This Sporting Life starring Richard Harris; Film Director Jim Sheridan will speak after this screening

The Plot of “This Sporting Life”

Yorkshire coal miner Frank Machin (Richard Harris) picks a fight in a club and subsequently finds himself being recruited for a rugby team. He’s an unpolished, player, but his aggressiveness, brutality and indifference to the rules of fair play impress the team owners. Suddenly a rising star, Frank despairs that his success on the playing field isn’t equalled in his personal life. He loves a widowed, emotionally challenged landlady (Rachel Roberts) who’s too damaged to return his feelings.

This Sporting Life is regarded as one of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of “kitchen-sink realism”. With an astonishing, raging debut performance by a young Richard Harris, an equally blistering performance by fellow Oscar nominee Rachel Roberts as the widow with whom he lodges, and electrifying direction by Lindsay Anderson, in his feature-film debut, This Sporting Life remains to this day as a riveting dramatic powerhouse of British Cinema.