English soldiers play football in France 1916, Courtesy of Imperial War Museum

The Football Pitch, England and the First World War

At the start of September 1914, less than a month after the outbreak of the First World War, the Football Association (FA), issued a mandate stating that clubs should offer up their fields ‘for use as Drill Grounds’.

English soldiers play football in France 1916, Courtesy of Imperial War Museum
English soldiers play football in France 1916, Image courtesy of Imperial War Museum

In an article in Britain and the World, Brandon Luedtke illustrates a parallel transformation during the First World War: on the home front, the making of the football pitch into a battlefield; at the war front, the reinventing of the battlefield as a playing field.BRW7-1Cover

He highlights that throughout the First World War, the football pitch satisfied many of the very real material and psychological needs of the English war effort.

 >>Learn more and read the article from Britain and the World

 

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