Playing Fields and Battlefields: The Football Pitch, England and the First World War

Abstract

Football during the First World War has been oft-studied in a socio-cultural context. Held as either a symbol of England's sporting approach to war or as evidence of working-class evasion of manly duty, anxiety over England's ability to win wars inspired both praise for and resentment toward the game of football. But what of the landscape on which the game itself was played? This essay demonstrates how the football pitch helped to manage the many strains brought on by World War I. On the home front, the pitch became a recruitment office, training camp, storage ground, rifle range, and livestock pasturage, in addition to hosting matches in the interest of maintaining civilian morale. At the front lines, English soldiers refashioned the mangled environment into a more familiar space by staging impromptu matches on makeshift pitches. Throughout the First World War, the football pitch satisfied many of the very real material and psychological needs of the English war effort.