Gripping, arresting and totally believable from the start, this is excitingly authentic. The terrible game of rugby league football is beautifully shot in all the horror of its violent thuggery and macho heroism. The streets, the houses, the shops, the pubs, the clubs and the children playing all evoke memories of that admittedly dreary but familiar visions. The living spaces, some cramped and dinged, like mine a that time, and others spacious and exuding that illusive smell of success (or upper class thuggery!) All this is fine and Richard Harris is fully believable as the film's angry young man. It is just that as the, rather overlong, film continues we get less of the 'sporting life' and the 'dead end streets' and more of the 'love' story and rather clumsy stabs at class warfare. In the end we are rather tiring of all the 'I love you', 'I hate you' cries and welcome the closing credit but it is still very much a worth seeing film that probably catches more of what it really felt like to be in Britain late 50s/early 60s than any other film I have seen.

This Sporting Life may be a touch overlong, but it is overall a truly brilliant movie and still hits hard after all these years. It has a very realistic story, and the characters are given so much depth and realism it is hard not to empathise. The cinematography is wonderful, the setting is truly evocative, the direction is superb and the screenplay truthful and honest. There are many superb scenes, particularly some truly remarkable scenes of confrontation that are honest to the point it verges on painful to listen. As for the acting, Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts really do give the roles of their live in This Sporting Life, and are both absolutely brilliant as the ruthless professional rugby player and repressed widowed landlady with whom he can only communicate with through violence, and they are finely supported by the likes of Alan Badel and William Hartnell. Overall, brilliant film with a great cast and a hard-hitting sense of realism. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Under anesthesia in an oral surgeon's office Richard Harris recalls a lot of his life and what it took to get him to the top of the game in his chosen sport of rugby. It isn't a pretty picture that emerges.

If rugby was an American sport, Richard Harris's part would have been played by Kirk Douglas. Aspects of Harris's character of Frank Machin can definitely be found in Douglas's Academy Award nominated performances as Midge Kelly in Champion and Jonathan Shields in The Bad and the Beautiful. Harris too got an Oscar nomination for his performance, but lost to Sidney Poitier in Lillies of the Field.

Matching him every step of the way is Rachel Roberts as the widow with whom he takes lodging and takes for granted as well. She's the widow of a rugby friend and he puts her through quite a lot.

Harris plays hard and dirty on the field and parties hardy at night. In American terms some of the worst aspects of the characters of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth combined.

Rachel Roberts was also nominated for Best Actress. In fact the nominations of Harris and Roberts are the only two the film received. Roberts lost however to Patricia Neal in Hud.

In the rest of the cast look for good performances from Alan Badel as the team booster, Vanda Godsell as his amorous wife who develops a thing for Harris and William Hartnell as the team trainer.

Hartnell's performance in This Sporting Life got him cast later on in a science fiction television series that became an institution on both sides of the Atlantic as he became the first Doctor Who.

Best scene in the film is the crude and boorish Harris at a posh London night spot when he's out with Roberts. Talk about out of your class.

Second best is at a drunken team party when Harris starts singing Here Is My Heart. I sing it better than he does there. But what's funny is that you'd never believe this is the same man who did the film version of Camelot and toured in same. Richard Harris did NOT do King Arthur in the way he sings in This Sporting Life.

For fans of Richard Harris and for those who will become fans of his when they see This Sporting Life.