Page 15 - Keble Review 2014

where meaningful employment is scarce, professional Top software engineers or medics possess widely-recognised
sports provide young people, men especially, with
the opportunity to acquire personal status, financial security and respect. Fiji is no exception. Many Fijian families support their sons by investing time, energy and resources towards the dream of being an international rugby player. Such players are revered in Fiji as providers for families and as the embodiment of Christian and traditional values. At the same time, overseas clubs rely upon circulation supply of ambitious young men, harvesting their dreams and hard work for public entertainment. Clubs must be able to quickly integrate these highly mobile players into a high pressure and often very new working environment. How does a global system facilitate this rapid movement of people? How do players integrate socially into the very different local contexts they move between?
My anthropological research explores these questions by following young Fijian men as they moved through some specific locations which allow them to become professional rugby players: their households where they were raised; a club in Suva where they train whilst hoping for opportunities overseas; in the cafés and boardrooms where scouts and coaches decide who will be recruited, and how much each person is worth; at the New Zealand high schools where many young men make their first move overseas; at amateur clubs in Australia and New Zealand where they display their skills; and, finally, at professional clubs in Australia, Britain and New Zealand where many pursue their careers. At each location I investigated how these men regarded their lives, opportunities and obligations, and how they were regarded by others. I was particularly interested in any dissonance between the practices, beliefs and values which people self-reported, and those which I observed as they lived, trained and worked.
The frictions between dispersed locations are a central concern of any study of globalized industries. Thought of as an industry (rather than
a sport) rugby shares many features with other highly-skilled labour markets, such as the large salaries and high levels of global mobility. However, it also poses specific social problems. Careers are short; many people come from impoverished backgrounds; getting a contract requires years of training and a certain amount of luck; success rates are low; those who succeed can experience unparalleled levels of fame and respect in their communities; and, those who fail often are left with broken bodies and very few marketable skills. Yet, despite the low likelihood of success many young people from countries in the Global South pursue this dream.
Within indigenous Fijian communities, I found that rugby clubs were an important source of social standing for young men, who were training for long hours every day in the hope of getting a contract overseas. The club at the centre of my research mostly involved young men from the outer islands of Fiji who had come to the capital city of Suva to
live with their extended families. This was a communal project relying upon the financial and emotional support of large groups of people. These were not rich people, and some of the players would regularly forego lunch because of a lack of resources. I argue that this level of sacrifice can only be explained in social terms. Whilst, explicitly, the long hours of rugby training were undertaken to enable a player to earn money overseas and provide for his extended family, in actual fact the immediate consequences were more rewarding. Clubs provided young men with purpose, social standing, and a sense of identity. They were taught to value God, to work hard for their families, and to avoid a life of crime. Those who travelled overseas were elevated instantly to the level of local hero or even national icons – triumphant, but humble, Christian rugby players.
Recruiting skilled workers in a globalized labour market generally relies upon certain standards such as academic or professional credentials.
qualifications. Talented rugby players however, possess physical or bodily skills rather than paper certificates. How then do clubs know what they are getting when they recruit from afar? The simple answer is that “professionalism” has emerged as a relatively standardized code of behaviour. CEOs and coaches looked to hire players sourced from specific places which they can trust to produce professional players. These places, like well-known clubs, local development systems or some of the national under-20s teams, act in many ways like university qualifications do for other professions - 2 years in New Zealand’s “Super Rugby” tournament would add tens of thousands of pounds to a players’ potential value according to player agents’ calculations. Players with these credentials could be trusted to arrive and fit in well at a club anywhere within the global system, not just on the field, but also in the social aspects of the sport. Coaches did look for “raw talent” elsewhere, but they saw this as a risk. A Fijian recruit, for instance, could become brilliant and a regular match winner, but there was a fear that they would disrupt or even undermine the team’s dynamics. Horror stories about one particular Fijian player who was regularly inexplicably absent from training and matches circulated as warnings against recruiting Fijians. Several coaches had policies of limiting the number of foreign players in their squads just to mitigate this risk.
Players training in Suva, Fiji
As an anthropologist I am fascinated by these expectations of professionalism. Alongside the skills of the game, players were also taught a mantra of self-reliance and bodily control, as well as the communication styles expected within a professional club. But the ideal of a universalized cultural framework of “professionalism” hides the importance of local variations and power relations. The whims
of coaches and the personalities of teams greatly affect the social expectations for players. Traditions persist in many clubs, particularly pre-existing socializing (e.g. rituals of beer drinking) and compete
with the ideal of professionalism. Other newer cultural forms, such as ritualized tattooing, or group hunting trips, are prevalent in some clubs. All of this makes for a confusing, and almost always alien environment for a Fijian man to enter. Many of their cultural traditions are not supported within clubs. For instance, Fijian attempts to respect the authority of coaches by remaining silent at training was sometimes interpreted as an “unprofessional” sign of stupidity or a lack of interest.
There is therefore an ambiguity in the value of young men as they circulate through global sports industries. They may be regarded
by their communities as the ultimate professional rugby player
– Christian, humble, skillful – whilst the professional clubs they
play at might simultaneously see them as talented, but potentially problematic players. If you bear these findings in mind if you watch any of the Rugby World Cup in the UK in 2015, you will have a greater understanding of the various challenges that players will have overcome to be there.
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