Books by Wray Vamplew

The Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports provides a social, economic, and political study of both field sports and those other activities and customs labelled as rural sports from the earliest of times to the present day in all of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The book brings together several distinct types of traditional rural sports with particular emphasis on the social history and traditional aspects. It contains several hundred entries focusing on individual sports and other providing analysis of key concepts, themes, and terminologies.

This reference work aims to provide sports enthusiasts, journalists, librarians, students and scholars with an authorative source of information on a comprehensive range of subjects covering the history and organization of football in Britain. Over 250 entries focus on key organisations or individuals, famous clubs, major competitions, events, venues and incidents, institutions and organisations as well as key issues such as gender, racism, commercialization, professionalism and drugs, alcohol and football. Additionally entries on football as reflected in drama, film, literature, paintings and other arts are also included. The aim has been to provide a reasonably comprehensive overview of British football, past and present. The "Encyclopedia of British Football" has been written by a team of over 50 experts in the field of sport from administrators and managers through fans, armchair enthusiasts, journalists and PE teachers to academic researchers and sports scientists.

Australia is a nation of sporting enthusiasts, as famous throughout the world for its athletes as for its sporting obsessions. The Oxford Companion to Australian Sport is the first authoritative and encyclopaedic reference on sport in Australia. Produced by the Australian Society for Sports History, in association with the Australian Sports Commission, The Oxford Companion to Australian Sport provides the first cohesive overview of the temper and development of the innumerable codes that constitute the Australian sporting character. Associate Professor Wray Bamplew and his four co-editors - all noted sports historians and authors - provide readers with almost 1000 entries on everything from 'Bodyline' to pigeon-racing. All sports are covered, not just the major ones like cricket, Australian Rules, rugby, lawn tennis and horse-racing. The Companion offers succinct and informative entries on orienteering, parachuting, hang-gliding and korfball, as well as countless short entries on famous and influential sportsmen and women, and on significant institutions, competitions and venues. The Companion also offers major thematic essays on crucial aspects of the history, proliferation and increasing professionalisation of sport in Australia. There are entries on sports medicine and sports management, which are major growth areas. The cultural influence of sport, as represented in art and literature, is discussed in separate entries, as are more contentious subjects such as violence in sport, crowd disorder, and obsessiveness about sport. For the first time, readers have access to biographies of sporting champions from countless sporting codes. Philip Anderson, Raelene Boyle, Ron Barassi, theChappell brothers, Dawn Fraser, Joan Hammond, Keith Miller and John Newcombe all rub shoulders in this literary pantheon. Unrivalled in scope and scholarship, The Oxford Companion to Australian Sport presents a readable cultural history of Australian sport which captures its diversity, its scandals and legends, and its formidable hold on the Australian imagination. It is essential reading for sportsmen and women, sporting administrators, scholars, journalists, and the great mass of sports followers.

Based on a vast range of club and association records, this book presents the first systematic economic analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sports during the years prior to World War I. The author explores the tensions behind an increasingly commercialized activity that was nonetheless suffused with gentlemanly values at many levels, and highlights the retreat of the latter as working-class consumption and participation became predominant.

Written specifically for students of both Sports Science and Physical Education, Sport and Physical Education: The Key Concepts is a reference guide to the disciplines, themes, topics and concerns current in contemporary sport. Entries on such diverse subjects as professionalism, history, exercise physiology and education offer an up-to-date perspective on the changing face of sport science.