ABSTRACT
It reflects, too, the way in which the old relationships between sport and leisure have changed dramatically, within a single lifetime. There is much more deliberate exploitation of leisure in south Dorset than ever there was in the past, but the traditional sports, football and cricket in particular, stand much where they did thirty years ago. While sport has never, of course, enjoyed a monopoly of leisure, its competitors have grown enormously in number and diversity during the present century . The long-standing national pastimes of pre-war days - reading, religion, the public house, the occasional train trip, the theatre or the circus - have been joined by the automobile, the package holiday, television, videos, and a wholesale widening of horizons and opportunities. The spectator sports have responded by embracing the commercial world themselves, with greater or less determination, and with greater or less success. They have recognized, often with reluctance, that they are subject to the same forces as the rest of industry, that they are in business as well as in play.
