Author Description

Australia is a nation of sporting enthusiasts, as famous throughout the world for its athletes as for its sporting obsessions. This book is the first authoritative and encyclopedic reference on sport in Australia. Produced by the Australian Society for Sports History, in association with the Australian Sports Commission, The Oxford Companion to Australian Sport provides the first cohesive overview of the temper and development of the innumerable codes that constitute the Australian sporting character. Vamplew and his co-editors provide readers with almost 1000 entries on everything from "Bodyline" to pigeon-racing. All sports are covered, not just the major ones like cricket, Australian Rules, rugby, lawn tennis, and horse-racing. The Companion offers succinct and informative entries on orienteering, parachuting, hang-gliding, and korfball, as well as countless short entries on famous and influential sportsmen and women, and on significant institutions, competitions, and venues. The Companion also offers major thematic essays on crucial aspects of the history, proliferation, and increasing professionalization of the sport in Australia. The cultural influence of sport, as represented in art and literature, is discussed in separate entries, as are more contentious subjects such as violence in sport, crowd disorder, and obsessiveness about sport. For the first time, readers have access to biographies of sporting champions from countless sporting codes. Philip Anderson, Raelene Boyle, Ron Barassi, the Chappell brothers, Dawn Fraser, Joan Hammond, Keith Miller, and John Newcombe all rub shoulders in this literary pantheon.