european college of sport science

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
THE IMPACT OF ATHLETICISM ON THE EARLY EVOLUTION ON FOOTBALL
FRETLAND, F.
SOGN OG FJORDANE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
Abstract
J. A. Mangan claim in his article in Soccer & Society in April 2008 that the impact of the educational ideology athleticism, was more important
to the evolution of English Association Football than earlier presumed. He does not give any specific definition of the concept
athleticism but in this article we can understand it as a game ethos which was taught the Victorian and Edwardian bourgeois youth. The
aim was to “play the game” in the right way with moral values and fairness as guiding lines. The idea of athleticism had been an important
part of the English educational institutions in the second part of 1900 Century. It had “both an ulterior and altruistic impact in the
universities, public and grammar schools of the middle classes and ...on the teacher-training colleges and elementary schools of the
working class” (Mangan 2008:174). In short, athleticism can be used as an analytic factor when it comes to explaining the spread and
democratisation of modern football. The proletarian adopted athleticism when school teachers used it as a part of the teaching. Moral
values as honesty, courage and fair play could be practised at the pitch but could also be transformed to other parts of life. Football could
be used to teach good manners in social life for young people.
In this paper I’ll try to explore and “translate” the use of athleticism into Norwegian terms. How important was the ideology of education
for the spread and growth of football in Norway?
Matti Goksøyr and Finn Olstad used, in their book Fotball! (Goksøyr M, Olstad F, 2002), the concept of youth revolt to explain the development
of football and its role in an early phase, as Rune Slagstad did it in his book on history of ideas of Norwegian sport (Slagstad 2008).
Slagstad writes that Norwegian football developed most like a youth revolt where the young people their self made written and unwritten
laws and administrated the football association (Slagstad 2008: 188). The youth was driven by a playful approach to football. PE-teachers
and the School as a whole did not get the control they wished, claim Slagstad (ibid). That means the pedagogical ideas on character
building (athleticism) were not important for the development of football in Norway in an early phase. I will question this, and try out if
athleticism had some impact on the early evolution of football, maybe more impact than Goksøyr, Olstad and Slagstad are claiming.
Overall we can ask if athleticism can be used as a factor to explain popularity for football in Norway.
References
Goksøyr M, Olstad F. Fotball! Norges Fotballforbund 100 år. [Oslo] 2002, 4, 360.
Mangan J. A. Missing men: Schoolmasters and the early years of Association football. I: Soccer & Society Vol 9, No.2, April 2008, 170-188.
Slagstad R. (Sporten). En idéhistorisk studie. Pax Forlag A/S. Oslo 2008, 188.
- YOU MUST BE A “TRØNDER”. SOCCER FANS CONSTRUCTING COMMUNITY ON WWW.RBK.NO AND
WWW.KJERNEN.NO
KRØVEL, R.
OSLO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
(Quote: Nils Arne Eggen to a talented African player on trial with Rosenborg).
Introduction: Groups or cultures have values that are largely shared by their members. But what happens to groups, community and
values when global flows of people, capital, goods and ideas challenge existing boundaries? This paper will investigate the process of
construction or re-constructing the imagined community of supporters and members of Rosenborg Ballklubb (RBK) and the fan club
Kjernen.
RBK went through a period of profound change in the years after approximately 1999 (Svardal 2007). The club had been founded by
players in a traditionally working class neighborhood of Trondheim. During the 1960s and 1970s, RBK, the most successful team in Trondheim,
also became the dominating team in the region of Trøndelag. Under the leadership of Coach Nils Arne Eggen, the club went on to
win 15 national championships after 1990. This meant that the club represented Norway in the Champions League in a period when
incomes grew dramatically because of increased earnings from television and commercials. RBK thus became the richest and dominating
club in Norway, but still professed an intention to recruit mainly local players.
Method: The investigation will focus on the period from 1999 to 2008, and take a historical perspective. It will therefore focus on changes
in the discursive construction of what it means to be “trønder”, i.e. from the region of Trøndelag. The paper investigates the struggle to
construct “trønder” as it is played out among fans on rbk.no and kjernen.no. Discursive analysis is applied to selected texts published
online. These texts are compared with discussion and interviews in the dominating regional newspaper Adresseavisen. In addition, key
members of both RBK and Kjernen have been interviewed.
Results and Discussion: This changed gradually after approximately 1999 when more and more international players joined the club. In
2007 RBK sometimes fielded a team of one Canadian, one Fin, two Swedes, one Slovakian, two Ivorian and one from Burkina Faso, in
addition to three or four Norwegians. This development stimulated a heated debate among fans, journalists and members of the club
(still run and owned by members). Some, like the former coaches Nils Arne Eggen and Ola By Rise, claimed that the club would be best
served by maintaining a majority of locally or regionally raised players, “trøndere”, with whom local audience could identify. Others felt
that the new multicultural outlook of the team could help include excluded or marginalized groups in the local community, thereby aiding
a necessary re-construction of the local imagined community. Some of the most dedicated fans in the group called “Kjernen” began
using “trønder” as an honorary title, not given only to those born or raised in Trøndelag, but, for instance, also to African or Latin-
American players found to “deserve” it because of their display on the field.
References
1. Svardal, Geir. 2007. Historien om Rosenborg ballklub : 1917-2007 / . Trondheim.
OSLO/NORWAY, JUNE 24-27, 2009 263