytic thinking had prompted its obsolescence (‘Degeneration theory’, www.artandpopularculture.com).
Postscript: Decadence and decay
“Decay” is closely related to the word “decadence” (Latin, decadentia, meaning ‘fall”. In 19th century imperialist thinking decadence and decay was a characteristic associated with the colonial anxieties of empire. The phenomenal success of the imperial powers, it was thought as in the case of past examples like Rome, made the elite complacent and weak, thus the seed of its downfall. The response of contemporary Europeans was a preoccupation with the morality and cultural values of their own societies (‘Decline and Fall’, William Rees, History Today, January 2023).
ⓐ one contemporary commentator, cricket writer Albert E Knight, thought the remedy for the physical and moral degeneration of Englishmen lay in cricket – advocating for the creation of more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen”
ⓑ a UK report conducted in 1904 with the title “Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration” confirmed that Britons were even more physically unfit than the war had suggested
꧁꧂ ꧁꧂꧁꧂
. Sokol’s approach to physical education derived from Tyrš’ PE system placed an emphasis on mass calisthenics.
festivals, these were mass, open-air extravaganzas for public consumption. Centrepiece of the Slet fest was thousands of athletes in a stadium exhibition of synchronised calisthenics, accompanied by stirring classical music. Complementing this were competitions in gymnastics and other sporting events, gatherings, parades and rallies, celebrations of culture and the arts. The first Slet was held in Prague in 1882, culminating in a mass calisthenics display. By the 1895 All-Sokol Slet Sokol’s growth and expansion was evident with around 5,000 men and boys performing in the stadium. The 1901 Slet was the first to include women as well as international participants from France and the US. The 1926 Slet (in an independent Czechoslovakia) was the first in the massive, purpose-built Strahov Stadium with a spectator capacity of 250,000 and 182,477 participants taking part (‘History of Prague Slets’, SOKOL Museum Library, 
no mercy given) contests were rare, it was much more common occurrence for bouts to end with a missio outcome (
mercy granted). Often economics rather than compassion swayed the outcome, gladiators were a very valuable commodity to the editor/owner and the rich and powerful had a vested interest in protecting their investment (Miller). Historians vary in their estimates of the numbers who died as a result of the combats but the concensus is that it was low. According to 
In a game in Brazil in March before pro-football was suspended, the Gremio team took the field wearing masks to protest the dangers players were exposed to during the pandemic 
Brian Palmer et al has pointed out the role marketing played in advancing the cause of baseball after the Civil War. The promoters of baseball sensing an opportunity at a formative point in its development, established the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871. This unified the sport as well as professionalising it (refer also to PostScript 2 for more on this), meanwhile cricket stayed regionalised and amateur, a sport of and for gentlemen and their social strata✧. Many top cricket players made the switch to baseball and the fans followed[13]. Cricket historian Tom Melville contends that a secondary element in baseball’s meteoric climb was that whilst many of the top baseballers succeeded in cricket, the opposite was less inclined to be the case[14].
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
El Estadio de Montjuic
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
⇐(Not much of a likeness!) 
With such startling figures, leg-spinner or not, the selectors couldn’t ignore Tich forever. He was selected in an MCC ‘A’ tour to New Zealand in which he excelled on NZ pitches, followed by a full test tour to Australia in 1924-25 in which he made his debut at age 36. A combination of good, hard Australian wickets and the fact that Australian batsmen were brought up on a diet of leg spin meant that Freeman made very heavy weather of the series. Thereafter the national selectors choose the leg-spinner very irregularly. He did very well against South Africa and the West Indies, but was not considered for the tests against the Australians on either the 1926 or 1930 tours of the UK, despite getting a six for and a five for in the county games for Kent against the tourists. The selectors demonstrated a remarkable lack of perception in not showing a sustained faith in Freeman’s obvious talent and not backing him in tests, especially in English conditions. As things turned out, his record in tests suggest the magnitude of their error in judgement:
Rugby league test Aust v GB (Photo cr: Queensland State Library)
In 1914 the initiative for a merger appeared to come from the VFL. Elements within the VFL (with some support from the South Australian and West Australian Leagues) led by Charles Brownlow, Geelong Club secretary and delegate to the Australian National Football Council (ANFC), viewed the 1914 All-State National Rules Carnival in Sydney as much of a failure. Interest in the carnival and in Australian football in general was down compared to that in the fledgling sport of rugby league, which was drawing big crowds (especially the Australia-Great Britain tests of that year). A point not lost on the VFL – the 1914 Melbourne Grand Final drew only 30,000 spectators compared to crowds of up to 41,000 for rugby league test matches during the same season! Brownlow (later memorialised eponymously in the Brownlow Medal) was of the opinion that a new combined sport of rugby league and Australian rules could produce a better spectacle, which would add thousands of pounds to the gate takings for games. The NSW Rugby League’s long-time secretary, Horrie Miller, was also favourable to the idea of a merger [‘The Australian and Rugby League Game Combine?’, NSW Football History Society (July 2014), 
(Photo cr: The Mercury (Tas.))
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The Victorian football and code of choice