Playing with the rules: Influences on the development of regulation in sport

Abstract

Sport today is a rule-governed practice: constitutive rules, both prescriptive and proscriptive, define required equipment and facilities as well as setting the formal rules of play; auxiliary rules specify and control eligibility; and regulatory rules place restraints on behaviour independent of the sport itself. This article offers a broad-sweep examination of the historical process of rule development in sport including an assessment of the influence over time of gambling, fair-play ideology, economic pressures, technological developments and legal intervention. En route, a seven-stage scheme of constitutive rule development is postulated which it is hoped will set a research agenda for sports historians to test with case studies of particular sports.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy and the Faculty of Management at Stirling University for financial help towards the research costs of this paper and to Emma Lyons for research assistance.

Notes

[1] Guttmann, From Ritual to Record, 16 – 36; Collins et al., Encyclopedia of Traditional Rural Sports, passim.

[2] Bragg, 12 Books, 89 – 118.

[3] Brodribb (Next Man In) on cricket laws and customs, Chapman (The Rub of the Green) on the rules of golf, and Lennon's tripartite work on Irish hurling and football (The Playing Rules; A Comparative Analysis; and Towards a Philosophy for Legislation) have ventured into the area of the history of rules in British sport, but only a few academic sports historians, notably Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions and Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture.

[4] Readers who wish to explore this avenue are directed to the archival-based studies of Kay, ‘From Coarse to Course’; Kay and Vamplew, ‘A Modern Sport?’: Middleton and Vamplew, ‘Horseracing and the Yorkshire Leisure Calendar’; Vamplew, ‘Reduced Horse Power’; Vamplew, ‘Sporting Innovation’; and Vamplew and Kay, Encyclopedia of British Horseracing.

[5] The descriptive terms are based on ideas in D'Agostino, ‘The Ethos of Games’, Meier ‘Restless Sport’, and Reddiford, ‘Institutions, Constitutions and Games’. The concept ‘regulatory’ has been used to differentiate such off-field regulations from the penalty-invoking ‘regulative’ rules which are part of the constitutive set that cover proscribed on-field behaviour.

[6] Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege, 2 – 4.

[7] Middleton, ‘Cockfighting in Yorkshire’, 131 – 2.

[8] Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture, 116.

[9] Hathaway, ‘Cudgelling and Singlestick’, 89; Collins, ‘Wrestling’, 283.

[10] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 22.

[11] Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, 18 – 19.

[12] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 22.

[13] Ibid.; Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture, 118.

[14] Brailsford, Bareknuckles, 22.

[15] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 32, 169 – 71; Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture, 118 – 19.

[16] Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, 14 – 15.

[17] Ibid., 18 – 19, 27, 31.

[18] The chronological coincidence of published rules in prize-fighting (1743), golf (1744) and cricket (1744) warrants further investigation. One speculative possibility is that it has something to do with the decline in horse racing (and gambling opportunities) following Parliamentary legislation in 1740 setting minimum levels of prize-money.

[19] Chapman, The Rub of the Green, 15, 212 – 25.

[20] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 161.

[21] Bowen, Cricket, 57 – 8; Vamplew, ‘Reduced Horse Power’, 94 – 7; Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, 365; Underdown, Start of Play, xviii, 161; Brodribb, Next Man In, xi.

[22] Collins et al., Encyclopedia of Traditional Traditional Rural Sports, 34, 115 – 18, 241; Corbishley, The Ashbourne Custom; Garnham, ‘Patronage, Politics and Modernization’; Morison and Daisley, Hallaton Hare Pie Scrambling.

[23] Harvey, Football: The First Hundred Years, 75 – 91.

[24] Harvey, ‘“An Epoch in the Annals”’; Goulstone, ‘The Working-Class Origins of Modern Football’; Harvey, Football: The First Hundred Years, 210.

[25] Behrend et al., Champions and Guardians, 63 – 71.

[26] Guttmann, From Ritual to Record, 45 – 7.

[27] Vamplew, ‘Reduced Horse Power’, 100 – 1; Woolgar, England, 23.

[28] The International Football Association Board (IFAB), comprising England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, was founded in 1886 to develop a common set of rules which could be applied internationally. When FIFA, the international organizing body for football, was formed in 1904 it declared that it would adhere to the rules laid down by the IFAB and in 1913 FIFA representatives were added to the board. The current voting rights were established in 1958, with each home nation having one vote, as have the four FIFA representatives. The key point is that a three-quarters majority is necessary for any change to be accepted.

[29] Chapman, The Rub of the Green, 199; Holt et al., The Professional Golfers' Association, 82; Steel and Lewis, Traditions and Change, 117 – 22.

[30] Haigh, Game For Anything, 86.

[31] Although there is no space here to explore the nature of rule enforcement agents, the point should be made that constitutive rules have to be both interpreted and enforced. Legal formalism – the view that the law consists solely of a body of rules to be applied by judges in syllogistic fashion to the facts of particular cases – has its adherents in the culture of adjudication in sport (Russell, ‘Are Rules All an Umpire Has’, 31). For the preponderance of a contest this might appear justified, but the rules of a sport that set the terms for cooperation and competition are never fully authoritative. The imprecision of language may render the rules ‘open textured’ so that they have to be interpreted by match officials (Ibid., 32). Discretion and subjectivity then enter the regulatory equation. Should advantage be played despite a foul? Is a player in an offside position interfering with play? (For a discussion of formalism related to sport see McFee, Sport, Rules and Values, 33 – 52.) More generally interpretation comes from particular incidents which lead to rule revisions. Here there are parallels with the legal system where statute law sets down the rules and case law is used to establish how these should be interpreted. However, in the legal arena these are done by different bodies, respectively Parliament and the judiciary, whereas in sport the rule-setting body is often also the interpreting institution.

[32] Williams, A Game for Rough Girls, 33 – 6.

[33] Golesworthy, The Encyclopaedia of Boxing, 55; Alderman, Modern British Jewry, 336; Murray, The Old Firm, 270; Golf World, April 1963, 56.

[34] Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture, 126; Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 223; Vamplew, Pay Up, 192, 211 – 13.

[35] Vamplew, Pay Up, 302 – 7.

[36] Collins, Rugby's Great Split, 168; Minutes of Northern Rugby Union 1895 – 1900, passim; Gillmeister, Tennis, 193. Behrend et al., Champions and Guardians, 45; Vamplew, Pay Up, 185; Holt et al., The Professional Golfers' Association, 18 – 23; Racing Calendar (1889), Rule 96.

[37] Lennartz and Schantz, The International Olympic Committee, 167; Daily Telegraph, 17 Feb. 2005; Financial Times, 14 May 2005.

[38] Howell and Howell, Aussie Gold, 6 – 38; Wong and Trumper, ‘Global Celebrity Athletes’.

[39] In arguing that sports competitions are rule-governed practices, sports philosophers have concentrated on the constitutive rules of competitive sport to the neglect of those rules pertaining to organized sport competitions (for example, Loland, Fair Play in Sport, 2).

[40] Vamplew, Pay Up, 124 – 38.

[41] Gillmeister, Tennis, 162; Littlewood, North Hants Golf Club, 11 – 13; Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2005; The Independent, 13 June 2005.

[42] Gillmeister, Tennis, 182 – 9; Deghy, Noble and Manly, 17 – 18, 92.

[43] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 169.

[44] Underdown, Start of Play; Radford, The Celebrated Captain Barclay; Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 69, 223; Lile, ‘Professional Pedestrianism’, 95; Collins, ‘Wrestling’; Tripp, ‘Wrestling’.

[45] Dodd, ‘Doggett's Coat and Badge’, 112; Middleton, ‘Cockfighting in Yorkshire’, 132.

[46] One authority has argued that there was no direct link between Victorian ‘fair play’ and the honour principle of medieval tournaments: Müller, ‘Reflections’, 478 – 9.

[47] Ibid., 478 – 80; Sheridan, ‘Conceptualizing “Fair Play”’, 164.

[48] Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference’.

[49] MacAloon, ‘Muscular Christianity’, 687 – 9.

[50] McIntosh, Fair Play, 27; Royal & Ancient Golf Club, Rules of Golf, 14; Vamplew and Dimeo, Sporting Conduct Initiative, 10.

[51] Quoted in McIntosh, Fair Play, 80.

[52] In 1999 a cup-tie replay was offered by Arsenal to Sheffield United when a goal was scored by a player who broke a sporting convention, but this threw over the competition rules, not the constitutive ones.

[53] Collins, ‘Violence, Gamesmanship and the Amateur Ideal’, 178.

[54] Allison, Amateurism, 3 – 49.

[55] Vamplew and Dimeo, Sporting Conduct Initiative; Sheridan, ‘Conceptualizing “Fair Play”’, 163 – 84.

[56] Rugby Football League, Rugby Laws, 38; Oslear, The Laws of Cricket, 13.

[57] Royal & Ancient Golf Club, Rules of Golf, 19.

[58] McNamee, Sporting Conduct, 8; Sheridan, ‘Conceptualizing “Fair Play”’, 164; Loland, ‘Fair Play’; Müller, ‘Reflections’, 480; Loland, ‘The Varieties of Cheating’.

[59] Collins, Rugby's Great Split, 209 – 12.

[60] For a synthesis of the literature see Borland and McDonald, ‘Demand for Sport’ and Symanski, ‘The Economic Design of Sporting Contests’.

[61]Scotsman, 5 March 2005; Butler, The Football League, 75 – 6.

[62] Kay and Vamplew, Weatherbeaten, 143 – 4; The Australian, 24 Jan. 2005; Scotsman, 5 March 2005.

[63]Guardian, 13 May 2001; Evening Standard, 24 Sept. 2004; Sunday Telegraph, 16 July 2006, S3.

[64] Broadribb, Next Man In, 37, 42 – 4, Oslear, The Laws of Cricket, 38 – 40.

[65]Weekend Australian, 17 May 2003; Vamplew, ‘Sporting Innovation’, Machat and Dennis, The Golf Ball Book; Holt et al., The Professional Golfers' Association, 33, 83.

[66] Brailsford, A Taste for Diversions, 173.

[67] For detail on the growing involvement of the law in sport see Gardiner et al., Sports Law and Greenfield and Osborn, Law and Sport. For a novel legalistic examination of the rules of one sport see Fraser, Cricket and the Law.

[68] Anderson, ‘Pugilistic Prosecutions’; Haigh, Game for Anything, 195.

[69] Football Association, Handbook, 74; Royal & Ancient Golf Club, Rules of Golf, 2.

[70] Gardiner et al., Sports Law, 232.

[71]Daily Telegraph, 29 Aug. 2006, 2; Fraser, Cricket and the Law, 24.

[72]Irish News, 18 April 2005.

[73] Rutter, The Golf Rules Dictionary.

[74] Condon, Report on Corruption.

[75] Loland, ‘The Varieties of Cheating’, 15 – 16; Russell, ‘Are Rules All an Umpire Has’, 39 – 40; Loland, ‘Fair Play’, 87; Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2005.