Why This Sport­ing Life is one of the great­est British films ever made

It starts with a rush of excite­ment. The speed of move­ment is a joy to watch. But then we see the toil that it takes – the star play­er is bru­tal­ly injured and forced to pause for long enough to con­front his own mor­tal­i­ty. Forced to con­front the choic­es his made to get to this stage, and won­der if it was real­ly worth it. It’s the open­ing of arguably the finest sports film ever made. Per­haps even the best British film ever made. It’s cer­tain­ly the best film shot in Wakefield.

Lind­say Anderson’s This Sport­ing Life is a har­row­ing, exhil­a­rat­ing look at the psy­che of rug­by league loose for­ward Frank Minchin, and was born out of per­son­al expe­ri­ence. The film was adapt­ed by Wake­field-born David Storey from his own nov­el, a miner’s son who attend­ed London’s Slade School of fine art, but also played semi-pro­fes­sion­al rug­by for Leeds at the same time. The nov­el sprang out of the gap between two very dif­fer­ent worlds. Storey has claimed that he realised he was not cut out to be a rug­by play­er after he refused to drop on a loose ball. His ​‘cow­ardice’ marked him out as untrust­wor­thy to team­mates and he instead embraced art and writ­ing in the South.

Actor Richard Har­ris, him­self a for­mer rug­by play­er, proved an astute cast­ing choice as the dif­fi­cult and com­plex Minchin. Obsessed with attain­ing noto­ri­ety and wealth, and lit­er­al­ly wil­ing to fight to get it, this is a char­ac­ter who has few redemp­tive qual­i­ties. He is a ball of aspi­ra­tional rage, refus­ing even in a team sport to allow him­self to be seen as some kind of equal. A work­ing class hero he ain’t. He is not a proxy for class strug­gle. Any wider sig­nif­i­cance of his refusal to be con­tent with spend­ing his life sole­ly down a pit is lost on him. His phys­i­cal prowess allows him count­less more oppor­tu­ni­ties no mat­ter how boor­ish his behav­iour to own­ers, man­agers and teammates.

His unwill­ing­ness to com­pro­mise also dri­ves the film’s main focus, his rela­tion­ship with Mar­gret Ham­mond. Played with a trag­i­cal­ly, all too authen­tic, melan­choly by Rachel Roberts, Ham­mond is every bit Minchin’s equal. She is not a one-dimen­sion­al object for Minchin to project onto, but a dam­aged and flawed per­son in her own right. With Anderson’s doc­u­men­tary like approach and prob­ing cam­era, their frac­tious, emo­tion­al­ly stunt­ed involve­ment with each oth­er is gen­uine­ly dif­fi­cult to watch.

This Sport­ing Life marked the end of the British New Wave. Its per­ceived dour­ness and emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty proved unpop­u­lar with crit­ics and audi­ences alike. Ander­son claimed in the years after the film’s release that one of its financiers told him, ​“the pub­lic has clear­ly shown that it does not want the drea­ry kitchen sink dra­ma,” and vowed nev­er to be involved with a ​“squalid” film ever again. Yet while it marked the end of an era of film­mak­ing char­ac­terised by a nar­ra­tive focus on work­ing class life, it was also one of the best films of that era to artic­u­late those experiences.

Despite the rep­u­ta­tion, this is not an over­whelm­ing­ly down­beat film. Minchin may be ​“a great ape on a foot­ball field”, but his bril­liance, how­ev­er fleet­ing, helps him express him­self in a way few oth­ers can. It’s no coin­ci­dence that he is a num­ber 13, a loose for­ward. Aside from the sup­po­si­tious cona­tions, no posi­tion on a rug­by field quite com­bines pow­er and guile like that of a loose-forward.

The film also boasts some gen­uine­ly fun­ny moments, show­ing the slap­stick imma­tu­ri­ty of young men and women with free time and dis­pos­able income. And it is a last­ing mon­u­ment to the often patro­n­ised but unde­ni­able spir­it of cama­raderie found in region­al vil­lages built around pits, fac­to­ries and mills. These places weren’t full of stereo­types in cloth caps with whip­pets, but real flesh and blood indi­vid­u­als with desires, regrets and rela­tion­ships of joy and sor­row. As an authen­tic exam­i­na­tion of British life, This Sport­ing Life is unlike­ly to ever be bet­tered or repeated.