Abstract
The relationship between sport and social capital is drawing the attention of a growing number of writers and researchers. However, its analysis is often limited to social capital accruing to communities or regions through involvement with sport and to the effects this may have on local wellbeing. While participation in sport can facilitate social capital creation at the community level, social capital accruing to wider communities, and particularly sporting communities, can affect the technical development of athletes. This paper reports on research employing both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the role of social capital in the development of female football players (i.e. soccer) in South Australia. In particular, this paper considers how social capital accruing to players from their personal social networks can influence their early ‘career step’ between recreational and school football to formal football clubs. The paper focuses on social networks encompassing players, their families and acquaintances, and highlights both positive and negative implications of social capital accumulated by means of membership in those networks.
While the body of knowledge concerned with the relationship between social capital and sport is gradually increasing both in extent and scope (e.g. Nicholson and Hoye, 2008), the theme is multifaceted and its implications deserve more attention (Rosso, 2010b). Literature on social capital and sport is mostly centred on the significance of sport for civil society and community strength (Atherley, 2006; Jarvie, 2003; Seippel, 2006; Sharpe, 2006; Tonts, 2005) and themes of social exclusion and inclusion (Atherton et al., 2001; Collins, 2003, 2004; Collins and Kay, 2003; Kay, 2003; Wagg, 2004). Sport is often seen as a vehicle for social capital accumulation (Auld, 2008; Cuskelly, 2008; Putnam, 1995, 2000), which in turn fosters civic pride (Jarvie, 2006), community identity, strength and cohesion (Atherley, 2006; Jarvie, 2003; Tonts, 2005), and contributes to trust, reciprocity and recognition (Seippel, 2006). In this light, sport has been deemed valuable to overcome cultural and social barriers (Tonts and Atherley, 2005) and to contribute to public health (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2006).
While the dynamics by which sport contributes to social capital have been the focus of most research on the topic (Nicholson and Hoye, 2008), a better understanding of how social capital can influence sporting outcomes needs to be developed. For example, it is clear that social relationships between athletes, coaches and parents can have an important impact on the way athletes live their experiences (Timson-Katchis and Jowett, 2005), and that the various phases of an athlete’s development can be influenced by the process of socialisation (Denzin, 2010) with significant others (e.g. peers, teachers, volunteers). However, with few exceptions, research on sport and athlete development fails to engage with the concept of social capital (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993), which can instead cast light on the accrual of a varied array of resources and/or burdens to athletes through the social networks that make up the communities and social groups to which they belong during the various phases of their technical development (Rosso, 2010b).
This paper reports on findings of research using women’s football in South Australia (i.e. Association Football, soccer) as a case study to investigate both positive and negative effects of social capital as a factor affecting players’ technical development and their career pathways (Rosso, 2011). The choice of South Australian women’s football was inspired by earlier work of the author on cultural and geographical aspects of the sport (Rosso, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010a) and by his personal involvement in it as a coach. This contributed to provide an ‘insider understanding’ of the dynamics of technical development that go beyond simple connections between talent, practice and self-drive, as well as a significant first-hand knowledge of the South Australian women’s football system and the people who make up the local football community. In agreement with Sultana (2007), a degree of subjectivity can strengthen a researcher’s commitment to base his/her research on relationships of mutual respect and recognition with his/her informants. Naturally, this poses also issues of biased observation and positionality (England, 1994; Sultana, 2007). With this in mind, a great deal of attention was placed on methodological rigour and techniques of verification and validation, such as triangulation (Patton, 1990).
Women’s football is a gendered sport. The literature on gender issues in sport provides an important insight on the challenges that female participants and women’s sporting organisations face. Despite women’s participation having grown greatly worldwide since the 1960s, sport has historically been a vehicle for the reproduction of masculinity, and the achievement of rights and recognition has normally been the result of significant power struggles with the dominant male element of sport culture (Theberge, 2000). This considered, the research on which this paper reports did not intend to explore specific issues of gender in sport or critical feminism, unless arising from the data itself (e.g. interviews). Nevertheless, research questions concerning gender issues in the accumulation of social capital could inform further research on the topic.
This paper considers how social capital can affect the first career step of those young players who take football beyond informal and/or school dimensions and join football clubs embedded in the formal FFSA (Football Federation South Australia, the local representative body of the International Federation of Football Associations – FIFA) sport system. While the development of players can be affected by social capital residing in both ‘personal’ or ‘communal’ networks (Rosso, 2011), this paper is focused on the influence of the former. That is, resources accruing directly to players through their personal social networks that can assist or inhibit their passage from sport participation at the informal or school level to the formal club level.
In its first part, this paper provides an insight of the conceptualisation of social capital informing this research, followed by an overview of recent research concerning social capital and sport. It then presents the methods and findings of the study, and considers how social capital residing in the players’ personal networks can influence (positively and negatively) their passage from recreational to club women’s football in South Australia. In doing so, it points out the relevance of social capital to moral support and encouragement; personal interest and cultural values placed on football; choosing a football club; practical resources; and negative aspects of sociability.
Conceptualising social capital for athlete development
For the purpose of this paper, social capital is defined as ‘the ability of individuals and groups to gain resources by means of membership in social networks’ (Rosso, 2010b: 72) and is seen as an actual component of talent development, capable of amplifying or weakening other key factors of success, including self-confidence, motivation, the ability to acquire skills and the ability to access financial and logistic resources.
Social capital is indeed a contested concept (Seippel, 2006); it is open to such a complex variety of approaches and definitions that often results in confusion over clarity of analysis. Broadly speaking, social capital is a resource embedded in social relations that can be accumulated by individuals and groups and helps people to gain advantages and/or act collectively (Field, 2003; Giorgas, 2007). However, the original definitions of Bourdieu (1986), Coleman (1988) and Putnam (1995) emphasised different aspects and produced several conflicts about the meanings of the concept. Atherley (2006: 349) summarises the different approaches of these three ‘conceptual fathers’ of social capital, in that the first considers social capital as ‘resources that provide access to group goods’, the second as ‘aspects of social structure that actors can use as resources to achieve their interests’ and the third as ‘trust, norms and networks that facilitate cooperation and mutual benefit’. A particularly useful distinction about approaches to social capital is provided by Woolcock (2003), who points out the difference between a ‘resource’ and a ‘civic’ approach. The first is influenced by Bourdieu. It is mainly concerned with social structures (e.g. networks) and it interprets social capital as access to resources within a social network, to be used to establish or maintain individual or group advantages. The ‘civic’ approach, instead, is closely influenced by Putnam. It focuses on the extent of individual involvement in social networks. It is concerned with cultural norms (e.g. generalised trust and reciprocity) and it aims to assess the ‘civic health’ of social groups, communities and regions (Glover and Hemingway, 2005). While the ‘civic’ approach tends to be the most common within the social capital literature, several authors agree that Bourdieu offers the most theoretically sound conceptualisation of social capital (Glover and Hemingway, 2005; Portes, 1998).
Social capital is informed here by the ‘resource’ approach (Woolcock, 2003) and by the view of social capital as a component of economic development (Woolcock, 1998, 2001; Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). It is conceived as ‘an actual resource residing in social networks that can contribute to establish or maintain advantages for groups and/or individuals by being accumulated, exchanged, and invested in (i.e. investments in time and sociability)’ (Rosso, 2010b: 77). As such, social capital is embedded in social networks and resides with individuals, but it can accrue to groups by extension and become a collective asset (Bourdieu, 1986; Lin, 2001; Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). A varied stock of social networks (i.e. ‘bridging’ social capital) is seen as more advantageous to overcome obstacles and vulnerabilities, and to gain access to new opportunities, than a more homogeneous stock (i.e. ‘bonding’ social capital); the profitability of the networks, moreover, depends on the resources that its members can bring to it (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).
The conceptualisation of social capital in this paper is also informed by the social capital theory of career success (Seibert et al., 2001), which substantiates the popular notion that ‘knowing the right people’ can facilitate career achievements. Integrating three apparently conflicting theories, Seibert et al. (2001) point out that social capital residing in social contacts affects career success in the form of three ‘network benefits’: ‘access to information’, ‘access to other resources’ and ‘career sponsorship’.
Importantly, social capital can also be a liability (Portes and Landolt 1996). Portes (1998) emphasises four main consequences of negative social capital. The first, ‘exclusion of outsiders’, occurs when excessive exclusivity results from strong bonds within a network. The second, ‘excessive claims on group members’, refers to free-riding problems, ‘as less diligent members enforce on the more successful all kinds of demands backed by shared normative structure’ (Portes, 1998: 16). The third consequence of negative social capital, ‘restriction of personal freedom’, results from high levels of social control fostered by excessively strong social bonds. The fourth negative consequence arises from circumstances in which group bonds are reinforced by shared adversity to mainstream society. In this case, ‘downward levelling norms’ operate against individual success, which is seen as undermining group cohesion.
Recent contributions to the field of social capital and sport
The field of sport and social capital is relatively recent. In the last decade, several authors provided comprehensive accounts on the implications, applications and theorisations of the concept of social capital and reviewed key themes and studies on social capital and sport (Jarvie, 2003; Nicholson and Hoye, 2008; Numerato, 2008; Okayasu et al., 2010; Rosso, 2010b; Seippel, 2006; Skinner et al., 2008; Tonts, 2005). Among the earlier contributions to the field there are the works of Seippel (2006) on the social and political role of voluntary sport organisations; Jarvie (2003, 2006) on participation in sport and communitarianism; Collins and Kay (2003) and Collins (2003, 2004) on sport and social exclusion; and Atherley (2006) and Tonts (2005) on the importance of sport for the cohesion of Western Australian rural communities in the light of economic restructuring.
The field gained further depth and range in recent years. The work of Burnett (2006) on the ‘Australia Africa 2006 Sport Development Programme’s Active Community Clubs Initiative’ and of Coalter (2008) on the ‘Mathare Youth Sport Association’ confirmed that participation in sport programs is a powerful way to develop social networks and generate social capital at the individual and community levels. Consistent with the social capital literature, volunteerism in sport was found to be a predictor of social capital at the community level (Harvey et al., 2007); youth sport participation was associated to adult involvement in community life (Perks, 2007); youth sport volunteering was linked to strong individual benefits, including increased social connectedness (Kay and Bradbury, 2009); and participation in football programs was identified as a valuable vehicle to social cohesion in Sydney (Nathan et al., 2010). While it is impossible to quantify how participation in sport affects social capital creation, sport participants enjoy a greater ability to develop extended social networks, relate to family or friends and obtain support in times of crisis than non-participants (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009).
Applying the concept of social capital to sport governing bodies, Persson (2008) found that in Denmark social capital linked to financial and social gains can result from the development of social responsibility by the nation’s sporting organisations. On the other hand, Numerato (2008) talks of barriers to the functioning of Czech sport governing bodies originating from the same dynamics (e.g. social interaction) that are often deemed to produce positive social capital-related effects. Nicholson and Hoye (2008) provide a broad account of themes emphasising the role of sport in facilitating social integration. These include the relevance of clubs, community and sport organisations to social capital (Auld, 2008; Brown, 2008; Cuskelly, 2008; Doherty and Misener, 2008) and the exploration of social capital ‘in action’ in Norway (Seippel, 2008), Australia (Lock et al., 2008), the USA (Rosentraub and Ijla, 2008) and the UK (Bradbury and Kay, 2008; Hylton, 2008; Long, 2008).
While the relationship between sport and social capital is generally seen in terms of sport contributing to social capital, Rosso (2010a) points out that it could also be considered from a different perspective altogether. Social capital can be seen as a factor facilitating or undermining the development of sports and the achievement of sporting success (Rosso, 2008, 2010a). From the point of view of sporting organisations, social capital can facilitate access to players, training facilities, qualified coaches (Rosso, 2008) and external resources, including knowledge and expertise (Rosso, 2010b). From a player’s perspective, it can facilitate access to mentoring, moral support and knowledge (Rosso, 2010b). On the other hand, negative social capital (Portes and Landolt, 1996) within sporting organisations may have detrimental implications for the development of sports, for instance by inhibiting the opportunities of outsiders to participate (Rosso, 2010a).
This paper builds on this last body of work. It is concerned with social capital as a resource affecting sporting development, in particular athlete development. Athletes become able to ‘take the next step’ in their sporting development, not only with relevance to technical matters, but also with consideration to personal and/or external or environmental factors. These include: self-drive and self-confidence; passion; emotional stability; access to good-quality coaching, advice and knowledge; access to facilities; access to positive learning environments; moral support and encouragement; access to role models; and access to other resources, such as financial and logistic resources (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Timson-Katchis and Jowett, 2005; Williams and Reilly 2000). Such components, on the other hand, are subject to a combination of ‘pull/push’ factors (Lee, 1966), including events, circumstances and social connections, that can help or prevent young athletes from gaining technical, physical and psychological strengths and knowledge, maintaining motivation, focus and self-confidence, accessing financial and logistic resources and overcoming contextual obstacles (e.g. distance, injuries, coaching decisions and negative life phases). As described by Rosso (2010b), social capital is to be intended as a ‘push/pull’ factor that is able to facilitate or prevent access to resources accruing both directly to players (e.g. access to personal advice) and/or to whole sport institutions or systems (e.g. effective means to acquire, share and/or disseminate information).
Methodology
Designed as an intensive research project (Sayer, 1992), this study does not seek to quantify ‘how much’ social capital influences the development of players, rather to explore ‘how’ social capital may affect their development and what type of social networks may favour its accumulation. Importantly, the abstract and multidimensional nature of the social capital notion poses fundamental difficulties in providing credible measurements and encompassing temporal dimensions to it (Giorgas, 2007).
This paper reports on one aspect of a wider-reaching study on the role of social capital in the development of South Australian women’s football players (Rosso, 2011), and focuses in particular on the role of personal networks in facilitating/hindering the passage of young footballers from school/recreational football to playing for formal clubs. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods (Bryman, 2004) and was conducted in metropolitan and regional South Australia (i.e. Adelaide and Mount Gambier) between 2007 and 2010. It is informed by 19 semi-structured interviews (Arksey and Knight, 1999) with players, coaches, parents and women’s football administrators and a questionnaire survey of all players aged 13–18 who took part in special elite development programs in 2007/2008 in South Australia. The survey yielded 35 per cent response rate out of 137 players. 1 In both interviews and questionnaires, participants provided details on aspects related to who and/or what assisted them in their transition from recreational participation to a more formal level of engagement in football. Thematic analysis of qualitative information following the general principles of constant comparison and coding associated with grounded theory (Bryman, 2004) was conducted. The next section of this paper reports on the results of the thematic analysis, focusing on the personal social networks identified by participants. Following Morse (1995) on the danger of ‘cherry picking’ when reporting findings using direct quotations, the use of verbatim quotes included in this paper is intended to be a representation of relative themes.
Results
It is difficult to establish when young players begin to ‘play seriously’, combining the pure enjoyment of playing sport with a focus on development as potential future elite athletes (Bale, 2003). Nevertheless, joining formal clubs can endow players with access to knowledge (e.g. coaches), facilities and equipment; membership in structures designed to assist them in their football career; same-age and similarly skilled peers (to share football experiences and ‘feed off’ each other); and networks of acquaintances (i.e. social capital) that can provide motivation, moral support, access to knowledge and practical assistance (e.g. transportation). Joining a club is therefore regarded as a fundamental step in the early pathway of young players.
Before joining clubs, players typically play recreationally at school and informally with friends and/or family members. At a young age, they are arguably more motivated by the pleasure of playing with their friends than by realistic career expectations. Typically, they are surrounded by peers displaying a diverse range of motivations and skills, and are vulnerable to the (positive and negative) influence of their social environment. Social and recreational motivations are often the driver of their early engagement with sport.
Drawing on Seibert et al. (2001), social capital can facilitate career progression by making available particular ‘network benefits’, such as access to information, other resources (including moral and practical support) and career sponsorship. The effect of such resources combines with existing physical, technical, psychological, socio-economic and cultural attributes of players towards their degree of vulnerability to exclusion from football (Collins and Kay, 2003; Wagg, 2004). Social capital affecting young players’ step from recreational/informal football to formal clubs can be accumulated through membership in a variety of social networks, including the players’ personal networks and networks across clubs, women’s football institutions, football communities and wider local communities. However, unlike in the case of higher-level career steps – for instance from state to national teams, when institutional and cross-system networks acquire particular importance (Rosso, 2010b) – social capital affecting the early engagement with local football clubs relates especially to the players’ personal networks. These include the players’ networks with family members and acquaintances.
Social capital accumulated through these networks affects the recreational players’ ability to access resources, including encouragement, moral and practical (e.g. logistic and financial) support, the feeling of acceptance and opportunities for developing their football skills. Access to such resources, in turn, contributes to reinforce the young players’ interest for the game and the cultural values associated with football, and to increase their motivation and self-confidence to consider joining a football club.
Relationships within families constitute a key form of social capital (Bourdieu, 1993; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1995). For example, the willingness of family members to provide children with time and attention is a critical factor of achievement in school (Coleman, 1988). While family ties may sometimes become too strong and inhibit the sociability of children in the community at large, social capital residing in family networks can facilitate personal development outcomes of children (e.g. sporting abilities; Winter, 2000). Family social capital can also assist to construct further social capital beyond the family, facilitating connections between family members and members of external networks involving kin (Winter, 2000). Similarly, social capital accumulated through the players’ personal networks with acquaintances can affect their ability to access resources that can facilitate or hinder their passage from recreational to club football. These networks include both acquaintances involved with the local football community (Nadel, 1998) and those who are not. Relationships with acquaintances include peers and adults, and encompass the school, the club and the private spheres. Examples include networks between fellow recreational players (e.g. school players); between recreational players and friends who do not play football at all; between recreational players and friends who play club football; and between recreational players and adults (e.g. teachers, coaches or family friends).
Moral support and encouragement
Moral support and encouragement from family and acquaintances can affect recreational players’ motivation, self-confidence and interest for the game. Among other attributes (e.g. skills), motivation and self-confidence are important in shaping the ability of individuals to participate in sport (Collins, 2004). This is no exception for South Australian women’s football, especially when young players face the challenge of trialling for their first club. Both networks within family members and acquaintances can bring significant moral support and encouragement to recreational players and affect, in turn, their self-confidence and motivation to trial for a formal football club. As highlighted by approximately 80 per cent of interviewed players and parents, drive and confidence are often connected to encouragement obtained from family members. For example, Sharon Black, 2 one of the most successful and recognised women’s football players in South Australia, with 56 appearances in the Australian national team, explained that her mother encouraged her significantly to join her first club in the early 1990s. At the time, football in Australia was still a strongly gendered sport and women’s football in South Australia was only in an embryonic phase (Rosso, 2009, 2010a). Nevertheless, Sharon’s relationship with her mother provided the necessary motivation to pursue what ‘obviously wasn’t a female sport’ (Black, 2008, pers. comm.). Consistent with this example, Mr Stuart Birch (founder and president of the South Eastern Women’s Football Association – SEWFA), asserted that players from encouraging and caring families are advantaged compared to players from less united or problematic families, because their self-confidence and motivation tends to grow as a result of the encouragement of their kin (Birch, 2007, pers. comm.).
Also acquaintances can provide recreational players with supportive networks conveying a sense of encouragement and leading to self-confidence and motivation build-up. For example, Adelaide player Sandra Scalzi (2007, pers. comm.) explained that a particular bond with her Physical Education teacher who ‘thought I was fantastic, he just kept pushing me to play’ reinforced her motivation to become a ‘serious’ player and contributed to confer her with the necessary self-confidence to join Adelaide City Women’s Football Club, one of the main clubs in South Australia. Key resources in this sense can accrue to recreational players through networks with acquaintances involved with local clubs. This include instances when recreational and club players share football experiences and the former can gain an enhanced awareness of their existing technical abilities and the opportunity to learn directly from more experienced peers (Scalzi, 2007, pers. comm.). These relationships can also have a more direct impact, and go beyond peer networks. For example, despite having successfully played at primary school level, when Kristyn Swaffer (one of the most accomplished Adelaide players who went on to play for Australia) moved to high school she was discouraged from playing in the school team, as there was no girls-only team and there was strong resistance about girl players playing in the boys’ squad (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.). When faced with the possibility of not making the school team, Kristyn resorted to her primary school ‘football networks’ to seek a way to keep playing football. At primary school, she had developed a strong relationship with her school coach, who was also the president of a local boys’ club and who had always tried to foster her interest for the game, including with extra-school activities.
He was my first ever soccer coach, and coached us for a few years […] He certainly encouraged me along. I can remember him taking me to see Australia play […] at Footy Park […], he took me along as a primary school aged kid to see Australia play […]. (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.)
His networks with both the local school and the wider football community resulted in important ‘bridging’ social capital (Putnam, 2000) that provided the necessary knowledge and social contacts to encourage Kristyn to trial for her primary school coach’s club. Like many other successful women’s players, also Kristyn started to play with a boys’ club: ‘He encouraged me to go there and to try out for the boys’ club team there…and so I got selected there’ (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.).
Personal interest and cultural values
Personal social networks fostered interest in football beyond the recreational level for the majority of interviewed players. For example, Kristyn Swaffer (2008, pers. comm.) described as very important for her early interest for the game the value placed on football by her community of peers. Although football was not the most followed sport by the Australian community at large, it was the mainstream sport among her early group of friends at primary school and she quickly found herself ‘playing at lunch time and recess with the kids at school’ (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.). Notably, in the southern suburb of Adelaide where she grew up (Hackham West), football was particularly popular due to the significant number of British migrants who settled in the area (Burnley, 2001) – a typical example of immigration patterns affecting the sporting culture of local communities (Mosley and Murray, 1994; Mosley et al., 1997). Interestingly, had another sport been the sport of election of her community of peers, she would have perhaps played it instead of football (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.).
Stacey Day, another Adelaide-grown Australian national player, believes that her family’s sporting culture and the tight bond with her brother strongly influenced her choice to play football instead of other sports: ‘My brother played […] and my mum and day both played […] so, it was within the family. So, I just followed and, yeah, here I am’ (Day, 2008, pers. comm.). Stacey’s parents were indeed keen for her to play the sport, and glad to help her in what they considered a valuable endeavour. Similarly, the father of a current state player explained that one of the main reasons that motivated his daughter to play beyond school is that football became an important connection between the two of them.
We sit up on Saturday nights and watch it […] I’m a single dad…[…] We’d set the alarm on Sunday morning, it may be three o’clock, we get up and watch the Reds [Liverpool F.C.] play…and you know, we sit up together, have a coffee […]. Plus, I love going watching her play… I take out every Saturday, and watch…and take her to trainings. (Pedlar, 2007, pers. comm.)
The influence of family members can also combine with local sporting cultures to affect the ability of recreational players to engage with clubs. For example, if football is not regarded as a favourite local sport, the reinforcement of self-drive and self-confidence accruing to players from family bonds can represent a primary resource for players, and mitigate the adverse attitude towards football held by other members of their social networks (Black, 2008, pers. comm.). While women’s football is a fast growing sport in Australia (Football Federation Australia, 2008), Mr Tom Sermanni – Head Coach of Australia’s national team – pointed out that both men’s and women’s football are often still seen as relatively minor sports and the competition of other sports has a major impact on young players’ choices (Sermanni, 2008, pers. comm.). In this light, strong motivation to play football at the club level gained from family social networks is especially important for young players living in areas where football is considered a minority sport.
Choice of club
Personal networks of recreational players can play an important role in influencing the choice of club that they decide to join. This is true for both networks with family members and acquaintances. Over one third of the interviewees maintained that recreational players often decide to join football clubs due to existing relationships with peers who already play at the club level and ‘pull’ new girls along. The acquaintance with club players sparks interest towards the club environment in recreational players on one hand and, on the other, it conveys a feeling of comfort brought by the consciousness of not being alone in their forthcoming experience. These relationships are often established at school, and are a very important source of recruitment for clubs. In 2007, for example, Adelaide-based Sturt Marion Women’s Soccer Club ‘had trials, we got new girls out […] they never ever played for a club…all because their friends play for a certain school, and they said: «Come and try out»’ (Neilson, 2007, pers. comm.). The same dynamics are common in Mount Gambier, where half of the interviewed parents said that the presence of friends strongly influenced their daughters when they joined their first clubs, or that the presence of their daughters strongly influenced others to join.
Over 20 per cent of interviewees noted that also family bonds often influence the choice of the club that young recreational players join, becoming an important determinant of the technical and human environment in which those players ‘take the next step’. To this extent, the parents’ personal links with clubs, the clubs’ reputation and location, and logistic reasons are important drivers for their choices. Notably, since local football governing bodies allow young females to play in male teams until they can compete physically with the boys, the combination of these factors can result in young girls joining boys’ clubs as their first clubs (Day, 2008, pers. comm.). Among the main reasons for young girls to join boys’ clubs is the importance of logistics in influencing their families’ choices, which often emerge when they have brothers already playing football and parents preferring to bring two or more children to a single club. Another reason is club loyalty, as Mr Nigel Inglis, vice-president of the SEWFA explains: ‘quite often if your older brother has played at, say, Central [Football Club], then when the girl is coming up she’ll start at Central’ (Inglis, 2007, pers. comm.).
Practical resources
Personal networks are very important also for the players’ ability to gain access to practical resources, especially financial and logistic resources. This is particularly true for family networks. This is even clearer considering that the step between recreational and club football typically occurs when players are quite young and therefore dependent on their families for club fees and transportation (Black, 2008, pers. comm.). In both Adelaide and Mount Gambier, the chances of players developing beyond the school level depend significantly upon their families’ abilities and possibilities. This is particularly true for those who do not live in proximity of any club (Neilson, 2007, pers. comm.) and for families suffering from socio-economic disadvantage with more than one child (Rosso, 2008). As Mr Stuart Birch, president and founder of the SEWFA put it:
Parents are huge. If a child wants to go on…if they haven’t got the support of the parents…then you are going to struggle. You will struggle, full stop. Someone to drive you to training, someone to drive you to the game, someone to pay your fees, someone to look after you. (Birch, 2007, pers. comm.)
Other practical resources accessible to recreational players by means of personal social networks include the opportunity for practicing their football skills with experienced and/or proficient kin or acquaintances. Belonging to a ‘football network of friends’, especially if girls are exposed to playing with and against boys, can be a key to the early acquisition of significant football skills. This, in turn, contributes to grow considerable self-confidence in regards to one’s football abilities and can assist players on several occasions throughout their football career, including when they are confronted with the idea of joining their first club (Swaffer, 2008, pers. comm.). For example, Adelaide-based elite player Sandra Scalzi asserted that the special relationship with her brother was instrumental in stimulating her desire to become a ‘real’ player and play for a club. Through the bond with her brother she developed a love for the game and, importantly, acquired the foundation of her notable technical skills.
My brothers […] always took me to the park, you know, touch up on my skills […] My brother is soccer crazy […] I probably learned most of my skills with my brother, just having fun in the backyard. (Scalzi, 2007, pers. comm.)
The willingness of her brother to spend time with her gave Sandra access to his football knowledge in the same way as the adults’ human capital is accessed by children in Coleman’s examples on parents facilitating school achievements (Coleman, 1988: 109–111).
Negative outcomes
A recognised risk embedded with the concept of social capital is to place excessive emphasis on its positive consequences, forgetting that sociability has also less desirable outcomes (Portes, 1998; Putzel, 1997). This refers to negative external effects that excessively strong bonds among members of a given social group can have on others, including racism, sectarianism, corruption and social exclusion (Field, 2003; Tonts, 2005). While there appear to be no overt patterns of exclusion from women’s football in South Australia, some factors should be considered. For example, exclusion factors, such as ethnic, cultural, sexual and socio-economic, have been found to occur within sport (Back et al., 2001; Collins and Kay, 2003; Wagg, 2004) and as such require some attention.
Findings from this study indicate that the most important factor of exclusion from women’s football in South Australia related to socio-economic aspects, especially in regards to annual fees and transport. In 2008, for example, Adelaide City Women’s Football Club expected its members to pay fees in excess of 400 Australian dollars (Adelaide City Women’s Football Club, 2007). While in extreme instances, the sport governing bodies (Carter, 2007, pers. comm.) and the clubs make available some forms of economic assistance, the lack of disposable income is a serious barrier to participation for lower socio-economic households. This is exacerbated by the effect of distance from clubs, which makes logistics even more expensive and difficult.
Other forms of exclusion may pertain mostly to small, very homogeneous clubs dominated by adult membership that focus mainly on social aggregation and may use identities (e.g. social, sexual, ethnic, or cultural) as distinctive elements of aggregation. Even if exclusive elements of such clubs do not even represent the clubs as a whole, strong points of view advocated by determined minorities may discourage the participation of players who are perceived – or perceive themselves – as ‘different’. Examples of such processes were especially common in men’s football until the 1980s (Mosley et al., 1997). Particular ethnic groups are strongly represented throughout local women’s football clubs, and several clubs maintain links with ethnic communities around Adelaide (Rosso, 2007). South Australian women’s football, however, is relatively detached from the ethnic issues that characterised men’s football throughout Australia for decades, and clubs typically welcome members of diverse ethnicities and cultures (Charles, 1994; Evans, 1997; Jones and Moore, 1994; Mosley, 1994; Rosso, 2007). This inclusive approach helps clubs to gain players on one hand, and financial resources on the other, considering that membership fees often represent the most important financial resources of clubs (Rosso, 2007). On the other hand, there is a lack of obvious initiatives to actively encourage less represented groups to take part in the sport. Clubs do not seem to consider particularly important the involvement of minority groups with the game, such as women of non-English speaking background who are almost absent from Australian sports (Taylor and Toohey, 1997). Also sexual preferences could be seen as factors of exclusion, as some Adelaide clubs share a reputation of being ‘lesbian clubs’ (Neilson, 2007, pers. comm.). Within the local women’s football community it is known that particular clubs display greater or lesser shades of diverse sexualities; however, interviewees indicated that exclusion from Adelaide women’s football clubs due to sexual preferences is of little or no concern (Neilson, 2007, pers. comm.; Scalzi, 2007, pers. comm.). This is particularly true for those clubs that run junior teams.
While social capital accumulated through personal networks can facilitate the career step of recreational players to club football, it can also pose barriers that hinder the same process. Relationships with family members and acquaintances can bear negative components and lead to feelings of unacceptance, marginalisation or inadequacy (Andrews, 2007, pers. comm.). For example, peer relationships can become a burden for young players and recreational players can undermine each other’s self-confidence and motivation to join a club by being unsupportive and making fun of each other’s efforts. Interestingly, this risk is higher for those who are not particularly popular with their peers, on or off the football field (Birch, 2007, pers. comm.). The consequences of negative social capital can be observed also if the players’ personal networks are characterised by sporting cultures openly critical of football, conveying criticism and hostility as opposed to support and encouragement, and the players do not enjoy strong positions within them (Burt, 2000). Such dynamic is particularly evident in regional areas. In Mount Gambier, for example, Australian Rules (also known as ‘footy’) and netball are the strongest community sports and girls who want to play football often have to do it as a ‘second sport’ because:
The footy clubs have netball teams and they travel all over the countryside […]. The whole family goes […] the sons or the dads are going to play footy and the girls are going to play netball. (Dickins, 2007, pers. comm.)
Conclusion
In exploring the dynamics by which personal networks of recreational female football players can influence their passage to formal football clubs, this paper made the case for the use of social capital to better understand processes of athlete development. The paper also sought to further broaden the understanding of the ‘slippery’ concept of social capital in relation to sport, particularly by proposing the view that social capital can be seen both as an outcome of sport and as a factor contributing to sporting outcomes. In particular, this paper argued that social capital residing in the players’ personal networks can affect both positively and negatively their success in the early career step of joining a formal football club. Social capital affects this process by facilitating access to social and practical resources, including moral support, encouragement, cultural values, guidance, the opportunity to practice skills and logistic and financial resources. These, in turn, can affect the levels of self-confidence, motivation, feeling of acceptance and technical skill of players, and make available to them transportation and financial resources. In particular, motivation and self-confidence are crucial and are especially affected by access to moral support and encouragement through personal networks with family and acquaintances. Given that the passage between recreational and club football typically involves young and financially dependent players, family social capital (Winter, 2000) is particularly important to gain access to financial and logistic resources. Consistent with the analysis of Bourdieu (1986), the value of social capital as a means to access resources grows when it is combined with cultural capital (intended here as the sporting culture of families and/or social groups). Social capital accumulated through networks characterised by strong ‘football culture’ is particularly effective in making resources (e.g. financial, logistic, social) available to recreational players who are members of such networks.
Negative consequences of social capital include considerations of socio-economic status, ethnicity, culture and sexual preferences, and are an interesting subject for further and more specific research in the field of social capital and sport. The relationship between social capital and social exclusion from local women’s football, in particular, deserves attention. Women’s football in South Australia seems to suffer less than its male counterpart from elements of social exclusion. Certainly, the scarce literature on the topic fails to highlight major concerns in this sense. A reason for this could be that women’s football represents already a reaction to gender-based exclusion from the sport and, in most countries, women’s football institutions struggle for rights and recognition (Hong and Mangan, 2003; Mangan, 2003). Another reason could be that an exclusive approach would imply the risk of becoming unattractive to wide groups of players in small local football communities, where often players of different clubs share common acquaintances and social networks and where one of the prime determinants of club choice is the presence of friends (Carter, 2007, pers. comm.). The paper highlighted examples in which negative social capital residing in the players’ personal networks leads to unacceptance and marginalisation or feelings of inadequacy, and undermines the motivation and self-confidence of recreational players.
This paper offers also some indications for further work on social capital as a component of sporting development. Building on the findings presented here and in Rosso (2010b), there is scope to explore the role of social capital in other stages of the careers of athletes and/or to undertake comparative analysis with respect to other sports or specific cohorts of athletes. These may include socio-economic disadvantaged athletes and athletes from specific backgrounds (e.g. cultural). Further research can be done on the gendered nature of sport (or most of them), to understand its relationships with dynamics affecting access to resources by means of social capital. Other areas of interest include specific work on negative social capital as a factor of underachievement in sport and specific attention to ‘communal’ networks in the accrual of social capital to sporting organisations.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.