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Army Sport News

The Army Sport Control Board Celebrates it’s 102nd Anniversary

The Army Sport Control Board celebrates its Anniversary today – formed on the 18th November 1918.
The Army’s official doctrine regarding sport, as outlined in SS 137, Recreational Training. This pamphlet, updated and reissued four times between the summer of 1917 and December 1918, expressed unequivocally the philosophy underlying the pursuit of games in the Army.

There was virtually no difference between this philosophy as expressed in 1918, and what it had been since the earliest days of Victorian Army sport:

“Games offer the best means of keeping men fit in mind
and body and cheerful and contented in spirit. Love of
games is inherent in the British race. Games recall the
and habit formation…Played in the real games spirit – the
Games. too. have a moral value, for the man who is training
for a competition will be more likely to keep both body and
mind under control than he would were such incentive lacking.
and he will be less inclined to succumb to vicious temptations.
Games are also a process of education. not in the ordinary
acceptance of the term, but in the sense of character building
and habit formation.. .Played in the real games spirit – the
amateur spirit – they teach self-sacrifice and self-subordination
in the individual, and these develop in time into esprit de corps.
indispensable to the Army in war or peace…”
An article written by the National Army Museum details the Army’s impact on sport throughout history.
“In the past, sport has been used to help shape native peoples into British ‘models’ of manliness and efficiency. But the army has also taken inspiration from abroad, adopting sports like polo and popularising them back in Britain.”