Winning and losing: the dynamics of pride and shame in the narratives of men who play competitive country football

Abstract

Football is an important site in the construction and performance of masculinity. In this paper we focus on rugby league and/or Australian Rules Football in the Bega Valley District, News South Wales, Australia. This paper investigates 17 football life narratives of men who play in the competitive rural sports leagues of the Bega Valley. Drawing on the theoretical work of Elspeth Probyn, a visceral approach is used to critically attend to the ambiguities and tensions surrounding the bodies of men who play football. We argue that the affective and emotional relationships of the dynamics of pride and shame are found within spaces sustained by football. We argue that a feminist geographical perspective of the dynamics of pride and shame open up possibilities to challenge normative understandings of football bodies and spaces.

Television commentary on women's and men's Australian Rules football: A thematic analysis

“…The physical aggression and toughness that are the hallmarks of the code are argued to be culturally sedimented and normalized as key aspects of masculine self-identity (Burgess et al, 2003; Krane, 2001; Messner, 1988). A range of negative social consequences associated with the reproduction of these hegemonic norms in Australian Rules football have been investigated: alcohol consumption (Hart, 2016; Nicholson et al, 2014), domestic and sexual violence (Corboz et al, 2016; Kearney, 2012), mental and physical strain relating to an idealised form of masculine ‘mental toughness’ (Coulter et al, 2016), and the association of shame with failure to comply with norms of football masculinity (Waitt and Clifton, 2015). Furthermore, the predominance of retired male players in commentator positions, and a television focus on broadcasting men's athletic competitions, have been argued to result in the cyclical reinforcing of a masculine subculture that disenfranchises women (Litchfield and Redhead, 2015).…”

Play, protest and pride: Un/happy queers of Proud to Play in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Urban researchers -such as Gorman-Murray and Nash (2016), Lewis (2016) and Mattson (2015) -offer nuanced insights into urban landscapes, queerly creative and neoliberal cities. Probyn (2000Probyn ( , 2003Probyn ( , 2005, Munt (2007) and Kaufman and Woolf (2010) have led us to argue that there is great potentiality in thinking about bodies, sport, cities, pride and shame (Johnston, 2007;Waitt and Clifton, 2015). We bring these literatures together and extend them by asking 'what does happiness do' (Ahmed, 2010: 2) to cities, activisms and queer sporting bodies in the context of Proud to Play?…”