A Gap but Not an Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography

Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation which is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports' basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers the reasons for historians' relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on the concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.