At the Olympic Games this summer, Britain will for the first time have teams in all of the volleyball disciplines: indoor, beach and the Paralympic sport, sitting. It is poignant that my friend Don Anthony will not be able to witness the excitement. Don, who has died aged 83, was widely recognised as the godfather of the sport in the UK, having founded the Volleyball Association of England in 1955.
Don was an Olympian himself. He took part in the hammer contest at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, and also competed in the British Empire and Commonwealth Games that decade. A devoted follower of the Olympic principle that it is more important to take part than to win, he abhorred medal tables.
Born in Watford, Hertfordshire, Don attended Watford grammar school. He excelled at football and English and was encouraged to send stories to the local newspaper. He wrote intermittently about sport and physical education for the Guardian from the 1950s to the 1990s.
He was appointed assistant lecturer in PE at Manchester University and later taught at Loughborough University and Avery Hill College in south London (now part of the University of Greenwich). He was an indefatigable researcher, historian and academic. In the 1980s, he tracked down the great-grandson of William Morgan, the man who founded the game of volleyball, and brought him to Britain.
When I was co-ordinator of the Birmingham Olympic bid in 1992, we asked Don to join the team, and he used this opportunity to research Much Wenlock, the small town in Shropshire whose games in the 1800s are thought to have been a catalyst for the modern Olympic movement. He also researched Britain's early Olympic heritage and, in 1994, welcomed Juan Antonio Samaranch, then president of the International Olympic Committee, to Much Wenlock.
Don loved quoting examples of sport in history. One of his favourites was that volleyball was played in Henry VIII's time. He had discovered a text about a game in which a ball is hit over a net. Some people thought this referred to tennis, but not Don.
Last year Don was made an MBE for services to sport. He is survived by his wife, Jadwiga, and his son, Marek.