From post-game to play-by-play

1 Rhythm

Marauders on the right, the opposition on the left. Tap tap tap, squeak, squeak, squeak – gap (wait) – CHEER. Tap tap tap, squeak squeak, squeak – gap – (wait) CHEER. Back and forth, back and forth, the ball moves between players towards the basket like notes played along sheet music, or the dot moving above karaoke lyrics; with patterning, sometimes interrupted but logically, purposefully and ultimately forwards. (Field notes, university basketball game, December 2014)

Under science, rhythm is understood as a segmented forwards movement defined by predictable timing and spacing; repeated intervals of either alternating strong and weak periods or complete progressions and stops. These intervals create a uniform pattern which provides a consistent pace to the rhythm. Specific types of rhythm include regular (constant interval lengths and constant strength of strong and weak periods), progressive (interval lengths change and/or strength of strong and weak periods change, often building in noticeable steps), and flowing (changes occur consecutively up and down in interval lengths and/or strength of strong and weak periods).

Echoing the scientific understanding, but not as precise, are numerous human expressions of rhythm. Rhythm is, of course, most typically associated with the production and consumption of music. Rhythms might also occur in the economy or, more abstractly, in the rolling out and spread of ideas and policies. Notably, in terms of immediate human participation, the timed collective spacing and movement of bodies and objects might also constitute physical rhythms in numerous areas of human existence. Thus, spatially one might experience and participate in the rhythms of our homes, workplaces, consumer spaces, neighbourhoods, cities and regions, and temporally in the rhythms of moments, hours, days, weeks and years.

Humans participate in and experience rhythm through being immersed in it physically and mentally to some degree. Rhythm is sensed, registered and acted either consciously or less-than-fully consciously as the body becomes both in-tune with, and part of, the rhythm. The regularity of the rhythm provides comfort and incentive for the body to move along at a certain pace with other bodies and objects, it feeling ‘natural’ to do so (or the opposite being the case when it feels awkward, difficult and unnatural to be ‘out of sync’ with the prevailing rhythm). As McCormack (2002) suggests, this process is an important part of the conduct and experience of life and, as such, has attracted the attention of theorists for the best part of a century, particularly with regard to how rhythms collide. For Bergson (1911a, 1911b), for example, the synchronization or conflict of different but co-existing social rhythms might lead to different degrees of mutual relaxation or tension amongst bodies on different levels of consciousness. On a similar note, Deleuze and Guattari (1988) talk about difference, and how rhythmic relations and expressions between social milieus create ‘territories’ of different style that are not hard barriers but motifs; counterpoints to each other. Most recently Lefebvre (1991, 1992), as part of his wider explanation of ‘rhythmanalysis’, talks about how rhythm creates an ‘animated space’ amplifying the space of bodies involved, making them larger in terms of apprehension, particularly in relation to those not involved.

Rhythm is essential to the practice and experience of sport. When the rhythms of sport persist they might signify or lead to consistency in performance (or their interruption might signify or lead to inconsistency in performance). There can be, for example, rhythms across and that define multiple events – such as a season – but most immediately rhythms are produced and sensed by participants in the moment, bringing them together in ebbs and flows. These immediate rhythms might be part of a particular ‘style’ of play or performance, defining it and how it looks and feels. They also entice, enrolling observers – such as the members of a crowd – changing them into participants with secondary yet important capacities. One does not have to search too hard to find alignments with these ideas in sports studies. In sports psychology, the concept of ‘flow state’ articulates what in lay terms is known as ‘being in the zone’; a feeling state of absorption and strong unselfconscious participation that reduces a participant’s thinking time, helping them to achieve a higher level of performance with less conscious effort as they are more able to ‘naturally’ anticipate the future moves of other bodies and respond accordingly (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991; Young and Pain, 1999). Meanwhile, across sports psychology and sports physiology, debates have emerged over ‘synchronicity’ or ‘synchronization’, considering coordinated behaviours in complex systems (Hove and Risen, 2009). Here the thinking is that components of human movement systems naturally entrain each other (in everyday life, for example, bodies walk in step, applause turns into timed claps). It is posited that even if sports participants are not consciously aware of these processes happening, synchronization can induce feelings of togetherness, improve communication and levels of athletic performance (Varlet and Richardson, 2015).

Similarly, in emerging non-representational sports geographies (Table 1) spatial and temporal rhythms have been illustrated in the practices of kayaking (Waitt and Cook, 2007), running (Cook et al., 2015; Lorimer, 2012), golfing (Bissell, 2013), climbing (Barratt, 2011, 2012) and cycling (Spinney 2006; Cook and Edensor, 2015). Indeed, in Deleuzian terms, the kinds of rhythms echoed in this research are akin to ‘crystal time’; a patterned energy and intensity that is not necessarily mapable onto linear, artificially segmented ‘clock time’. Being more typical of the human experience, crystal time is lived time that flows along, ‘stretching’ when time seems to slow (for example when a sports participant wants an event to end), ‘compacting’ when time seems to speed up (for example when a sports participant needs more time to compete and does not want an event to end) or ‘shallowing’ when time seems to matter less (for example when a sports participant is intensely occupied in a performance) (see Glennie and Thrift, 2009). Whilst many participants might live sport in crystal time, they are also aware that they need to adhere to clock time (many sports having, for example, set durations and regularly timed breaks). Thus, crystal and clock times are consecutively running realities in sport. In terms of experience, although participants might lose themselves in the movement refrains that constitute the rhythms of their performance, regularly or irregularly intervening moments of formal structure interrupt, imposing their own ‘external’ rhythms periodically, announcing a sudden conscious return to clock time (for example the whistles or calls that divide a game, or landmarks that show a distance left to run or cycle).

2 Momentum

Bolt in lane 6 in yellow and black, playing with the crowd. Gatlin inside him in lane 4 tense, intense, isolated; Bolt the rabbit he has to chase. Quiet … hush …. BANG. Bolt rockets off, 1 second-2-3-4 … catching his prey quickly. 7-8-9 he catapults off the bend ahead of Gatlin, his lightening first half setting him up for the rest of the race. Now opening his stride down the home straight, 13-14-15 moving seemingly effortlessly like an unstoppable train away from Gatlin who loses form in his wake. Tap-tap-tap-tap his legs hit the track, pump-pump-pump-pump his arms drive up and down, extending his lead. 17-18-19 and Victory. (Author’s fieldnotes: Men’s 200m Final, IAAF Championships, Beijing, 2015)

According to the laws of mechanical physics, linear/translational momentum is motion force that is a combination of an object’s mass and its velocity (p=mv). It being a vector quality, to exist in a measurable sense, an object must move uninterrupted in one direction for a calculable time and distance. In terms of practical application, in engineering momentum is most often considered in terms of the energy required to create it (to get objects moving forwards) and to kill it (to stop objects). Momentum, however, also occurs in the social sphere, albeit in forms that are less mathematically precise. On one level there is ‘behavioural momentum’; the tendency for human behaviour to persist (for example in career decisions and trajectories) or in how one human activity (such as, in sport, taking performance-enhancing drugs) potentially leads onto another (such as training with more intensity and performing to a higher standard) with implications (such as winning or being caught).

On another level there is ‘felt momentum’ which transpires through, and is experienced as, the basic physicality and force of bodies and objects moving in particular directions. One can experience, for example, the agency and feeling of being swept up, of moving with and adding to the prevailing momentum (and thus the sheer joy of momentum itself, or discomfort of momentum if the direction is unwanted). Alternatively, one can experience the agency and feeling of inertia; of there being a lack of momentum, or moving and working against the prevailing momentum. These positive and negative experiences are often in relation to what is going on immediately, although they can also be about longer-term events. For example, sports participants experiencing consecutive failures or absences might describe feelings of being ‘stuck’ or ‘in a mire’ or even ‘in decline’.

In many sports physical momentum is critical; the combined basic mass and velocity of a body part, body or bodies being key to success (whether this be a tennis player’s arm swinging a serve, a football player running into a tackle or a rugby maul moving forward), as might be the combined mass and velocity of certain objects involved (for example, a javelin flying through the air, a bobsleigh entering its main run). Otherwise, as conveyed in sports psychology, ‘performance momentum’ is an important facet of sport. Although closely aligned with the aforementioned idea of ‘flow state’, this is more about sustaining achievement (in lay terms known as being ‘on a roll’). As Adler (1981) reflects, performance momentum is a dynamic intensity characterized by an enhanced state of motion, grace and success (see also Burke et al., 1998; Vallerand et al., 1998). It involves the co-existence and synchronization of mental sub-systems – such as excitement and confidence – but also beyond this the positive recycling of emotional and physical energy; the force and intensity of performance momentum propelling individuals and teams towards their goal, allowing them to perform as more than the sum of their parts (Adler and Adler, 1978). Performance momentum can be initiated or destroyed by in-game moments that act as catalysts, ‘stirring things up’, yet sequentially one might think about a momentum chain involving rapid relational, circumstantial and experiential changes (see Taylor and Demick, 1994). Processually, this chain involves changes in events (precipitating agency), experience (what is happening), cognition (e.g. perception of control, self-belief), affect (e.g. joy, sadness), psychology (e.g. motivation, arousal), behaviour (e.g. pace, posture), performance (e.g. distance, speed) and outcome (e.g. winning, losing). Meanwhile, one residual outcome of performance momentum can be a positive psychological mindset; confidence and affective memory that remain in individuals or teams after the end of a specific event (e.g. a match or game) until the start of the next. This memory facilitates the reintroduction of performance momentum once a new event commences, allowing ‘the hot hand’ to continue potentially over multiple events.

The experiential, affective and behavioural elements of performance momentum still require investigation (Crust and Nesti, 2006), and NRT might help animate its physical, spatial and less-than-fully consciously acted dimensions. Moreover, it might animate its role in more recreation-orientated individualized pursuits (for example the habits and unconscious movement of golfing practice and performance (Bissell, 2013) or maintaining one’s stride and timing whilst running through urban landscapes (Cook et al., 2015; Lorimer, 2012)). Thus NRT might add to psychology’s current knowledge base on the cognitive dimensions of performance momentum (its ‘how and why’), by helping to expose its diverse contexts and happenings (its ‘what, where and when’).

Otherwise, beyond considerations of individuals and teams, research might consider momentums in the becoming of sports places more broadly, and the way their energy spreads, within and beyond them. In Deleuzian terms, in thinking about sporting assemblages – whereby matter and energy take precedence over discourse and ideology – momentum might help us to think about the force of change within them when different components are drawn to each other, bringing about new unities and realities (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988). Specifically for example, in discussions of sporting affects, momentum might be used to describe the substantiveness of bodies being affected and affecting, and sporting moods and atmospheres building or retracting.

3 Vitality

Ahhhh, phew, I finish my first jog in months, tired and aching. With my chest pounding, lungs burning and sweat pouring, I straighten up slightly and shuffle gradually from the track – my trainers scuffing on the rubber surface as I slowly move along schlik, schlik. I sit down on a hard wooden bench next to other joggers also recovering; they looking like me, sounding like me, feeling like me. But I’m strangely energetic, powerful, alive and stress free. I’m hyper aware of my body, how it feels, and how it feels in its surroundings. I’m done yet ready for more. Turning over a new leaf is easy in this place. (Author’s field notes, August 2015)

In NRT, vitality is about the aliveness and buoyancy of the living and non-living worlds and their collective potential. With regard to the living, direction is gained from vitalism – or vitalist philosophy – which recognizes the exceptional qualities possessed by all living things; their essential spark and energy, and that they constantly move, change and evolve (Greenhough, 2010). With regard to the non-living, direction is gained from new materialist thinking, particularly on the subject of ‘vibrant matter’. This moves beyond textbook physics’ definitions of vibration (the expenditure of energy through oscillations around an equilibrium centre), to describe the capacity of things – from core materials to more complex objects – to act as quasi-agents with their own tendencies, trajectories and forces that might aid or impede humans. Both of these lines of thinking recognize that when encounters happen between the living and non-living, an energetic animation results. A collective materiality that gives life a range of qualities including its richness and diversity, vivaciousness and spirit; its potential and capacity to develop on its own impulses; its self-generating continuance and purpose, yet also its instability, irrationality and unpredictability.

As an intellectual endeavour, vitality provides a relief from deterministic and mechanistic academic thinking (such as is prevalent in physics, chemistry and human models of rationality) by demanding a reevaluation of how we understand events and things; not as definable by their ‘properties’ but as always in flux and only ever composed of temporary relations. So, as Greenhough (2010) describes, as much as vitality is reflective of certain qualities life possesses, it is just as much a way of acknowledging the limits of our current understandings, demanding that we as researchers attend to the complexity, relationality and character of the world. Moreover, it challenges us to focus on the liveliness of common interactions through methodologies that animate the qualities of the relations between the living and non-living.

The idea of vitality arises in centuries of thinking on human health and fitness and is deployed sporadically in contemporary sports education and research (mainly through consideration of vitalism specifically – Bonde, 2009; Hvidberg-Hansen and Oelsner, 2011; Smith and Lloyd, 2006). More commonplace, however, is sports science’s long tradition of calculating the way the sporting body physically changes, setting up possibilities for changing embodied experiences. Clear, from a physiological standpoint, is how physical activity can trigger the production of chemical processes that make the body feel more ‘alive’ during and after physical exertion. These involve endorphins (a pharmacological activity associated with morphine-like substances produced by the nervous system that induce a euphoric-like affect); dopamine (a compound and neurotransmitter associated with improved mood, attention, motivation and feeling of wellness common to reward behaviour); and adrenalin/epinephrine (a hormone produced by glands – often as a reaction to danger as part of a flight or fight response – which increases blood flow to muscles, heartrate and feelings of fear and excitement).

Using these processes as starting points, NRT-informed sports geographies might entail a focus on the relationships between the changing vital performing body and its environment (see Waitt and Stanes, 2015). Indeed such scholarship might supplement deterministic thinking, providing insight into how physical processes play out and feel more broadly. Although not taking this line of inquiry directly, promising starts are currently being made in emerging research, for example, in considerations of cold water and body assemblages and sensations in surfing, wind surfing, swimming and kayaking (Anderson, 2013, 2014; Evers, 2009; Foley, 2015; Humberstone, 2011; Waitt and Cook, 2007), flesh-on-flesh contact in mixed martial arts (Green, 2011), and more generally through theoretical attention to the work and ideas of known vitalist philosophers (Foley, 2015; Green, 2011).

4 Infectiousness

My first ‘fun run’ in 3 years; a 5k in Toronto for charity. Our team meets on a cold dark morning by the lakeshore, all of us inadequately dressed for the weather and shivering. Yet soon the lively music playing, happy voice on the public announcement system and the lively chatter of the fellow participants induces a nervous, excited jumping amongst us; up and down, up and down. A movement that is utterly infectious, bringing us together as one in our shared cause and task to come; up and down, up and down. One cannot help smiling and jumping, up and down, up and down. (Author’s field notes, October 2015)

The idea of infectiousness is rooted in bio-medicine’s engagements with contagion; the communicability of disease by ‘infection’ (the movement of pathogens between bodies). Yet, at the same time, forms of psycho-social and psycho-physiological infection can create life in the form of bodily expressions and feelings that pass between humans. We know, for example, from our everyday lives that laughter can be infectious, a person’s enthusiasm or place’s energy can be infectious, dancing can be infectious, and so on.

Infectiousness of action and feeling, and how it occurs, is understood in NRT specifically through a Spinozian and Deleuzian reading of ‘affect’; a transitioning of a body and the process whereby it is affected by other bodies, modifies and then affects further bodies. Thus, through providing an energetic uplift or dampening, affect impacts upon human capacity for engagement and involvement in life. As Deleuze argues, whilst negative affection (a sadness affect) acts like a toxin that weighs humans down and reduces their capacity to operate physically and mentally, positive affection (a joyful affect) acts as a nutrition that carries them forwards and increases their capacity to operate physically and mentally (Dawney, 2013; Deleuze and Parnet, 2006). Importantly, affects are not fully known or reasoned as they occur, but are experienced less-than-fully consciously, revealing on a somatic register as a pre-personal feeling state. More broadly, then, ‘affective environments’ might be thought of as the collective expression of affects and their reproduction in places. These environments are also registered both singularly in humans and collectively in co-present human groups as the prevailing ‘atmosphere’. Notably, as Thrift (2004) suggests, affective environments can be created, spread and re-produced by state and commercial interests that purposefully provide textures to people’s lives, often through attention to the sensory attributes of places and products in standardized forms.

In sport, the classic example of affect in action is ‘home crowd advantage’ (Bale, 1988; Balmer et al., 2001). This involves an energy feedback loop whereby the movement of the sportspersons and movement and sound of the crowd energize each other, leading ultimately to enhanced performances, whilst design elements might be involved in this process (such as the specific layout of a sporting venue, audio-visual techniques and technologies – as explored later in this paper). As Massumi (2002) suggests, the soccer field is really a field of relations between bodies and objects which have the potential to create local ‘modulations’ which configure affects (see also Edensor, 2015). Indeed, he explains:

The way in which the audience’s perspective is included in the game is not through regulatory application, but by affective means. The excitement or disappointment of the stadium audience adds auditory elements to the mix that directly contribute to modulating the intensity of the field of potential. The audience feedback is itself modulated by the spectators’ accumulated individualizations of the game – their already-constituted knowledge of and attachment to the histories of the players and teams. (Massumi, 2002: 80)

5 Imminence

The game is finely balanced in the seventh inning and the tension is high. We wait for the pitch … waiting … waiting … The pitcher winds up, the ball leaves his hand and we watch it speeding for a microsecond. CRACK!! Bautista connects perfectly and the ball is hanging in the air. H--A--N--G--I--N—G … H--A--N--G--I--N--G and … and into the stand for a three run homer. (Author’s field notes, Texas Rangers vs Toronto Blue Jays. October 2015)

Imminence can be an outcome of rhythm, momentum and infectiousness, and it often arises because of their energy and forward movement; because they propel and give some notice. In terms of timing, imminence refers to the close future arrival of something. In terms of likelihood, that arrival is certain/impending, or at least thought to be. What exactly might be imminent in life varies greatly, from the initially non-physical (such as the pre-dated arrival of laws, rules or policies) to the physical (bodies and objects). Imminence is particularly important in terms of how the arrival is expected or unexpected, how bodies and objects are prepared or ill-prepared for it, and the actions they take or do not take prior to and on arrival.

Because in most sport something is imminent, participants must anticipate the next moment, whether they be conscious or less-than-fully conscious of their own state of anticipation. The anticipation of what is or seems to be imminent often pre-empts a reaction of some kind (e.g. catch, save, swing) and/or an energetic release (e.g. a start, shot, throw). If the action is delayed long enough, imminence can give rise to collective nervous tension (the classic examples being the wait before a 100 meter Olympic final which, for fans, can seem almost unbearable). Yet it is imminence – the not yet having yet expecting – that gives sport a certain type of attraction. From the quick brace to the conscious pain of waiting it punishes us, keeps us on edge, can even frighten us, yet this is ultimately exciting. The sports sciences acknowledge that anticipation of what might be, or seem to be, imminent is crucial to success in many sports. If a participant knows what is likely going to happen, they can adjust their movement to cope or take advantage. Hence, for example, there is a longstanding emphasis across literatures on ‘reading the play’ (Abernethy, 1986, 1990; Abernethy et al., 2012; Savelsbergh et al., 2002) and, to a lesser extent, on ‘varying the play’ (so that, through tactical creativity, one’s opponent anticipates poorly; Brown and Gaynor, 1967).

Displaying a degree of alignment, NRT conveys the entire world as being in a state of permanent imminence; a world where everywhere is forever incomplete, and where everywhere something new is always going to arrive. Indeed, as Cadman (2009) posits, NRT strives to think in the same configuration as life; as a series of infinite ‘ands’ which add to the state of affairs. Thus, in addition to being concerned with what is happening, NRT is just as much – if not even more – concerned with what might be expected next, and after that, and after that. Moreover, NRT is also concerned with the jumps forward themselves, the spacing that enables and introduces the next moment. These ideas are reflected, for example, in scholarly debates on apprehension, anticipation, pre-emption, preparedness (Anderson, 2007, 2010; Merriman, 2013) and on the momentary, often microsecond, bare/still points between action and performance (Thrift, 1997, 2000b). These are priorities that distinguish NRT from many other forms of social scientific research that, in contrast and as suggested earlier, tend to stop the world and extract stable representations from it (Cadman, 2009).

We see these ideas emerging in non-representational sports geographies in the different imminences, for example, in the hit coming and the fighter bracing (Green, 2011), the next automatic move of the climber (Barratt, 2011, 2012), the forthcoming obstacles to be navigated by the runner (Cook et al., 2015; Lorimer, 2012) and the night cyclist apprehending landscape emerging at them from the dark (Cook and Edensor, 2015). Indeed, these studies convey the sense of apprehension, human reactions and consequences as sports movement-spaces unfold.

6 Encounter

Its 1988 and I’d waited two years to see if my favourite boxer Michael Spinks could beat Mike Tyson. It’s style, speed and finesse, vs aggression and raw power. It’s good vs evil. They stand in the ring and the unbearable wait is almost over … Spinks looking strangely apprehensive, staring into space; his knees wrapped in supporting bandages, looking like a bad omen. Tyson is menacing, pacing back and forth, back and forth … DING! round one. Tyson forward – ducking, bobbing, punching, Spinks backward – dancing, retreating, blocking. Tyson forward, Spinks backward. Tyson forward, Spinks backward. One minute forty seconds and: BANG, over topples Spinks, through the ropes. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 OUT. Dreams crushed. (Author’s fieldnotes, re-watching on YouTube in 2015)

Encounters occur as the meeting – head-on or obliquely and expected or unexpected – of two or more phenomena. These phenomena might be ideas or structures and, often later, objects and bodies, each of which possesses rhythms and momentums that determine the timing and force of the encounter and its outcome. Encounters are moments but can vary in duration according to the nature of the things encountering each other, ranging from the almost instantaneous to longer timeframes. In sport we see and experience the hits and tackles, punches and kicks, take-offs and landings, that make the moment and often change the course of events.

Sports disciplines often focus on extreme encounters and their consequences, such as sports sociology on sports violence as entertainment (Bryant and Zillmann, 1983; Jones at al., 1996; Messner et al., 2000) and sports science and sports medicine on the health consequences of concussions (Broglio and Puertz, 2008; Broglio et al., 2014; Guskiewicz and Mihalik, 2011). In NRT the idea of encounter is, however, often more subtle, not always about the meeting of particularly powerful forces, and is often informed specifically by Deleuzian thinking. As Duff (2010, 2014) argues, for Deleuze encounter ‘events’ are pre-personal, physical intensive singularities made by the meeting of bodies and objects. They, as spatial, temporal and processual moments, transform and reinvent these bodies and objects in relations of becoming. Encounters thus produce new realities by moving, disfiguring, creating new directions and new things. Each encounter is significant because it is unique (for example in its physical and sensory character) and because it is never contained or isolated, but part of a greater web of events (i.e. each encounter is made by previous events and influences future events). Indeed, for Deleuze, encounters mean that life is made through ‘discontinuous becoming’; a complex process rather than a clear and linear one, involving progress and retreat, changes of direction, losses and increases in capacity with no final mature state (Duff, 2010, 2014). The energy involved does not disappear, it merely changes direction and/or form. Hence encounters, because they are unavoidable and ever present, make the world and the future.

This line of thinking is extended into the behavioural realm by Dawney (2013), who considers some encounters as interruptions. She argues that interruptions – which are momentary, and almost always, to some extent physical – disrupt the flow of affective less-than-fully conscious experience, as individuals suddenly become more consciously aware of their actions and surroundings. Yet interruptions provide an opportunity for individuals to momentarily take stock, to focus consciously on what went previously and what might be next; to interplay the affective with the cognitive and subjective. Interruptions, for example, might reduce the ‘naturalness’ of agency, but also facilitate bodies and minds moving in new or previously unexpected ways.

The few emerging non-representational sports geographies show us that there is always encounter, even in ‘non-contact sports’; something colliding, something changing, something new beginning. It is the runner meeting an obstacle (see Cook et al., 2015; Lorimer, 2012), the swimmer’s skin touching cold water as they enter the Irish Sea (Foley, 2015) and the kick landing on the opponent’s body (Green, 2011).

1 Compatibility with existing concerns

Various criticisms have been directed at NRT in recent years including, as Colls (2012) notes, that as an approach it is overly positive, universalist, relational, reductionist, technocratic, emotionless, masculinist, abstract and power-blind (see Bondi, 2005; Creswell, 2012; Jacobs and Nash, 2003; Kearns, 2014; Nash, 2000; Thien, 2005; Tolia-Kelly, 2006). This long list acknowledged, I feel that such concerns can be allayed if space is reserved for both ‘old’ and ‘new’ in sports geography, i.e. both representational and non-representational inquiries. Indeed, this is not such a stretch because as much as NRT is concerned specifically with animating movement, the immediate and sensory in life, it is also a broader injunction for thinking about how humans consciously shape movement, the immediate and sensory, and how they are shaped by them. In other words, NRT is concerned with how movement, the immediate and the sensory ‘overflow’ comprehension, conscious thought and action.

We know, for example, from traditional social science and geographical lenses that ‘difference’ (such as sexuality, gender or contrasting team associations in sport), ‘togetherness’ (such as sports team and fan cohesion) and ‘belonging’ (such as to a sport, sports teams and sports places) are all clearly about conscious comparison and quite deeply felt emotions and relationships. Being about both ourselves and others, they help define us internally and externally (one consciously feels them, and one can be framed by others with respect to them). However, as NRT articulates, simultaneously all three are also about less-than-fully consciously acted and experienced physicality in places and the resulting affective forces which one is included in or excluded from. If included, numerous relational performances and encounters come into play between bodies and bodies and objects, the physicality they share in places – i.e. their relative spatial positioning, movement, affective intensities and their register – creating a form of solidarity between them (Andrews et al., 2014; Thrift, 2010). Thus difference, togetherness and belonging are based on events ‘happening with’ (or not) in place, just as much as they are based on emotions and cognitive reasoning (Wright, 2015).

The non-representational sports geographies introduced in Table 1 and throughout the paper provide excellent examples of these types of processes in action. Beyond these, three different forms of recent literature do the same, showing the interplay between what is happening and what is known, but their ‘value added’ is that they also illustrate the movement of sport into social spaces. The first is Claudia Rankine’s award-winning Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), a public poem which focuses in one part on the affective life of the female tennis champion Serena Williams. Rankine observes how, despite her power, wealth and money, Serena cannot escape racist judgements based primarily in aesthetics (the look, movement and volume of her body. She possesses a powerful, colourfully clothed and sometimes loud black body that invades and contravenes elite ‘white space’ with its own strict codes and conventions. So, when Serena dances at her victories, she is later judged to be ‘ghetto’. When she shouts at point calls that are clearly biased against her, she is later labelled an ‘angry black woman’. When she refuses to be physically present in places where she has experienced racism, she is thought to be ‘stubborn’ (see also Douglas, 2002, 2012; Schultz, 2005).

The second example is Brian Massumi’s previously mentioned Parables for the Virtual. Massumi (2002) comments on the NFL Super Bowl and associated peaks in domestic violence in the US. He describes how, through the television, the game folds out of its own event-space into domestic space. As an actor that possesses its own intensity, it upsets the fragile state of non-violence in households where the possibility of male violence exists. Indeed, it aggravates dysfunctional domestic and gender relations in that it creates a situation whereby conflicts can arise over clashing codes of sociality and rights of access to parts of the home. In particular, the television suddenly stands out from the background, imposing itself as a catalytic object, attracting bodies around it, each possessing different potential for abuse or victimization. In close proximity to the television, words and gestures assume unusually high volumes and intensities. Meanwhile, the masculine and often violent images emitting from it are inductive signs. Massumi argues that the male body transduces elements of the situation into a reflex readiness for violence. Thus, although the motivations, ethics, legalities and outcomes are worlds apart, sporting and domestic violence are connected in the same violent affective milieu (see also Card and Dahl, 2011; Gantz et al., 2006; Sachs and Chu, 2000).

The third example is a 2013 report by BBC journalist Martin Vennard who interviewed architects and sports executives on how stadiums acquire their atmospheres (a subject connected to the subject of home crowd advantage, discussed previously). Reflecting the findings of recent research on the subject, Vennard (2013) argues that the energy feedback loop between the crowd and players is assisted by design features such as the proximity of – and geometry and directness between – the crowd to the field of play, the rake of the stands, the curvature of the roof, reflective surface materials and lighting. Moreover, it is assisted by specific mood heightening strategies (often involving music, live dancing and imagery); the cultures, traditions and actions of fans themselves; the style and level of the play of the home team; players’ gestures and the interactions they have with the crowd, and finally by the enduring reputation of the place itself (see also Edensor, 2015; Uhrich and Benkenstein, 2010; Uhrich and Koenigstorfer, 2009). Vennard also finds that, although creating the ‘correct’ atmosphere might be politically and practically difficult, the intense atmospheres themselves not only contribute to team identity, fan identity and sporting performance, but the experience can drive sales and profits.

Given that the performative, sensory and affective qualities of sports are tightly interwoven with conscious historical, social, cultural, political-economic, institutional and technological processes, one might hope that, accordingly, individual studies, literatures and debates in sports geography might each possess a nomadic consciousness and movement between representing (the representable) and showing (the non-representable) (see Colls, 2012). This brings me to the question of how one might attempt to do the latter.

2 Methods, writing, imagination

To engage with the bare bones of what takes place as sports movement-space, often before it is subject to comprehension and the inscription of meaning, is certainly a challenge. As McCormack (2002) ponders in the case of rhythm, for example, how can researchers attribute words to wordless movements without killing their energy? How can researchers ‘non-represent’ movements, when movements are often less-than-fully consciously experienced and beyond meaning? How can researchers talk about movements when movements are not individual or single but contingent relations between bodies and objects? What is certain is that any attempt to do these things in the context of sport would necessitate new methodological priorities and approaches involving new relationships between geographers and sport. Indeed these priorities and approaches might be summarized as an overall objective to ‘witness’ sport; this involving paying attention to the unfolding of events so that emerging data has a fidelity and faithfulness to them (see Dewsbury, 2003; Dirksmeier and Helbrecht, 2008).

As Latham (2003) argues, with NRT, existing methods do not have to be abandoned, they just need to be adjusted and/or augmented and/or combined and made to ‘dance a bit’, involving such things as moving interviews, photography, video and other visual methods that provide different access points and registers (Latham, 2003; Laurier, 2005; Lorimer, 2006, 2012; Wylie, 2005) (notably, the latter being increasingly deployed by sports disciplines and studies more generally; Phoenix and Smith, 2011). Spinney (2015), for example, combines bio-sensing technologies (GPS-enabled EEG sensors) with go-along interviews and mobile video ethnography when researching embodied movement, the sensory and affective in cycling. The two approaches, he argues, complement one another. Whilst the former can provide bodily data on intensity/quantity in a quantitative form that avoids a high degree of subjective interpretation, the latter can provide critical insights into the ‘feel’ and ‘quality’ of the overall experience (thus both the what and how of affect get addressed).

In order to witness sport, an ‘irrealis’ style might also be employed in academic reporting that attempts to escape the obscure, elitist, exclusionary categorical language often used. This is a style that is loose, flowing and expressive, that is restless and tantalizes, and that possesses a living quality forming itself in the image of the very things it presents (Ingold, 2015; Lorimer, 2005; Vannini, 2015b). Returning to the sports commentating analogy, as McCormack (2013: 118) notes:

Clearly the point is not to jettison postevent interviews. Nor to stop talking about events. However, when talking or writing about affective spacetimes of moving bodies, it might be possible to refigure the relation between these spacetimes and forms and styles of talking and writing. It might be possible to move away from, or at the very least supplement, the logics of after-the-event sports reporting.

Underpinning witnessing must be a new disposition and involvement on the part of sports geographers. Beyond an appreciation for the bodily ways to sense sports atmospheres (see Sparkes, 2009), they must share a ‘wonderment’ and passion for witnessing and participating in sport’s moving, immediacy. They must be aware of an ongoing and quickly changing moment of sport that moves out of view once they focus too hard, but nonetheless be enticed enough by it to know it deserves some academic comprehension (Vannini, 2015a). As McCormack (2002) suggests, they must resist the temptation to freeze movement and the movement of their own thoughts, and instead be intuitive and apprehend movement. At times, not unlike the techniques employed in mindfulness (see Whitehead et al., 2016), they must attempt look at sports through eyes not obscured too much by anticipatory thoughts on meaning. They must let go and be prepared to be taken with sport’s dominant flows and smaller ebbs and swells, and feel its sensations emerging. How difficult can this really be, for movement is a dominant characteristic of sport, and the one that engages us most immediately and perhaps most powerfully?