I found this the other day when searching for something else, and it interested me from the points of view of: Life still continued during the war. The seriousness of the need to have such rule changes and how they were worded (made me smile). Does anyone else have any other sporting rule changes they can add? TD
Brilliant find TD and a local course to me as well. I can only add an anecdote I heard from a step-family member about the Ladbroke Grove area of London. There was a group of barrage balloons situated in the Wormwood Scrubs area of Shepherds Bush. One of these was placed on or near the playing fields in Du Cane Road. She remembered that when playing cricket, if a ball's flight was interrupted by the balloon ropes or other such equipment, it was deemed a four, regardless of the ball's trajectory or the fact that it might have well gone on to be a six. Howszat!!
With all the talent overseas enlisted / entertaining troops overseas Canadian hockey rules had to be loosened up to keep the fans happy. :Hydrogen: Forward passing over the Blue line was allowed, with a red center line being the forward pass limiter now. In the USA, Baseball nearly came to a screeching halt. Blackout rules and travel restrictions sent the MLB Commissioner direct, in person, to President Roosevelt for help.
good day tricky dicky.s,m.yesterday,09:03pm.re:sporting rule changes for ww2,brilliant.only the golfers could do that.great post.regards bernard85 :icon_bye:
14th Sept 1939: On 14th September, the government gave permission for football clubs to play friendly matches. In the interests of public safety, the number of spectators allowed to see these games was limited to 8,000. These arrangements were later revised, and clubs were allowed gates of 15,000 from tickets purchased on the day of the game through the turnstiles. The government imposed a fifty mile travelling limit and the Football League divided all the clubs into seven regional areas where games could take place. ................. the Football League decided to start a new competition entitled the Football League War Cup. http://spartacus-educational.com/Fleaguecup.htm TD
Not quite rule changes but an effect anyway: Rugby: In the world of Rugby, a sportsmen’s lunch to celebrate the arrival of the 1939 Australian rugby team was cancelled, and instead of playing rugby they spent two weeks filling sandbags and helping to erect coastal defences until they sailed home.
Horse Racing: Unlike most sports which were totally suspended during the Second World War, horseracing was allowed too continue, albeit amidst controversy and political pressure calling for it to be abandoned. Whilst most sports put their normal competitions to one side, holding alternatives which held only entertainment value, racing remained as close to ‘the real thing’ as wartime pressures and sensibilities would allow. With the fall of France in 1940 the ongoing debate which raged around wartime racing came to a head and there was an attempt to suspend all horseracing. This was avoided only when some influential members of the government argued that the recreational and morale-building benefits of the sport outweighed the negatives. The detractors on the other hand saw racing as a wasteful luxury and a drain on scarce resources in terms of transport, feed and manpower, and there were constant attempts to stop or reduce it. The movement against racing was championed by Philip Noel-Baker, himself a fine sportsman who had won an Olympic 1,500 metres silver medal. Noel-Baker was a high-minded intellectual with no time for horse racing and, unfortunately for the sport, he was also Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of War Transport. When it came to fuel he preached a message of utmost economy and transporting horses around the country came pretty near the top of his list of targets. The Home Office and the Jockey Club went head to head throughout the war and there was constant and unseen political infighting which led to the initial suspension and then reinstatement of racing in 1940. This was followed by ever-tightening restrictions on events, number, and location of courses in 1941/2 and even more minimal racing programmes in the later years of the war. Programmes were restricted to local meetings where travel requirements were minimal. This not only affected horse racing but also the very popular sport of greyhound racing which was cut to one or two meetings a week. A day at the wartime races was a very different, and in many ways, more exciting racing experience. It could include a bombing raid as it once did at Newmarket, a riot of bitter anti-racing campaigners as it did on occasion at Cheltenham, or even an unlicensed meet, with the murky world of illegal racing raising its ugly black-market head. Ripon, Hurst Park, Newmarket, Windsor, and Edinburgh all saw actual or at least proposed racing activity. Newmarket’s July course played host to all of Britain’s classic races during the both the First and the Second World Wars. But there was no Grand National from 1941 to 1945, as Aintree became an Italian P-O-W camp, and the Cheltenham Gold Cup was cancelled in both 1943 and 1944. Other racecourses were utilised in the war effort – Newmarket’s Rowley Mile course became an RAF base, Bath was used as a landing field by the Royal Air Force, Redcar (which had been used as a Royal Naval Air Service flight training airfield during World War One) was redeployed as a British army camp, Ascot was turned into a German refugee interment camp, Haydock Park became the first port of call for incoming French sailors, Nottingham housed the 7th Leicestershire’s, Epsom Downs Racecourse was used for an anti-aircraft battery, racing at Cartmel was suspended for the duration as was racing at Fakenham, and most other courses were used in some war-focussed way with even a few being ploughed for food production. TD
Now this thread, l like. I have an article on how the POW's made their own gold course, golf balls and sticks somewhere. Are they called sticks? They also had their own world series and international rugby, football and cricket matches, with a few international players. Don't suppose they were earning like our modern day 'heroes' are. There is also that lovely story of the spitfire pilot parachuting down onto the gold course and going into the bar. Who was it that had that as their avatar on here? Regards, Nick
Craig aka Gage has it in his signature. http://ww2talk.com/forums/user/2367-gage/ 'There I stood at the bar, wearing a Mae West, no jacket, and beginning to leak blood from my torn boot. None of the golfers took any notice of me - after all, I wasn't a member!' Kenneth Lee - after being shot down on the 18th August 1940.
There are also the guys that carried on dreaming about their sports and writing about it, bird watching, fishing (Fishing from Afar), mountain climbing or fox hunting. Can we add those examples here? Regards, Nick
That's the one, great British reserve!!!! It's my golf club and i'm not going to let any bally hun interrupt my game, what! We have standards you know
Any members can add sport related WW2 items on this thread if they wish, I started it because I found the golf related rule changes to account for possible 'interference' from that dammed hun against the 'nicities' of home life. But I guess we should add anything sport related affected by WW2 from all over. Perhaps there was a ruling that during fishing competitions (if they existed) trawl nets on rivers were not allowed after an air raid TD
Pike fishing in Stalag Luft 6. It was reported by a Warrant Office in the Prisoner of War Magazine, designed to keep next of kin informed on Prisoner of War conditions but something that tended to present a more colourful life than they really experienced, that at Stalag Luft VI, that besides using the fire reservoir for swimming, they also used to do a little fishing. ‘A young Jack (Pike)’ he wrote, ‘which has hitherto borne a charmed life , roves around the fire pond, having only a dent in the back as a souvenir of a number of attacks with intent.’ He was able to however add a P.S. that the pikes charm ran out. ‘We soaked it in salt water before frying and it was a lot better than the bream we tackled on the Broads in more peaceful days.’ Regards, Nick
Golf in Stalag Luft 3. Another article from the Prisoner of War magazine. The ingenuity of these guys is quite something. And they were not worried by unexploded ordinance or shrapnel!!!!! The ball going over the warning wire must have been considered as 'out of bounds' in the true sense of the word. Regards, Nick
