Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching: towards a relational perspective

Abstract

While scholars have increasingly engaged with the (micro)political and emotional experiences of coaches in professional and semi-professional football, little attention has been given to grass-roots coaches’ understandings of these issues. The aim of this paper is to outline one possible research agenda that could contribute to the development of a rich and increasingly nuanced understanding of the everyday realities of being a grass-roots football coach. In particular, we consider (volunteer) coaches’ participation in grass-roots football to be an inherently relational endeavour. Following the presentation of a creative fiction that is based upon our shared experiences of being grass-roots football coaches, we then illustrate how relational thinking might be productively applied to exploring the social, (micro)political and emotional features of grass-roots football coaching.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Potrac et al., ‘“Handshakes, BBQs, and Bullets”: Self-interest, Shame and Regret in Football Coaching’; Nelson et al., ‘Thinking, Feeling, Acting: The Case of a Semi-professional Soccer Coach’; and Thompson et al., ‘“I Found out the Hard Way”: Micro-political Workings in Professional Football’.

2. cf. Nias, ‘Thinking about Feeling: The Emotions in Teaching’ 26; Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching.

3. Jones and Wallace, ‘Another Bad Day at the Training Ground: Coping with Ambiguity in the Coaching Context’: 119.

4. Potrac and Jones, ‘Power, Conflict, and Cooperation: Toward a Micropolitics of Coaching’, 2009a; Potrac and Jones, ‘Micropolitical Workings in Semi-professional Football’, 2009b; Potrac et al., ‘“Handshakes, BBQs, and Bullets”: Self-interest, Shame and Regret in Football Coaching’; and Purdy et al., ‘Trust, Distrust and Coaching Practice’.

5. Ball, The Micro-politics of the School, 19.

6. Potrac et al., ‘Coaches, Coaching, and Emotion: A Suggested Research Agenda’; Nelson et al., ‘Thinking, Feeling, Acting: The Case of a Semi-professional Soccer Coach’.

7. Ibid.

8. Jones, Edwards, and ViottoFilho, ‘Activity Theory, Complexity and Sports Coaching: An Epistemology for a Discipline’.

9. Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching.

10. Jones and Wallace, ‘Another Bad Day at the Training Ground: Coping with Ambiguity in the Coaching Context’; Jones, Edwards, and ViottoFilho, ‘Activity Theory, Complexity and Sports Coaching: An Epistemology for a Discipline’; and Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching.

11. Lusted and O’Gorman, ‘The Impact of New Labour’s Modernisation Agenda on the English Grass-roots Football Workforce’.

12. Green and Houlihan, ‘Governmentality, Modernization, and the “disciplining” of National Sporting Organizations: Athletics in Australia and the United Kingdom’.

13. O’Gorman, ‘The Changing Nature of Sports Volunteering: Modernisation, Policy and Practice’; Robinson and Palmer, Managing Sports Organisations.

14. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’

15. Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, 2.

16. Ibid.

17. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’

18. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

19. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Donati, Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences.

20. Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, 3.

21. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Donati, Relational Sociology: A New Pradigm for the Social Sciences; and Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical issues.

22. Ibid.

23. Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues.

24. Ibid., 2.

25. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Donati, Relational Sociology: A New Pradigm for the Social Sciences; and Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical issues.

26. Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’.

27. N. Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’; Powell and Depelteau, Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical issues.

28. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’.

29. Ibid.

30. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology.

31. Ibid., 342.

32. Ibid.

33. Beames and Pike, ‘Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education’; Jones, ‘Dilemmas, Maintaining “Face,” and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life’; and Sparkes, Telling Tales in Sport and Physical Activity: A Qualitative Journey.

34. Jones, ‘Dilemmas, Maintaining “Face,” and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life’.

35. R. Rinehart, ‘Fictional Methods of Ethnography: Believability, Specks of Glass, and Chekhov’.

36. Jones, ‘Dilemmas, Maintaining “Face,” and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life’; Sparkes, Telling Tales in Sport and Physical Activity: A Qualitative Journey; Tierney, ‘The Cedar Closet 1’.

37. Beames and Pike, ‘Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education’, 5.

38. Barone, ‘Among the Chosen: A Collaborative Educational (Auto)biography’.

39. Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching.

40. Beames and Pike, ‘Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education’; Jones, ‘Dilemmas, Maintaining “Face,” and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life’.

41. Beames and Pike, ‘Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education’.

42. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 23.

43. Sparkes, Telling Tales in Sport and Physical Activity: A Qualitative Journey.

44. Jones, ‘Dilemmas, Maintaining “Face,” and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life’.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., 109.

47. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 23; Beames and Pike, ‘Goffman Goes Rock Climbing: Using Creative Fiction to Explore the Presentation of Self in Outdoor Education’.

48. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology; Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’.

49. Ibid.

50. Crossley, ‘Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?’.

51. Ibid., 347.

52. Ibid.

53. Kelchtermans and Ballet, ‘The Micropolitics of Teacher Induction. A Narrative-biographical Study on Teacher Socialisation’; Kelchtermans and Ballet, ‘Micropolitical Literacy: Reconstructing a Neglected Dimension in Teacher Development.

54. Kelchtermans, ‘Who I am in How I Teach is the Message: Self‐understanding, Vulnerability and Reflection’.

55. Kelchtermans, ‘Career Stories as Gateway to Understanding Teacher Development’, 43.

56. Kelchtermans, ‘Career Stories as Gateway to Understanding Teacher Development’; Kelchtermans, ‘Who I am in How I Teach is the Message: Self‐understanding, Vulnerability and Reflection’; and Kelchtermans, ‘Vulnerability in Teaching: The Moral and Political Roots of a Structural Condition’.

57. Ibid.

58. Kelchtermans, and Ballet, ‘Micropolitical Literacy: Reconstructing a Neglected Dimension in Teacher Development’, 766.

59. Heidegger, Being and Time.

60. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology, 33.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., 33.

63. Burkitt, Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity, 127.

64. Burkitt, ‘Emotional Reflexivity: Feeling, Emotion and Imagination in Reflexive Dialogues’.

65. Burkitt, Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity; Burkitt, Emotions and social relations.

66. Burkitt, Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity’, 128.

67. Hochschild, The Managed Heart.

68. Potrac and Marshall, ‘Arlie Russell Hochschild: The Managed Heart, Feeling Rules and Emotional Labour: Coaching as an Emotional Endeavour’.

69. Hochschild, The Managed Heart; Turner and Stets, The Sociology of Emotions.

70. Kelchtermans and Ballet, ‘Micropolitical Literacy: Reconstructing a Neglected Dimension in Teacher Development’.

71. Theodosius, ‘Recovering Emotion from Emotion Management’, Sociology 40, no. 5 (2006): 893–910.

72. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

73. Burkitt, Emotions and Social Relations.

74. Ibid., 149.

75. Nelson et al., ‘Carl Rogers, Learning and Educational Practice: Critical Considerations and Applications in Sports Coaching’; Tracy, ‘Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact’.

76. Hunt, Walby, and Spencer, Emotions Matter: A Relational Approach to Emotions.

77. Jones et al., The Sociology of Sports Coaching.

78. Groom et al., ‘Writing and Representing Research’.

79. Ibid., 94.