So how well do you know your sport? Can you answer these three questions?
What event is the second largest multisport Games in the world after the Olympics?
At what event have 48% of all recent medallists at the Olympic Games, including Beth Tweddle, Jessica Ennis-Hill, and Michael Jamieson medalled at?
What event is taking place in Gwangju, Korea between 3 and 14 July 2015?
If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then you may not be aware that the Summer Universiade, or the World University Games as it is more commonly known, is currently underway in Gwangju, Korea, and will run until the 14 July 2015. The World University Games is held every two years for student athletes and this year between 12,000 and 13,000 athletes from 141 countries are competing for medals in 21 different sports. Sixty-seven athletes from Great Britain and Northern Ireland have travelled to Korea to compete across 12 different sports to attempt to improve on the medal haul from the 2013 Games held in Kazan, Russia when Great Britain took home 1 gold, 1 silver and 4 bronzes.
Many of the events are already underway and by day five GB has already surpassed its success from two years ago and currently sits in ninth position in the medal table with 2 golds, 2 silvers and 1 bronze. Medals have already been won in the Artistic Gymnastics (Kelly-Jay Simm, Women’s Individual All-Around, GOLD), and in the Swimming (Jay Lelliot, Mens 400m Freestyle, GOLD, Men’s 800m Freestyle, SILVER; James Wilby, Men’s 100m Breaststroke, SILVER; Craig Benson, Men’s 100m Breaststroke, BRONZE). Kelly-Jay Simm is also in with a good chance of more medals as she competes today in the final of the vault, the uneven bars, and the floor exercise. Hopes are high for more medals in the pool as Craig Benson goes into the 200m Breaststroke later today (Tuesday 7 July) with the fastest qualifying time from the semi-finals. He is joined in that final by fellow Scot Calum Tait.
A positive start is likely to have filled Team GBR with confidence as more sports start over the coming days. Follow the medal successes of the team via the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) and the Games websites.
With 24 teams competing over a full month, it’s the largest and longest tournament in the history of women’s football. In the UK, all 52 matches will be given full coverage across the BBC for the first time. Indeed, this World Cup could rival the men’s tournament so let’s find out a bit more about what else we might expect.
England’s vital statistics
England is at number six in FIFA’s world rankings after qualifying first in the team’s group for the World Cup with a 100% record. The team had a tough friendly with Germany at Wembley who beat England 3-0 in November 2014.
More recently, after arriving in Canada for the Women’s World Cup, England played a friendly against Canada, losing 1-0 despite some strong performances from the team.
England reached the quarter-finals of the cup in 1995, 2007, 2011. This time there is a blend of experience and new talent and the team will be looking to improve progress at this tournament with their new head coach, Mark Sampson.
Playing technical
The artificial turf controversy has clearly highlighted how differently women are treated compared to men – men play on grass in the World Cup, but the women’s teams will play on a range of different artificial surfaces in Canada.
How will this affect the game? Apart from the increased risk of ankle injuries and the heat stress-related health problems from the potential high surface temperature, the women are likely to change their game to adapt to the turf.
The ball moves at a greater speed and players have less control as it rolls out of bounds more frequently. Put simply, it is physically more demanding than playing on natural grass. So there are likely to be more short and midfield-to-midfield passes to control the ball better.
Teams that might already hold the advantage of playing on such surfaces include Japan, which beat the USA on penalties in an nail-biting final at the 2011 competition in Germany. Japan’s style of play is technical; players maintain possession and their passes are short. Whereas USA (winners in 1991, 1999) and Canada, which both have an attacking style of play, might be affected most by the surface.
What’s new?
Eight teams are enjoying their debut at this year’s World Cup: Thailand, Switzerland, Spain, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Netherlands and Ecuador. This could lead to some high-scoring games, new plot lines and who knows what could happen in the games being played on a different surface?
Who qualified, who
didn’t. Bullshark44
Due to the increased number of teams, the format of the tournament has changed slightly. There will two more groups (six groups of four) and a second knockout round. In total 52 matches will be played and it will take seven successful games to win the tournament.
Players to watch
With the new teams, there are going to be a lot of new players to watch out for together with the existing talent, such as the well-known Marta Vieira da Silva from Brazil (who is the best player in the history of the game and FIFA World Player of the Year five times), and Abby Wambach from the USA (who is also among the best in the world and was awarded FIFA World Player of the Year in 2012). Wambach has scored more goals than any international player in either men’s or women’s football.
In the England women’s team, along with Eniola Aluko’s speed and Fara Williams’s tough experience, there is rising star Fran Kirby who has natural ability and intuitive talent on the pitch. She is top scorer for the domestic side, Reading. She grabbed the heart of the nation when she spoke honestly about her struggle to come to terms with bereavement, her battle against depression and her fierce return to Reading, scoring 33 goals in her first season back. She is a talented footballer as well as a huge inspiration to others at such a young age.
At 21, Kirby is not the youngest player in the tournament, however. Vivianne Miedema, 19, from the Netherlands is another rising star and one to watch. She was a key player in helping the national team qualify for the first FIFA Women’s World Cup.
What I love about these women is their ability to push boundaries outside their footballing careers by tackling homophobia (Casey Stoney), standing up against gender discrimination (Wambach leading a discrimination lawsuit against FIFA over the artificial turf), and inspiring other women into football.
The first game kicks off on Saturday June 6 with Canada playing China; let’s cheer them all on with admiration and the respect they deserve.
We currently have a vacancy for a full-time lecturer in Sport and Fitness (based in Milton Keynes) to join our growing and vibrant team of six staff involved in updating materials, overseeing teaching activities and active research that connects with our BSc (Hons) Sport, Fitness and Coaching.
If you have an excellent knowledge of sport and exercise science or sports studies, good experience of working in higher education and a strong research profile you can find out more about the post through the link below.
As we enter the new year we thought it would be nice to reflect back on 2014, which was a pretty busy year for the Open University Sport and Fitness Team. Here are just some of our highlights and special moments from 2014.
Our student numbers rose once again in 2014 as we welcomed a brand new cohort of sport and fitness students to our modules and qualifications
We also welcomed some very talented new tutors to the team to help support our growing numbers of students
Seeing some of our students graduate – attending degree ceremonies always makes us very proud! 2014 saw our first cohort of graduates from the BSc (Hons) Sport, Fitness and Coaching qualification
The team also had other publications including the book Podium written by our Head of Department Ben Oakley, and various The Conversation articles written by Candice, Caroline, Jess and Simon.
We now look forward to an even more amazing 2015!
Happy New Year from the Central Academic Team for Sport and Fitness
(Caroline, Simon, Jess, Candice and Gavin)
Education can be dramatically enhanced by social networks, a report from The Open University claims. Massive open social learning brings the power of social networks to people taking online courses, by recommending, liking and following the best content created by other learners. The so-called ‘network effect’ comes from many thousands of people learning from each other, but it needs careful management to reach its full potential.
The Innovating Pedagogy 2014 report (www.open.ac.uk/innovating) identifies 10 methods of teaching, learning and assessment that are gaining influence but which have not yet had a major impact on education. Other innovations covered by the report include: dynamic assessment where learners are offered personalised tests to support their learning; learning through storytelling; threshold concepts that are difficult to teach; and bricolage or creative tinkering with resources. Creative educational games such as Minecraft are bringing together bricolage and social learning, allowing millions of people to build shared cities and machines out of virtual interactive bricks.
Mike Sharples, Professor of Educational Technology at the OU and lead author of the Innovating Pedagogy report said: “Social networks have transformed entertainment from delivering books, radio and television programmes into holding a global conversation. The same is about to happen with education through social learning. That is a huge opportunity, but also a challenge to manage the discussion and file sharing. Learning on that scale can’t only be controlled centrally. It has to come through social network techniques that put learners in contact with others who share their interests, reward the best contributions and allow learners to report issues.”
Welcome to our 2014 Commonwealth Games blog. As Glasgow prepares itself for tomorrow night’s opening ceremony and the sporting extravaganza that will follow, we will be providing articles and commentary from an academic perspective throughout the games.
What is the Commonwealth Games?
The Commonwealth Games is a multi-sport competition for Commonwealth countries (71 will be competing this year) held every 4 years. Seventeen sports will be played over the 11 days of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. These include traditional Olympic sports such as athletics, boxing, gymnastics and swimming, as well as sports that aren’t in the Olympics such as netball and lawn bowls. Look out for an article later this week by Jess Pinchbeck examining stereotypical perceptions of netball ahead of the start of the netball competition on Thursday.
For those of you who tried our quiz on the business of football yesterday, here are the answers:
Q1. C – 3.2 billion people around the world watched some of a match on TV at home during the last World Cup finals; 2.2 billion of us watched at least 20 consecutive minutes!
(Source FIFA)
Q2. C- it is likely to be priced at between £275,000 and £300,000 according to media agency ZenithOptimedia
Q3. A – The Brazilian Institute of Tourism forecasts that visitors to the event will spend over £6.6bn in the country
Q4. C- Total Prize Money: $576 million
(confirmed by FIFA)
Q5. B – The German federation has promised all 23 players a 300,000 euros bonus for winning the title.
Q6. A- The Football Association would have lost up to £100 million if England had failed to reach the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
(Source Daily Telegraph)
The World Cup is big business. Test your knowledge of just how much revenue is involved in the World Cup by answering our quiz questions. Post your answers and/or any comments using the ‘leave a reply’ box at the bottom of this page (sorry – no prizes for correct answers!). The answers will be available on this site tomorrow.
(1) How many people worldwide watched the 2010 World Cup Finals?
A) 1.2 billion
B) 2.2 billion
C) 3.2 billion
(2) How much can ITV charge advertisers for a single 30-second spot shown during an England group game shown exclusively on ITV?
A) £100,000
B) £200,000
C) £300,000
(3) How much are tourists visiting Brazil for the World Cup expected to spend?
A) £6.6 billion
B) £2.2 billion
C) £4.4 billion
(4) How much prize money will the nations competing in this years’ World Cup share?
A) $101 million
B) $353 million
C) $576 million
(5) What bonus will each German squad player receive if they win this years’ World Cup?
A) 100,000 euros
B) 300,000 euros
C) Nothing
(6) How much did the English FA estimate that they would lose if the national team failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup?
In my attempt to be a good sporting parent I encourage my children to both participate in and spectate as many different sports as possible. However in spite of my attempts at diversity when faced with a range of activities or equipment to choose from, nine out of ten times they’ll opt for kicking a football. There appears to be something about football that possesses an unexplainable attraction for my children and many like them. When you pass any school playground at lunchtime it is easy to see that football dominates; rarely do you witness a game of rugby or volleyball being played. So is this obsession with playing football in the playground reflected in the sports participation of the general public?
What do the facts and figures say?
The number of people over 16 in England who play sport at least once a week is on the rise, therefore one might assume that the number of people participating in football would also be increasing, however this is not the case. The 2013 Sport England Active People Survey actually shows a decrease of around 100,000 in the number of people aged 16 and over that participate in football once a week. Nevertheless let us not under estimate football’s popularity as it still remains the fourth most popular participation sport with only swimming, athletics and cycling preceding it, rendering it the most popular team sport. Figures show that team sports are generally on a decline, perhaps due to people wanting to participate in individual activities that they can schedule around their own timetable, yet football still has 1.8million participants every week compared to its closest team rival rugby union, which has only 159,900. If we delve into these statistics further we note that only 18.5% of participants are members of a football club, although 25% have played competitively, both a slight decrease on previous year’s figures. This suggests that the majority of adult football participation takes place in a more recreational context.
This decrease in participation, alongside other issues, have resulted in public funding cuts to the FA of 1.6million by Sport England, potentially impacting grassroots football and young people in particular. In the 14-25 year old age bracket football is by far the most popular sport with 1.3 million participants, illustrating that this age group make up the majority of footballs demographic. Similarly The Taking Part survey (DCMS, 2013) shows that for 11-15 year olds football was the most popular with 56.1% having played in the last four weeks, seeing significant increases since 2010/11. Schools also had the strongest club links with football clubs. This suggests that football is still the most vibrant sport being played in secondary school, and regular participation appears to continue up until the age of 25.
These trends are also replicated in a survey by the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation in 2012 showing football as the most popular team sport for women, with around a quarter of a million participants. Figures from the FA show that 1.38million women and girls in England participate regularly, reinforcing the importance of the younger demographic in these participation figures. As with the Active People’s Survey individual activities are still the preferred choice for women with football only the 9th most popular sport overall and continuing to see decreases in participation rates each year.
The story behind the statistics
The statistics paint the picture of football being the most popular team sport with children aged 11-15 and also into adulthood represented by the 14-25 age group. Yet with a wider range of sports becoming more accessible to the general public through national governing body funding initiatives and the London 2012 legacy there has been, and continues to be, a gradual shift in the types of activities people are engaging in, with individual activities growing each year. So although overall participation numbers in sport are rising those participating in the more traditional team sports such as football appear to be declining at adult level.
In addition various media reports attribute government cutbacks to the steady decline of grassroots football stating the local authority playing fields used by the majority of amateur football clubs are just not up to the standard required (Winter,2013). Furthermore the fees to use these poor facilities continue to rise, making grassroots football more expensive but also less enjoyable and more of a challenge for those involved in its organisation. Lack of coaches qualified to a high level is also cited as a key failing of grassroots football (Winter 2013), with perhaps poorly qualified coaches producing inadequate sessions and discouraging continued participation amongst participants.
Following the success of Team GB in London 2012 and the subsequent increases in swimming, athletics and cycling participation it may be feasible to suggest that the success of the England men’s team in Rio 2014 may be a crucial factor to help give football participation levels a useful boost.
References:
DCMS (2013). Taking Part October 2011 to September 2012 Supplementary Child Report. Statistical Release, April 2013.
Department for Education (2013) ‘Evidence on physical education and sport in schools: key findings’ [online] Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/226506/Evidence_on_physical_education_and_sport_in_schools-summary.pdf (Accessed 9 June 2014)
Sport England (2014) ‘The National Picture’ [online] Available from: http://www.sportengland.org/research/who-plays-sport/national-picture/ (Accessed 9 June 2014)
Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (2012) ‘Football Factsheet’ [online] Available from: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEgQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thefa.com%2F~%2Fmedia%2Ffiles%2Fthefaportal%2Fgovernance-docs%2Fequality%2Fwomen-and-girls%2Fwomens-football-fact-sheet-oct-2012.ashx&ei=TJiVU8rLD8He7AaQiIEg&usg=AFQjCNHLM40pRUljBuVjWCB7KZraRG1OVw&bvm=bv.68445247,d.ZGU (Accessed 9 June 2014)
Nigel has been an Associate Lecturer at the Open University since 2009 and has tutored a range of modules within the sport and fitness programme. He has also authored several of the study topics including:
E112 – Introduction to Sport, Fitness and Management
• Study Topic 4: Training for Sport and Fitness
E217 – Sport and Conditioning Science into Practice
• Study Topic 4: Exploring Core Stability
• Study Topic 5: Strength and conditioning
E313 – Exploring Psychological Aspects of Athletic Development
• Study Topic 3: The Coach-Athlete Relationship
E314 – Exploring Contemporary Issues in Sport and Exercise
• EMA topic Overview: How does ethnicity influence participation and performance in sport
E117 – Introduction to Sport and Fitness
• Study Topic 6: Eating to Win
In addition to his work at the Open University he has worked as a personal trainer and fitness manager. Nigel has also worked as lecturer in sport and exercise in further and higher education and as a manager of a sport and outdoor education department. Currently, he undertakes a range of consultancy roles such as the authoring, development and external verification of sport and fitness qualifications.
