Newcastle University

    CURDS Annual Distinguished Lecture 2009-10

How did the north-east become a hot bed of football at the end of the 19th century? The iconic role of association football in the region has had a lot more attention than the question of how and why it acquired that role. There was certainly nothing inevitable about it, given that rugby union had a firm foothold in the region for half a dozen years before soccer even began, and that rugby league and rugby union became just as beloved of miners in West Yorkshire and South Wales as soccer was, and is, in the north-east. One possible explanation is that soccer had more in common with forms of 'traditional' or 'folk' football that were played in Northumberland and Durham in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than did rugby, and could take advantage of this fact when it emerged. Another is that early soccer had some kind of appeal for players and spectators in the north-east that early rugby did not. In offering an explanation in my lecture I show that in history accident or chance matters a lot, and that games can change a great deal even when their names remain unchanged. 

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Gavin Kitching is an internationally renowned political scientist and Professor at one of Australia’s leading universities, the University of New South Wales. His work to date has been highly influential in the fields of development studies and political philosophy. Gavin is currently a Visiting Professor within CURDS working with colleagues exploring the development of local and regional identities. Born and bred in the mining village of Fencehouses, Co Durham, Gavin has retained a strong connection with the region, including the publication of the North East based crime novels – the  Bob Henderson Mysteries.