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Netball is commonly cited as being the national game for females in Australia. Yet the game’s popularity is not reflected in the field of sport history in the breadth or depth of analysis compared to other sports. There are only two major published academic articles pertaining to the origins and development of netball in Australia. In this paper, these articles are critically analyzed. The analysis reveals gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies in the history of netball in Australia. Despite what is said to be known about the history and historical significance of netball in Australia, many important questions remain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sexism is an ongoing problem within the Olympic Games, and in broader society. Historians are well placed to analyze social change over time and have a role to play in transforming gendered meanings that contribute to cultural sexism. However, to have real political effects, historians need to pay greater attention to the contradictory, discontinuous, and complex aspects of gender history, and contextualize women’s experiences within the whole field of gender relations. In this paper, a critical historical approach inspired by Michel Foucault and Joan W. Scott is proposed as a means to achieve this goal. The case of road cycling is used as an example to illustrate how Olympic historians might approach a topic from this critical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the biographical sporting narratives produced about a selection of New Zealand's most successful women swimmers are interrogated and analyzed. It is argued that biographical narratives, ironically, pay insufficient attention to the complexity and fluidity of 'character'. As such, it is suggested that the interrogation of fictional characters is a useful way of exploring the cultural conditions of possibility which shape the (re)production of sporting heroines. To this end, the narrative of a fictional swimmer, Alex, is compared and contrasted to the biographical sports narratives of New Zealand women swimmers, and the untapped political possibilities of a fictional sports heroine are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the history of women's rugby union in New Zealand, women's football rules in Australia in the late 1800s, and England women's hockey team 1914 tour of Australia and New Zealand.