Effects of different practice task constraints on fluctuations of player heart rate in small-sided football games

This paper analyzes effects of different practice task constraints on heart rate (HR) variability during 4v4 smallsided football games. Participants were sixteen football players divided into two age groups (U13, Mean age: 12.4±0.5 yrs; U15: 14.6±0.5). The task consisted of a 4v4 sub-phase without goalkeepers, on a 25x15 m field, of 15 minutes duration with an active recovery period of 6 minutes between each condition. We recorded players’ heart rates using heart rate monitors (Polar Team System, Polar Electro, Kempele, Finland) as scoring mode was manipulated (line goal: scoring by dribbling past an extended line; double goal: scoring in either of two lateral goals; and central goal: scoring only in one goal). Subsequently, %HR reserve was calculated with the Karvonen formula. We performed a time-series analysis of HR for each individual in each condition. Mean data for intra-participant variability showed that autocorrelation function was associated with more short-range dependence processes in the “line goal” condition, compared to other conditions, demonstrating that the “line goal” constraint induced more randomness in HR response. Relative to inter-individual variability, line goal constraints demonstrated lower %CV and %RMSD (U13: 9% and 19%; U15: 10% and 19%) compared with double goal (U13: 12% and 21%; U15: 12% and 21%) and central goal (U13: 14% and 24%; U15: 13% and 24%) task constraints, respectively. Results suggested that line goal constraints imposed more randomness on cardiovascular stimulation of each individual and lower inter-individual variability than double goal and central goal constraints.

Individual differences in the visual control of intercepting a penalty kick in association football

Recent perceptual-motor studies have revealed variations in learning trajectories of novices. Despite such observation, relatively little attention has been paid to studying individual differences in experienced performers’ perceptual-motor behaviors. The present study examined individual differences for a visual anticipation task. Experienced association football goalkeepers attempted to intercept penalty kicks taken with deceptive and non-deceptive kicking actions. Data revealed that differences in the action capabilities of goalkeepers affected the timing and accuracy of movement response behaviors. Faster goalkeepers tended to wait until later before initiating movement in comparison with slower goalkeepers. The study of affordances in sport environments offers a theoretical framework with which to overcome some of the reported methodological limitations in the visual anticipation literature.

The ecological dynamics of 1v1 sub-phases in association football

This paper analyzes effects of different practice task constraints on heart rate (HR) variability during 4v4 smallsided football games. Participants were sixteen football players divided into two age groups (U13, Mean age: 12.4±0.5 yrs; U15: 14.6±0.5). The task consisted of a 4v4 sub-phase without goalkeepers, on a 25x15 m field, of 15 minutes duration with an active recovery period of 6 minutes between each condition. We recorded players’ heart rates using heart rate monitors (Polar Team System, Polar Electro, Kempele, Finland) as scoring mode was manipulated (line goal: scoring by dribbling past an extended line; double goal: scoring in either of two lateral goals; and central goal: scoring only in one goal). Subsequently, %HR reserve was calculated with the Karvonen formula. We performed a time-series analysis of HR for each individual in each condition. Mean data for intra-participant variability showed that autocorrelation function was associated with more short-range dependence processes in the “line goal” condition, compared to other conditions, demonstrating that the “line goal” constraint induced more randomness in HR response. Relative to inter-individual variability, line goal constraints demonstrated lower %CV and %RMSD (U13: 9% and 19%; U15: 10% and 19%) compared with double goal (U13: 12% and 21%; U15: 12% and 21%) and central goal (U13: 14% and 24%; U15: 13% and 24%) task constraints, respectively. Results suggested that line goal constraints imposed more randomness on cardiovascular stimulation of each individual and lower inter-individual variability than double goal and central goal constraints.

Dynamics of attacker–defender dyads in Association Football : parameters influencing decision-making

Previous work on pattern-forming dynamics of team sports has investigated sub-phases of basketball and rugby union by focussing on one-versus-one (1v1) attacker-defender dyads. This body of work has identified the role of candidate control parameters, interpersonal distance and relative velocity, in predicting the outcomes of team player interactions. These two control parameters have been described as functioning in a nested relationship where relative velocity between players comes to the fore within a critical range of interpersonal distance. The critical influence of constraints on the intentionality of player behaviour has also been identified through the study of 1v1 attacker-defender dyads. This thesis draws from previous work adopting an ecological dynamics approach, which encompasses both Dynamical Systems Theory and Ecological Psychology concepts, to describe attacker-defender interactions in 1v1 dyads in association football. Twelve male youth association football players (average age 15.3 ± 0.5 yrs) performed as both attackers and defenders in 1v1 dyads in three field positions in an experimental manipulation of the proximity to goal and the role of players. Player and ball motion was tracked using TACTO 8.0 software (Fernandes & Caixinha, 2003) to produce two-dimensional (2D) trajectories of players and the ball on the ground. Significant differences were found for player-to-ball interactions depending on proximity to goal manipulations, indicating how key reference points in the environment such as the location of the goal may act as a constraint that shapes decision-making behaviour. Results also revealed that interpersonal distance and relative velocity alone were insufficient for accurately predicting the outcome of a dyad in association football. Instead, combined values of interpersonal distance, ball-to-defender distance, attacker-to-ball distance, attacker-to-ball relative velocity and relative angles were found to indicate the state of dyad outcomes.

Watching football in marvellous Melbourne : spectators, barrackers and working class rituals

A study of crowds drawn to Australian football matches in colonial Victoria illuminates key aspects of the code's genesis, development and popularity. Australian football was codified by a middle-class elite that, as in Britain, created forms of mass entertainment that were consistent with the kind of industrial capitalist society they were attempting to organise. But the 'lower orders' were inculcated with traditional British folkways in matters of popular amusement, and introduced a style of 'barracking' for this new code that resisted the hegemony of the elite football administrators. By the end of the colonial period Australian football was firmly entrenched as a site of contestation between plebeian and bourgeois codes of spectating that reflected the social and ethnic diversity of the clubs making up the Victorian competition. Australian football thereby offers a classic vignette in the larger history of 'resistance through ritual'.

'You're not fit to wear the shirt': towards a cultural sociology of the football shirt

The world of football is a matter of life and death for many of its fans, and has also attracted much sociological attention. Much of this scholarly work focuses on issues such as deviance, identity, globalisation and commodification (Elias and Dunning 1986; Giulianotti and Robertson 2009). More recently, there has been some evidence of a cultural approach to football and to the football shirt (Benzecry 2008). In this paper, we seek to develop this trend by examining the football shirt as a totem, and by understanding it as inserted into circuits of the sacred and the profane, and the authentic and the inauthentic. Through examples such as shirt throwing, badge kissing, shirt swapping and supporters‟ efforts to construct alternative, protest strips, we show that the football shirt is deeply embedded in narratives of authenticity, sacredness and profaneness. In doing so, we aim to represent football as a rich cultural practice, which involves secular rituals and performances.

Opinions, attitudes and driving experiences of car and racing "enthusiasts" : results of the Ontario Car and Racing Club Survey

In recent years, car club and racing websites and forums have become an increasingly popular way for car enthusiasts to access racing and car club news, chat-rooms and message boards. However, no North American research has been found that has examined opinions and driving experiences of car and racing enthusiasts. The purpose of this study was to examine car club members’ opinions about and experiences with various aspects of driving, road safety and traffic legislation, with a particular focus on street racing. A web-based questionnaire (Survey Monkey) was developed using the expert panel method and was primarily based on validated instruments or questions that were developed from other surveys. The questionnaire included: 1) driver concerns regarding traffic safety issues and legislation; 2) attitudes regarding various driving activities; 3) leisure-time activities, including club activities; 4) driving experiences, including offences and collisions; and 5) socio-demographic questions. The survey was pre- tested and piloted. Electronic information letters were sent out to an identified list of car clubs and forums situated in southern Ontario. Car club participants were invited to fill out the questionnaire. This survey found that members of car clubs share similar concerns regarding various road safety issues with samples of Canadian drivers, although a smaller percentage of car club members are concerned about speeding-related driving. Car club members had varied opinions regarding Ontario’s Street Racers, Stunt and Aggressive Drivers Legislation. The respondents agreed the most with the new offences regarding not sitting in the driver’s seat, having a person in the trunk, or driving as close as possible to another vehicle, pedestrian or object on or near the highway without a reason. The majority disagreed with police powers of impoundment and on-the-spot licence suspensions. About three quarters of respondents reported no collisions or police stops for traffic offences in the past five years. Of those who had been stopped, the most common offence was reported as speeding. This study is the first in Canada to examine car club members’ opinions about and experiences with various aspects of driving, road safety and traffic legislation. Given the ubiquity of car clubs and fora in Canada, insights on members’ opinions and practices provide important information to road safety researchers.

Interacting constraints of defensive pressure and ball displacement trajectories shape locomotor pointing behaviours in association football

Performance of locomotor pointing tasks (goal-directed locomotion) in sport is typically constrained by dynamic factors, such as positioning of opponents and objects for interception. In the team sport of association football, performers have to coordinate their gait with ball displacement when dribbling and when trying to prevent opponent interception when running to kick a ball. This thesis comprises two studies analysing the movement patterns during locomotor pointing of eight experienced youth football players under static and dynamic constraints by manipulating levels of ball displacement (ball stationary or moving) and defensive pressure (defenders absent, or positioned near or far during performance). ANOVA with repeated measures was used to analyse effects of these task constraints on gait parameters during the run-up and cross performance sub-phase. Experiment 1 revealed outcomes consistent with previous research on locomotor pointing. When under defensive pressure, participants performed the run-up more quickly, concurrently modifying footfall placements relative to the ball location over trials. In experiment 2 players coordinated their gait relative to a moving ball significantly differently when under defensive pressure. Despite no specific task instructions being provided beforehand, context dependent constraints interacted to influence footfall placements over trials and running velocity of participants in different conditions. Data suggest that coaches need to manipulate task constraints carefully to facilitate emergent movement behaviours during practice in team games like football.

Reading images : the book club in the art gallery

This paper seeks to document and understand one instance of community-university engagement: that of an on-going book club organised in conjunction with public art exhibitions. The curator of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum invited the authors, three postgraduate research students in the faculty of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at QUT, to facilitate an informal book club. The purpose of the book club was to generate discussion, through engagement with fiction, around the themes and ideas explored in the Art Museum’s exhibitions. For example, during the William Robinson exhibition, which presented evocative images of the environment around Brisbane, Queensland, the book club explored texts that symbolically represented aspects of the Australian landscape in a variety of modes and guises. This paper emerges as a result of the authors’ observations during, and reflections on, their experiences facilitating the book club. It responds to the research question, how can we create a best practice model to engage readers through open-ended, reciprocal discussion of fiction, while at the same time encouraging interactions in the gallery space? To provide an overview of reading practices in book clubs, we rely on Jenny Hartley’s seminal text on the subject, The Reading Groups Book (2002). Although the book club was open to all members of the community, the participants were generally women. Elizabeth Long, in Book Clubs: Woman and the Uses of Reading in the Everyday (2003), offers a comprehensive account of women’s interactions as they engage in a reading community. Long (2003, 2) observes that an image of the solitary reader governs our understanding of reading. Long challenges this notion, arguing that reading is profoundly social (ibid), and, as women read and talk in book clubs, ‘they are supporting each other in a collective working-out of their relationship to a particular historical movement and the particular social conditions that characterise it’ (Long 2003, 22). Despite the book club’s capacity to act as a forum for analytical discussion, DeNel Rehberg Sedo (2010, 2) argues that there are barriers to interaction in such a space, including that members require a level of cultural capital and literacy before they feel comfortable to participate. How then can we seek to make book clubs more inclusive, and encourage readers to discuss and question outside of their comfort zone? How can we support interactions with texts and images? In this paper, we draw on pragmatic and self-reflective practice methods to document and evaluate the development of the book club model designed to facilitate engagement. We discuss how we selected texts, negotiating the dual needs of relevance to the exhibition and engagement with, and appeal to, the community. We reflect on developing questions and material prior to the book club to encourage interaction, and describe how we developed a flexible approach to question-asking and facilitating discussion. We conclude by reflecting on the outcomes of and improvements to the model.

Effects of a defender on run-up velocity and ball speed when crossing a football

This study evaluated effects of defensive pressure on running velocity in footballers during the approach to kick a stationary football. Approach velocity and ball speed/accuracy data were recorded from eight football youth academy participants (15.25, SD=0.46 yrs). Participants were required to run to a football to cross it to a receiver to score against a goal-keeper. Defensive pressure was manipulated across three counterbalanced conditions: defender-absent (DA); defender-far (DF) and defender-near (DN). Pass accuracy (percentages of a total of 32 trials with 95% confidence limits in parenthesis) did not significantly reduce under changing defensive pressure: DA, 78% (55–100%); DF, 78% (61–96%); DN, 59% (40–79%). Ball speed (m·s−1) significantly reduced as defensive pressure was included and increased: DA, 23.10 (22.38–23.83); DF, 20.40 (19.69–21.11); DN, 19.22 (18.51–19.93). When defensive pressure was introduced, average running velocity of attackers did not change significantly: DA versus DF (m·s−1), 5.40 (5.30–5.51) versus 5.41 (5.34–5.48). Scaling defender starting positions closer to the start position of the attacker (DN) significantly increased average running velocity relative to the DA and DF conditions, 5.60 (5.50–5.71). In the final approach footfalls, all conditions significantly differed: DA, 5.69 (5.35–6.03); DF, 6 .22 (5.93–6.50); DN, 6.52 (6.23–6.80). Data suggested that approach velocity is constrained by both presence and initial distance of the defender during task performance. Implications are that the expression of kicking behaviour is specific to a performance context and some movement regulation features will not emerge unless a defender is present as a task constraint in practice.

Not just another ball game : young adult and adult football fictions are different

Current media attention on the crossover novel highlights the increasing permeability of the boundaries between young adult and adult fiction. This paper will focus upon some of the difficulties around definitions of young adult fiction before considering the fiction of football, or soccer as it is more commonly known in Australia. The football genre exhibits a number of discrete and identifiable differences between young adult and adult readerships including, for example, the role of the protagonist, and the narrative’s distance from the game. This paper will use Franco Moretti’s Mapping as Distant Reading model of abstraction to highlight and unpack these and other characteristic differences in the narratological and stylistic techniques employed across adult and young adult texts. Close reading analysis of the adult football fiction Striker (1992) by Hunter Davies and young adult football fiction Lucy Zeezou’s Goal (2008) by Liz Deep-Jones’ will further illustrate the range of tensions and divergences as they are reflected across those readerships. The texts have been selected because they speak to themes of fear and safety; Joe Swift (Striker) is driven by a need to move away from childhood poverty and insecurity, while Lucy Zeezou shelters a homeless friend. With both protagonists being kidnapped for ransom for example, the texts have also been selected for their striking similarities in form and content.

Marking out the pitch : a historiography and taxonomy of football fiction

Football, or soccer as it is more commonly referred to in Australia and the US, is arguably the world’s most popular sport. It generates a proportionate volume of related writing. Within this landscape, works of novel-length fiction are seemingly rare. This paper establishes and maps a substantial body of football fiction works, explores elements and qualities exhibited individually and collectively. In bringing together current, limited surveys of the field, it presents the first rigorous definition of football fiction and captures the first historiography of the corpus. Drawing on distant reading methods developed in conjunction with closer textual analyses, the historiography and subsequent taxonomy represent the first articulation of relationships across the body of work, identify growth areas and establish a number of movements and trends. In advancing the understanding of football fiction as a collective body, the paper lays foundations for further research and consideration of the works in generic terms.