The Coming of Nelson and the Ending of Apartheid Cricket? Gatting’s Rebels in South Africa, 1990

Abstract

The year 1990 is pivotal in South African history. The liberation movements were unbanned, and Nelson Mandela was freed in the midst of a tour by Mike Gatting’s English rebel cricket team. The newly constituted National Sports Congress, which had the support of the African National Congress, was at the forefront of protests against the tour. For once, Ali Bacher and apartheid cricket were on the back foot. However, the NSC did a sudden volte-face by calling off protests and negotiating the end of the tour. One reason for this decision was that the NSC was made aware of Mandela’s imminent release and that sport would play a key role in creating a ‘stable’ environment. These moves and countermoves accelerated cricket “unity” and saw South African return to international cricket before the formal end of apartheid. This paper interrogates the consequences of cricket returning to the international fold in such haste. It is entitled ‘Nelson’ because in some cricket countries, the score of 111 is called Nelson, and there is a superstitious belief that a wicket would fall. With Mandela’s release, 1990 was the year in which apartheid’s wicket fell, though victory celebrations appear to have been premature.     

A generational divide within the class-based production of girls in American youth soccer

By building upon earlier research on social class and soccer, the following study specifically provides insight into American, adolescent girls’ experiences with youth soccer (Swanson, ‘Complicating the “Soccer Mom”’; Swanson, ‘Soccer Fields’; Andrews, ‘Contextualizing Suburban Soccer’; and Zwick and Andrews, ‘The Suburban Soccer Field’). Driven by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts regarding social class reproduction, I engaged in ethnographic-style conversations regarding recreational youth soccer with girls ages 11–14 and their Baby-Boom-Generation mothers in order to further understand how the American, middle-class habitus may be contributing to a particular gender-based path in youth sport (Bourdieu, Distinction). Additionally, Grossberg’s and Giroux’s literature on youth and politics of culture informed my understanding of the discrepancies between parents’ views and their children’s views on youth soccer experiences (Grossberg, ‘Cultural Studies’; Giroux, Stealing Innocence). In this paper, I recognize American involvement in youth soccer as a class-based form of childrearing as I describe parents’ expectations of girls in youth soccer. The participants’ thoughts on race, social class, gender, and today’s youth as related to their soccer experiences are provided.     

The Role of the Lebanese-Australian Diaspora in the Establishment of Rugby League in Lebanon

Abstract

The Lebanese Rugby League was formed in 1997 in Sydney when a team comprised of Australian-based players of Lebanese descent participated in an international tournament. The Lebanese national team later qualified for two rugby league men’s World Cups (2000 and 2017). The case demonstrates how diasporas can shape sport development. The accomplishment of the Lebanese team has also given the small country some exposure at the global level. Additionally, since 2002, a new sport has been established in Lebanon, making the country one of the few cases in the world where rugby league is more popular than rugby union. This paper examines diaspora issues including the assimilation of Lebanese emigrants into Australian sporting culture and strategic uses of citizenship. Furthermore, the research sheds light on the ‘glocalized’ development of rugby league in Lebanon by its establishment at private Lebanese universities while it is known in Australia for its working-class origins. There is a relationship of mutual dependence between diaspora and homeland: without its diaspora, Lebanon could not participate in the World Cup, and without domestic development in the sport (which includes, since 2015, also women’s teams), the diaspora would not be permitted to participate in global championships.     

Politics,resistance and patronage: the African boycott of the 1966 World Cup and its ramifications

ABSTRACT

The 1966 World Cup Finals are remembered primarily for on-field events, not least the host’s capture of the Jules Rimet trophy, the performances of the minnows of North Korea in reaching the quarter-finals and the Eusebio-inspired exploits of the tournament’s other debutants, Portugal. What is less prominent in this history but more significant in impacting the longer-term trajectory of the World Cup and the global game, are events off the field of play, specifically the decision of African nations to boycott the qualifying rounds of the tournament. This paper assesses the circumstances behind this boycott, both within FIFA and in the highly charged political climate that characterized the immediate post-colonial era. Particular attention is paid to the role of Ghana as the boycott's chief architect. Thereafter, I explore some of the intended and unintended consequences of the boycott, including its contribution to an ongoing transformation in the global governance of football.     

‘Stick to Soccer:’ fan reaction and inclusion rhetoric on social media

Abstract

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide, social media reflected a range of support and dissent. US Soccer posted a photo featuring an eagle and the phrase ‘One Nation, One Team’ in rainbow font on their official social media accounts. This paper explores the reaction to those posts by social media users. We examined comments made about the post and, using elements of grounded theory, found five themes emerge: (1) resistance to the intertwinement of politics and sport and pushback to that resistance; (2) patriotism/nationalism; (3) the symbolic importance of out gay players, coaches and fans; (4) general negative comments; and (5) general positive comments. We contextualize these themes in light of (1) the tension around the role of politics in sports, (2) US Soccer’s historical heterosexism and its manifestations and (3) the changing landscape of women’s sports in regards to homosexuality.     

From bastard child to a place in Australia’s family; the Federal Government’s role in repositioning Australian soccer as a legitimate,mainstream sport: a qualitative study

Abstract

Following over a century on the margins, soccer moved into the mainstream of Australian sports culture in 2003. This resulted from the intervention of the Federal Government via a review into the sport’s governance and structure, the reform led by high-profile recruit Frank Lowy. By 2015, the men’s national team had won the Asian Cup, qualified for three consecutive FIFA World Cup Finals’ appearances and the men’s professional A-League had successfully completed its tenth season. Australian Soccer was now perceived to be part of the sporting mainstream. This qualitative study utilized semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample from politics, sport and business (N?=?22), and identified four key transformative mechanisms: Federal Government intervention, the recruitment of Frank Lowy, implementing credible governance and structure, and leveraging the game’s traditional popularity. Soccer’s reformation was aimed, in part, to provide Australia greater leverage in Asia, the region where Australia’s interests are significantly influenced by the geo-political axis between the USA and China.     

Recycling Steel: football,tradition, and historicity in Pennsylvania

On 19 August 2015, the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer announced plans to sponsor an expansion team in the second-tier United Soccer League. Two months later, an enthusiastic crowd filed into the historic Bethlehem Steel plant in eastern Pennsylvania to witness the new side’s unveiling. Against the backdrop of towering blast furnaces that evoked the region’s industrial golden age, Union representatives heralded the return of Bethlehem Steel Football Club. This paper explores the nexus of past and present in the recycling of Steel. Juxtaposing the modern club’s retro-themed kit against the identity of its storied namesake, it argues that the past is simultaneously honoured and obscured. In so doing, it situates the recycling of Steel in its broader historical context, paying attention to the business ambitions of Union executives, the cultural penchant for heritage branding and the efforts of a once-vibrant manufacturing town to negotiate the realities of a postindustrial landscape.     

Fan culture and motivation in the context of successful women’s professional team sports: a mixed-methods case study of Portland Thorns fandom

Abstract

By the metric of average home attendance, the Portland Thorns of the National Women’s Soccer League are the most popular women’s professional sports team in the world. This paper investigates that distinct sports context through a mixed-methods case study of Thorns fandom, asking what fans themselves perceive to be salient elements of a successful fan culture for women’s professional soccer and what motivates their fandom. Drawing on survey data that are contextualized by ethnographic observations and interviews, we offer an interpretive analysis of ways Thorns fandom hybridizes elements of traditional and alternative sports fandom. Our findings highlight the emphasis Thorns fans put on quality soccer in a professional atmosphere where fans themselves create the supporters culture, along with the symbolic importance to fans of identifying with values such as gender empowerment, diversity and inclusion. We discuss ways these themes might offer and inform alternative models of sports fandom.     

Ethnicity as an Exercise in Sport: European Immigrants,Soccer Fandom,and the Making of Canadian Multiculturalism, 1945–1979

Abstract

Ethnic sport offers an important and understudied lens into how newcomers – a key population on the social peripheries – negotiate their entry into host societies. Canada was among the top countries to receive European migrants after the Second World War. Soccer participation and fandom were a gateway in their resettlement and an axis for community formation, identity expression, economic advancement, and personal pleasure. This paper explores what four decades of ethnic soccer on the peripheries of post-war Toronto reveals about the local organization of immigrant life and the European newcomer’s mediated entry into English Canada. It demonstrates that Toronto soccer fans were sufficient in number and electoral voice to transform the urban politics of leisure and organization of social diversity, even as their leisure activities were still heavily contained by host institutions. Paradoxically, soccer’s straightjacketed role in Toronto as an ethnic social adhesive and platform for identity expression rendered it largely irrelevant to the general, more settled population, while its capacity to articulate ethnic differences made it a force and symbol of English Canada’s re-imagination as a multicultural society in the 1970s.     

Playing up to Precarity; Or,the Lost Generation

Abstract

This article considers the development of an academic precariat and its impact on sport history. It discusses the author’s own experiences as a sport historian and the impact of academic unemployment on a generation of would-be sport historians. It argues that not only is there an academic precariat within sport history but that this is the result of internal and external factors. Externally it reflects the challenges to the academy from market reforms and the neo-liberalization of the academic world, and internally it reflects the failure of senior academics to resist those reforms thereby allowing junior colleagues to take the full force of their impact. The result is a lost generation of sport historians.     

Comment on “Football-specific fitness testing: adding value or confirming the evidence?”

Abstract

The recent point–counter-point exchange arising from the article by Mendez-Villanueva and Buchheit (2013) (Football-specific fitness testing: Adding value or confirming the evidence? Journal of Sports Sciences, 31, 1503–1508) has generated an interesting debate on the real-world utility of fitness testing in professional association football (soccer). In the present authors’ opinion, this exchange could also have been placed more in the context of the physical testing and subsequent benchmark profiling of the youth player within elite academy talent identification and development processes. This point is further strengthened by the current media debate at the time of writing on the development of elite youth football players in England and the Elite Player Performance Plan or EPPP (The Premier League. (2011). Elite Player Performance Plan. London: Author) published by the English Premier League as part of a vision for the future development of youth football in the League and throughout the English professional game. The EPPP recommends the implementation of a national database to enable comparison of Academy player performances against national physical testing “benchmark” profiles. In continuing the above debate, this letter questions the real-world utility and potential pitfalls of nationwide athletic benchmark profiling programmes for elite youth football.     

Hosting International Events and Promoting South Korean Identity Discourses: Continuities and Discontinuities

Abstract

More than six decades after the end of the Korean War (1950–53), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) continue to face each other across the highly fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula. Both Korean governments continue to maintain and reinforce a pan-Korean identity amongst its respective populations. At the same time, both states need to provide its respective citizens with distinct national identities, which obviously requires a politically difficult and highly delicate balancing act. The focus of this paper is on the dominant identity discourses in South Korea. These have been observed, interpreted and analyzed in five international events and festivals that the South hosted over the last three decades: the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the 2002 Soccer World Cup (co-hosted with Japan), the Busan Asian Games in the same year, the 2011 Daegu World Athletic Championships and the 2014 Incheon Asian Games. All these events offered a distinctive nationalist flavour, celebrated tradition and modernity, and emphasized South Korea’s rapid 20th century development and achievements, but also served as a reminder of the ethnic homogeneity of the divided Korean people and the unjust political division of the Korean peninsula.     

Requiem for the College Women’s Gymnasium: Disciplining the Female Body in Educational and Architectural Space

Abstract

The women’s college gymnasium’s geographical, architectural and spatializing arrangements have historically been important ingredients in the social constitution of the gendered body. It has provided a critical stage on which struggles within the profession of physical education and its relation to competitive sport have been enacted both within its own boundaries and at the level of the broader campus and its shifting priorities. This paper explores the rise and demise of women’s gymnasia on North American college campuses from the late nineteenth to the latter decades of the twentieth century to illuminate how the shifting academic landscape has reflected changing attitudes towards the perceived needs of female students and the nature of their training in physical education and movement sciences. The analysis focuses upon two women’s colleges in the United States remarkable for their architectural splendour and programme integrity: the University of California at Berkeley’s Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium for Women and the Anna Hiss Gymnasium at the University of Texas, Austin. It laments their gradual demise as academic institutions have increasingly shifted their priorities and the world of the female gymnasium has retracted to be reinserted into college campuses’ twenty-first century vision for student recreation and competitive sport.     

On Searching for the Latin American Sportswoman and Finding an Argentine Sports Historian

Abstract

This paper is a personal account of the author’s interest in the field of sports history and its emergence in Argentina. It explores several prejudices and misunderstandings that have contributed to a limited and partial vision of this scholarly discipline.     

Psychosocial outcomes associated with soccer academy involvement: Longitudinal comparisons against aged matched school pupils

ABSTRACT

Despite literature highlighting numerous risks to the healthy psychosocial development of youth elite academy soccer players, little of this research is based on high-quality research designs. This study employed a prospective longitudinal cohort design to track psychosocial outcomes of academy involvement within male youth elite soccer players (n = 33, U12-U16 age groups) compared to age-matched soccer-active school pupils (n = 44) over 12 months. Participants completed questionnaires assessing the most commonly raised psychosocial concerns at four equally spaced data collection periods (T1–T4). Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVAs) indicated that, over the year, both groups reported a healthy and improving stress and recovery balance, as well as positive and stable needs satisfaction and physical, psychological and social well-being. Academy players reported stable positive school-related quality of life, whereas school pupils reported increases from T3 to T4. Academy players reported consistent significantly higher total athletic identity and exclusivity of identity. Findings suggest that many concerns around negative psychosocial impacts of soccer academy involvement did not materialise in this context. However, heightened athletic identities remained a concern.     

Lessons learned and tables turned: ‘(in)security’ and media representations in the 2018 World Cup

ABSTRACT

This essay follows up on an article published in Soccer & Society prior to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. There it was argued that this edition of the World Cup served as particularly interesting for the academic field focussed on sport-mega events (SMEs) and ‘security’, because of its uniquely securitized climate. Written immediately after the 2018 World Cup, the present essay reflects upon the event’s ‘security’ and mega-event security more broadly. It revisits some ‘security-related’ episodes. Then, special attention will be given the media discourse vis-à-vis ‘hooliganism’. The essay argues that the media discourse took an unorthodox ‘turn’ with regard to English ‘hooligans’, who, compared to past events, were portrayed as being ‘in risk’ – rather than being the group generating ‘the risk’ of football-related violence and public disorder.     

Parental Support and Objectively Measured Physical Activity in Children: A Yearlong Cluster-Randomized Controlled Efficacy Trial

Purpose: We studied whether physical activity (PA) counseling for parents influenced the level of parental support of children’s PA and leisure-time PA in children of different levels of initial parental support. We hypothesized that the initial level of parental support would moderate the intervention efficacy. Method: Children (n = 44, M_age = 6.09 ± 1.17 years) and their parents (n = 61) randomly assigned to an intervention group received counseling for 6 months. Children in the control group (n = 47, M_age = 6.12 ± 1.11 years) and their parents (n = 63) did not receive any counseling. Parental support was assessed using the Family Physical Activity Environment Questionnaire, and children’s leisure-time PA was recorded using triaxial accelerometers at baseline, at 6 months, and at 12 months. The efficacy of the intervention was tested by linear mixed-effects modeling adjusted for confounding variables (Model 1) and additionally for children’s participation in organized PA or sports (Model 2). Results: Parents within the lowest initial parental support intervention tertile significantly increased their support, and their children’s mean level of leisure-time PA significantly improved compared with the corresponding controls during the counseling period. On the other hand, intervention was found to have an unfavorable influence especially in the PA of children of initially highly supportive parents. Conclusion: Targeting PA counseling for parents with low support of their children’s PA could contribute to better family-based PA counseling efficacy.     

Parental Behavior,Cognitive Appraisal,and Motivation in Young Athletes

Purpose: This study tested two hypotheses relating young athletes’ sports motivations to parental behaviors and cognitive appraisal: (1) young athletes’ motivation in sports is related to their parents’ behavior; and (2) this relationship is mediated by cognitive appraisal, even after controlling for competitive level and sports records. Method: This cross-sectional study included 673 young athletes and it measured the athletes’ perceptions of parental behaviors, cognitive appraisal, and sports motivation. Results: Structural equation modeling confirmed Hypothesis 1–the mother’s behaviors accounted for 15 to 16% of the variance in sports motivation, and the father’s behaviors accounted for 12 to 21% of the variance. The correlation patterns differed according to whether the athletes were evaluating the mother’s or father’s behaviors. Hypothesis 2 also was confirmed, for cognitive appraisal partially mediated the relationship between the perception of parental behaviors and sports motivation (34% of the variance was accounted for by the perception of the mother’s behavior; 30% by the father’s). The mediating model did not vary with competitive level or sports records. Conclusion: Parental behaviors and cognitive appraisal need to be taken into account to understand young athletes’ sports motivations.     

Identity,scale and soccer supporter groups: the case of the Timbers Army

The purpose of this article is to examine how Timbers Army members collectively construct and present their supporter group identity through an awareness of and interaction with soccer and supporter culture at different socio-geographic scales. Central to this is a strong attachment to and with place – most specifically to the city of Portland, Oregon, where the team is based. Using participant observation and interviews, we explore how the group’s identity evolved in a country without a history of soccer support. The findings illustrate how individuals and collectives come to view themselves and their locality within a globalized world through processes of glocalization and relativization. Soccer and its attenuate supporter culture(s) are perfect arenas for exploring social identity and the fuzziness of geographic borders within global–local interactions due to the global appeal yet highly specific local manifestations of soccer support.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Transition from Doctoral Student to Faculty Member in Physical Education

ABSTRACT

Purpose: A paucity of literature examines how doctoral students are prepared for the transition into physical education teacher education faculty roles. Given the need to understand how doctoral programs impact such preparation, we sought to investigate this process using a longitudinal approach grounded in occupational socialization theory. Method: Fourteen participants (8 males, 6 female) were interviewed during final stages of doctoral programs and their first years in faculty positions; questions focused on key socializing agents and experiences that shaped their preparation for their academic careers. Data were analyzed using a constant comparison approach entailing open and axial coding. Results: Strong advisor-advisee relationships and finding a supportive department culture during one’s first faculty position were key socializing mechanisms. Participants who independently sought research experiences transitioned more smoothly into faculty roles; however, many had heavy teaching loads which conflicted with ambitions to regularly conduct research. Further, some faculty members experienced tense sociopolitical environments which hindered their productivity and confidence in current job roles. Conclusions: Our results speak to the challenges and successes that faculty members experience as they transition into the academy. Findings have implications for further research and practice to enhance the quality of doctoral education and faculty induction programs.