‘(Simply) the best’, or remembering when tina turner met the winfield cup: Nostalgia and the construction of authenticity in rugby league online spaces

Workington Man, Brexit and populism: discussions of politics, identity and class among rugby league fans online

“…Of those that held this view, some did dissent from the idea of rebellion and cited other factors-local issues, tribal politics, or simply a seat being a safe seat, which, of course, in some cases proved to be less safe in 2019. Discussions of gender did not cover ideas surrounding populism-and its base, the white working-class male (Moffitt 2016;Mudde 2017;Kemmers 2017)-although some posters mentioned that the use of man in Workington Man was a deliberate attempt to make the Bourdieusian field (1986) of rugby league a space for the contestation and construction of hegemonic masculinity (Spracklen and Spracklen 2020). Disagreement with the article regarding voting intention, whatever the posters' personal views or hopes for outcomes, was essentially driven by two key claims.…”

“…We are aware that we cannot be sure that these are genuine rugby league fans in the north of England-or indeed genuine readers of The Guardian-but these users are performing these roles in these online spaces. If they are bots or agitators or rugby union fans pretending to be something else, they certainly perform authentically (Spracklen and Spracklen 2020).…”

“…Through the history of rugby league and rugby union in the UK, between 1895 and 1995, rugby union was the game of the middle and upper classes of England, played in private schools, universities, the military and in clubs enculturated in the cult of the gentleman amateur (Collins 2006(Collins , 2015Spracklen 2016;Spracklen and Spracklen 2020). 6 Sports reporters in the press, on radio, then on television, promoted this privileged position of rugby union.…”

“…Since then, rugby union has become even more hegemonic and representative of the English middle classes, as rugby league has struggled to get fair coverage in the public sphere against the old-school tie connections that ensure rugby union gets sponsors, air time and column inches (Collins 2015). Rugby league, though, survived in the north of England as an imagined, imaginary community-a space where symbolic boundaries and myths preserved a sense of white, male workingclassness (Spracklen 2016;Spracklen and Spracklen 2020).…”

“…Some implied it was an example of an oversight, the lack of understanding of the modern game which could cost the Conservatives votes. These were attempts to highlight their cultural capital by being aware of the gender changes within the field of rugby league and wider society (Melnick and Wann 2011;Spracklen and Spracklen 2020).…”