Running the club for love: challenges for identity, accountability and governance relationships

Abstract

The current context of State sport governance and funding structures in the United Kingdom continue to challenge national, regional and local bodies and community clubs’ abilities to fulfill ambitions to support participation and competition at all levels. Notwithstanding sport clubs’ laudable intentions to support involvement and encourage participation (often with limited resources, guidance and communication from National Governing Bodies [NGB]), clubs face considerable practical, political and ideological constraints that adversely affect their day-to-day operations and ability to translate sport policy in ‘action’ in meaningful ways. Drawing on data from 21 athletic clubs in England, this paper examines how athletic clubs’ relations with the NGB, UK athletics (UKA), raise questions about the clubs’ individual and collective identities, agendas, ideals and overall value to its members.

Keywords:

• Athletics
• grassroots
• identity
• accountability
• governance

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 Grassroots in this article refers to community or foundational level led by volunteers (Cuskelly, 2008; Misener & Doherty, 2013).

2 UK Sport focuses on leading sport in the UK to world class success. Sport England’s focus is to ensure everyone in England should feel able to take part in sport or activity, regardless of age, background or ability.

3 PE is Physical Education.

4 DoE is Department of Education.

5 SportScotland is Scotland’s national agency for sport and view sport as a way of life as it is at the heart of society and therefore has a positive impact on people and communities.

6 Sports Club Survey 2013 reported that the average club (∼114 adult members) now has 24 volunteers.

7 Parkrun is a free, weekly, 5-km timed run which take place across the world open to all abilities.

8 Clubmark is the sport accreditation scheme for community sports clubs and stands for higher standards of welfare, equity, coaching and management in community sports clubs and ensuring the nation’s sports club infrastructure is safer, stronger and more successful. Essentially it demonstrates that a club can provide the right environment in considering welfare and enjoyment of life-long participation in sport (ClubMatters 2018).

9 To note, in the United Kingdom, while clubs have the capacity to set agendas and policies in their day-to-day governance, funding is provided from state funding bodies and NGBs. Thus, it is in the club’s best interest to align themselves and their policies with those of their funders to ensure economic support is maintained.