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Dette er siste tekst-versjon av artikkelen, og den kan inneholde små forskjeller fra forlagets pdf-versjon. Forlagets pdf-versjon finner du på journals.sagepub.com: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1012690216679966 This is the final text version of the article, and it may contain minor differences from the journal's pdf version. The original publication is available at journals.sagepub. AbstractIn recent years there has been growing concern about concussion in sport in general and rugby union in particular. The qualitative study reported here draws on interviews (n=20) with adult players in non-elite club rugby union in Ireland in order to explore the frames of reference within which they perceive, give meaning to and manage concussion. Within a sporting subculture which emphasises lay sporting values -particularly the value of "playing hurt" -and which reflects a functional view of injury, non-elite players tend to display an irreverent attitude towards concussion which encourages risky behaviours and underplays, ignores or denies the significance of concussion. We analogously describe these beliefs and actions as being "head strong". The paper concludes by identifying the contextual contingencies which make the regulation of injuries in rugby union so difficult and by establishing some core principles of public health education campaigns that might be deployed to militate against the high incidence of concussive injury in future.

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The burgeoning number of football academies in Africa are widely understood by young aspiring players and their family members as a conduit for transnational migration and a professional career in the game. However, for the vast majority of academy recruits the stark reality is involuntary immobility. While there is a growing literature on African football migration, the experiences of young players from the continent who are unable to translate their academy training into a professional career overseas has been neglected. This article addresses this lacuna by focusing on how this process is experienced and navigated by a cohort of former Ghanaian academy players. These experiences are positioned within the context of the intergenerational contract, a pervasive social norm in West Africa that places considerable expectations on young adults to reciprocate materially to their household. The analyses here are based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana totalling 12 months, conducted between January 2008 and July 2015.

This article marks an important watershed in the investigation of elite sport development in the 'Atlantic Isles'. It outlines some features of the emergence and development of international elite sports policy and its idiosyncratic diffusion to Northern Ireland (NI) specifically. Drawing on the SPLISS framework and the need for empirical work within Pillar 7 (coaching provision and coaching development), there is also an examination of elite coaches' perceptions of the policy factors influencing international sporting success. This goes some way towards redressing the dearth of knowledge about the complex social and political realities in which elite coaches ply their trade. A 'mixed methods' approach was employed, which incorporated secondary analysis of government and sports policy documents, the historical charting of the elite sports policy field in NI, the completion of an internationally validated survey and also semi-structured interviews with eight high-performance coaches (seven males and one female) who ranged in age from 38 to 59 years. The study demonstrates some of the unique challenges for the dual positioning of NI within Irish and British sports governance arenas. There, the resultant fractured elite sports policy landscape has constrained coaches' attempts to deliver upon performance targets. There was also less than convincing evidence of a 'high-performance' oriented sport culture. The article concludes by bridging the gap between sports policy and social policy in NI and, in so doing, offers some possibilities for developing a more integrated research agenda.