The political economy of grassroots football: From obscurity to austerity

The paucity of academic research belies the prominent position of grassroots football in the cultural life and leisure of contemporary Britain. One of the key issues with the current research on grassroots football is definitional. The phrase is oft cited, but rarely explicitly defined. It is applied to a wide range of football, from games played and watched informally in improvised spaces, such as a street corner or park, all the way through to established non-league clubs competing in the national league. The ideal of the amateur is inextricably linked to the development of the sport and the internecine struggle between the ancient universities and public schools on one side and the emergent professional clubs, players and supporting industrial interests on the other. The importance of football, as the national game, for understanding wider patterns of politics and power in British society is largely ignored in the political science and public policy literature.