On its first day, the Play the Game communication conference on sport and society received a major boost in the form of a message of support from United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Knowledge bank: Europe’s minor nations can breathe a sigh of relief as doomsday has been temporarily averted. At the April 2005 congress in Tallin, UEFA changed procedures for replacing President Lennart Johansson. This delayed Franz Beckenbauer’s seemingly inevitable advance to European football’s top job with his suggestions for preliminary rounds before international qualifying tournaments.

Knowledge bank: One hand, the military dictatorship used the soccer World Cup 1978 to gain political prestige at home and abroad. On the other, the Argentinians celebrated football because they regarded it as something of their own. Indeed, this World Cup had many faces...

Knowledge bank: Professor of sports history, Hans Bonde, gives a brief introduction to the fascinating history of the Danish gymnastics pedagogue Niels Bukh. He revolutionized male aesthetics, became a symbol of Danishness and was dangerously close to the Nazis during the 1930's. 

Knowledge bank: In this article, Laura Robinson explains how and why she wrote the play FrontRunners about ten indigenous runners in Canada. These men had been good runners and students in 1967 when Winnipeg hosted the Pan-Am Games and had been selected to run 800 kilometres with the torch from St. Paul, Minnesota to Winnipeg. However, just before entering the stadium the torch was taken from them and given to a non-Aboriginal runner.