'Muscular, Militaristic and Manly': The Middle-Class Hero as Moral Messenger.

The article examines attitudes towards sports, the idea of sportsmanship, and their role in society in Great Britain in the 19th century, focusing on sports in the private schools known as endowed public schools which were the foundation for the education of the country's elite and upper middle class in that time. The declining popularity of sports such as fox hunting and prizefighting, which were important sports of the early part of the century, and the rise in popularity of more organized team sports such as cricket, rugby and soccer are discussed. This change is considered as reflecting the need to make sports an element of social control, through the introduction of games with well-defined rules which required group coordination for success. This in turn is linked to a broader ideal of masculinity related to Great Britain's imperialism of the time.