Historical Frameworks and Sporting Research Introduction By 1985, it was recognized that an historian’s focus on sport history was of value and that research in our field had gained a ‘new respectability’ after the publication of several important studies. 1 The field has since developed considerably with research focusing on a variety of sports, countries, regions and individuals, as well as consideration of sport’s place within topics such as class, gender, race, fashion, media and so on. 2 Leading academics working in our field have urged us to focus on writing good history, without worrying whether sport history is any more or less valuable than other sub-disciplines. 3 Our field has developed significantly and, as a community, we have considered methodologies utilized in our research and have sought to develop ideas and encourage others to engage with methodological debates. 4 Throughout the last three decades of sport history’s own acceptance, or attempts at acceptance, into the mainstream of history academia, there have been challenges to our way of thinking. Researchers have begun to question some of sport’s long established ‘truths’ and this has led to healthy debate and occasionally unhelpful criticism or even ridicule. 5 Consider the origins of football debate that has been raging on for several years, particularly within the pages of this journal. 6 It was not too long ago that historians and the general public felt they knew how association football was ‘born’, developed and propagated around the country. We believed there had been mob football, followed by a rediscovery of the game via the public schools whose pupils subsequently travelled around the country promoting the sport to communities. This explanation was chronicled extensively, but then historians researching sport at a local level started to question the earlier findings, leading to a wealth of valuable research in recent publications. 7 However, rather than establishing a common theme, this research has led to competing theories with some historians believing in the 'orthodox' position, keeping faith with the traditional view, while 'revisionists' argued that the public schools were not as influential as traditionalists believed and that the lower-middle- classes were more relevant in the game’s ultimate development. 8 This has resulted in some researchers publishing academic articles listing every occurrence of the word football they have identified in online newspaper archives, with the intention that presenting a wealth of