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ABSTRACT
There is a crisis of leadership in sport. Leadership as an athletic excellence is under threat from the deepening influence of coaches on in-game decisionmaking. To appreciate what is being lost in this shift of responsibility, it is necessary to understand the challenge of athlete leadership. Captaincy is the quintessential on-field leadership role. However, the role of captain, and athlete leadership more widely, remains philosophically untheorized. This paper initiates a discussion of leadership in sport by providing the first normative account of captaincy. Rugby union is used as a case study, as this sport preserves an especially demanding and complex form of captaincy that may provide a rough template for the revival of athlete leadership in other sports. A virtue theoretical analysis of the role is developed based on a functionalist conception of virtue. It is argued that discharging the responsibilities of such captaincy requires two key virtues: ‘sporting judgement’ and ‘responsibility’.
Acknowledgments
For instructive comment and criticism, I am grateful to Andrew Bloodworth, Olly Cracknell, Paul Gaffney, Mike McNamee, and two anonymous referees. I also benefitted from discussion of the paper at the joint 2017 European Association for the Philosophy of Sport and British Philosophy of Sport Association conference in Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In light of powerful objections to adversarial competition levelled by, among others, Kohn (Citation1992).
2. For example, Russell (Citation1999).
3. For example, Hardman and Jones (Citation2011) or Simon (Citation2018).
4. For example, the literature on sportsmanship, such as Keating (Citation1964) or Abad (Citation2010).
5. Important contributions have been made in works aimed at a general audience, including Brearley (Citation2015) and Walker (Citation2017).
6. For a recent overview, see Cotterill and Fransen (Citation2016).
7. Rugby union is a global game, played by 8.5 million people in 121 countries (World Rugby Citation2017).
8. The body which determines the laws of soccer is actively considering changes to expand the responsibilities of captaincy to align more closely with captaincy in rugby (International Football Association Board Citation2017).
9. An alternative approach to this character-based analysis would be to examine the characters of those who have captained successful teams and extrapolate character traits that are commonly held among them. For such a success-based approach, see Walker (Citation2017). However, this approach does not distinguish between traits that are conducive to good captaincy from those developed by people in captaincy. Some traits that we associate with being in power may result from the experience of being in power rather than explain why one become powerful. Pfeffer notes that ‘often the characteristics that we believe to be sources of power [e.g. articulateness, extroversion, self-confidence etc.] are almost as plausibly the consequences of power instead’ (Pfeffer Citation1992, 73). Moreover, a team’s results are a poor measure against which to judge a captain’s ability qua captain. A winning team can be so superior to their opponents that little hinges on the quality of captaincy. Conversely, a team can be so weak in relation to its opposition that even outstanding captaincy cannot bring about a winning results. So, we must look beyond mere results to assess the quality of captaincy.
10. This is to be distinguished from an aretic account of virtue by which the virtues are defined in terms of their tendency to allow the occupant of the role to flourish as a person in and through the role.
11. This differs from many other types of leaders. For example, a military leader may order an air strike on an enemy, but they will not be involved in the execution of that order.
12. A complete virtue ethical account of captaincy may require a prior account of the purpose of the sport and what aspect of human good that sport advances. See Oakley and Cocking (Citation2001, ch. 3). To that extent, the account offered here is ‘mid-level’ as it assumes the responsibilities of the role absent an account of deeper normative underpinnings.
13. I leave open the possibility that substantive winning may be possible despite one’s cheating to some degree. See Paul Gaffney’s concept of ‘playable cheating’ (Gaffney 2018-2019). Assuming that cheating necessarily involves rule-breaking, the playable cheating doctrine contradicts the ‘logical incompatibility thesis’. According to that thesis, cheating precludes winning, because winning presupposes playing, and playing presupposes rule-following (Suits Citation2014, 26).
14. This is not to claim that the captain is the only player with responsibility for shaping the team’s culture and animating values, but they have an elevated responsibility in this regard.
15. Such an alignment is also necessary with players who occupy non-captaincy leadership roles within a team. In rugby, this is most evident in the relationship between the coach and the outhalf. The outhalf is a crucial decisionmaking position, akin to a quarter-back in American football.
16. Though this decision may be dictated in advance by the coaching staff.
17. Examples of captains executing this motivational responsibility are evident in clips involving British and Irish Lions captains Martin Johnson (The British and Irish Lions Citation2020, 1:45–3: 35), Paul O’Connell (The British and Irish Lions Citation2016b), and Alun Wyn Jones (The British and Irish Lions Citation2016a).
18. Occasions may arise in which a player would best serve their team by avoiding risk. For example, in order to avoid injury or to reduce the risk of committing an offence that would result in a sanction from which the team would likely concede points. However, there are many circumstances in which one can best serve the team by assuming avoidable risk, for example, in the execution of a dominant tackle that drives the opponent backwards or in contesting the ball at the breakdown following a tackle.
19. Consider, for example, English captain Martin Johnson’s decision not to speak to his team as they were about to take to the field for the men’s Rugby World Cup Final in 2003 (Rugbypass Official Citation2019, 2:10–3:37).
20. An ‘individualised’ approach to ethics in political leadership, which is contextualist as opposed to morally subjectivist, has been developed by Mark Philp (e.g. Philp Citation2010). This approach emphasises that the evaluation of individual political leaders should be sensitive to their particular capacities and the specific constraints on their agency at the point of decision. One such constraint is how the leader is viewed by those they lead: ‘Since the development and implementation of political decisions depends on carrying people with you, the variability of people’s reactions to those who attempt to lead them will play an important role in determining what it is possible for any particular politician to do – thereby necessarily individualizing the answer to “what should X do in a given context”’ (Philp Citation2010, 469).
21. This idea of ‘acting together’ draws from Gilbert (Citation2013, 34).
22. Examples of captains executing this spokesperson role are evident in clips involving England women’s captain, Sarah Hunter (Irish Rugby TV Citation2016) and New Zealand men’s captain, Kieran Read (World Rugby Citation2019).
23. This advocatorial aspect of captaincy is exemplified by Irish men’s captain Rory Best’s discussion with the referee concerning purported illegal tackles committed on Irish outhalf Jonathan Sexton. See Cummiskey (Citation2017). Subtle advocacy was also evident in British and Irish Lions captain Sam Warburton’s intervention in the final moments of the final test between the Lions and New Zealand in 2017. Warburton’s interventions were arguably delaying tactics to encourage the referee to pause and reconsider his initial decision. For a clip of the incident, see Rugby365.com (Citation2017), and for an analysis, see Goile (Citation2017).
24. This lawyerly role is so important that it formed the (at least the publicly stated) basis for coach Warren Gatland selecting Sam Warburton as British and Irish Lions Captain in 2013. See Rees (Citation2013).
25. The distinction between ‘trustee’ and ‘delegate’ models of representation has been discussed by Hannah Pitkin (Citation1967). The trustee model of parliamentary representation was famously defended by Edmund Burke in his ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’ (Burke Citation1774).
26. Indeed, given the speed at which decisions must be made and the context-sensitive nature of these decisions, it would be difficult to implement a pure delegate model of in-game representation in rugby.
27. The type of judgement at issue here is a form of ‘practical judgement’. Practical judgement is oriented towards action. Following Aristotle, this is to be distinguished from ‘theoretical judgement’, which is concerned with matters of truth and knowledge.
28. For a view that judgement is the preeminent virtue in all leadership contexts, see Keohane (Citation2005).
29. As Isaiah Berlin notes with regard to political judgement ‘[judgement] involves an acute sense of what fits with what, what springs from what, what leads to what’ (Berlin 1996 [Citation1957]).
30. As Onora O’Neill argues, ‘we can formulate definite descriptions...but in doing so we do not point to particulars, however much information we tuck into the act description’ (O’Neill Citation2018, 119).
31. In the context of political judgement, Isaiah Berlin notes that good judgement involves a ‘highly developed discrimination of what matters from the rest’ (Berlin 1996 [Citation1957]).
32. England men’s captain, Chris Robshaw, was heavily criticised when England failed to score after electing to take the more risky, but potentially more rewarding, option of kicking for the corner to set up a try rather than kicking for goal in a pivotal moment during England’s World Cup match against Wales in 2015. See Mairs (Citation2015). However, the evaluation of individual tactical decisions should not be purely consequentialist. In addition to point-scoring concerns, evaluation should consider at least whether the decision cohered with the team’s playing philosophy.
33. How sporting judgement is acquired, its relationship to rationality, and how to discern good from bad sporting judgement are questions that require further attention but cannot be taken up here.
34. For an excellent discussion of this distinction in Berlin, see Cherniss (Citation2018, ch. 12). This distinction is implicit in Berlin’s comparisons of Franklin D. Roosevelt with Winston Churchill (Berlin Citation1949) and Woodrow Wilson (Berlin Citation1998).