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POSITORY (HIR) Duncan, S. K., (2021). The spirit of play: fun and freedom in the professional age of sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 15(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2021.1929430 CRICOS Provider Code: 00012G. RTO: 416 B2130518 Document Repository Cov Abstract: In Johan Huizinga’s most prolific study of play, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture he states that for play to be considered authentic, genuine and real it must be fun, free, spontaneous and creative. Huizinga believed that play ought to be separate from ordinary and real life with the outcomes of play baring little to no consequences beyond the play contest (1950, 7-13). While Huizinga acknowledged that play could be utterly absorbing it should only be serious within the contest itself and not thereafter. Yet given the serious, structured, commercialised nature of the professional sports industry how can Huizinga’s discussion of play be useful today? This paper will highlight that even in the professional world of sport, Huizinga’s play characteristics still have an important role to play in ensuring professional athletes and teams can reach their full potential. Indeed, the confrontation between Huizinga and professional sport leads us to re-think Huizinga’s account of play. Using the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) as a case study, this paper will highlight how making the club environment and playing the game as fun and free as possible assisted the Tigers in winning their first AFL Premiership for 37 years in 2017. Key Words: Huizinga, play, fun, freedom, spirit of play, sport, community. Word Count (excluding references): 9,770 The Spirit of Play: Fun and Freedom in the Professional Age of Sport Introduction: In Johan Huizinga’s most prolific study of play, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture he states that for play to be considered authentic, genuine and real it must be fun, free, spontaneous and creative. Huizinga believed that play ought to be separate from ordinary and real life with the outcomes of play baring little to no consequences beyond the play contest (1950, 7-13). While Huizinga acknowledged that play could be utterly absorbing it should only be serious within the contest itself and not thereafter. Yet in today’s professional era of sport, playing games has never been more serious. Play characteristics such as fun, freedom and spontaneity now seem redundant with athletes more inclined to focus on process, meticulous training schedules and the ruthless execution of their coach’s instructions, game plans, tactics and set-plays. While athletes may enjoy, or even love their craft, they are also paid to perform – often to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. Winning and losing has consequences that extend beyond the field of play. For an individual, winning can consolidate their place in the team, lead to bigger, longer and financially lucrative contracts, higher sums of prize money and rich endorsement and sponsorship deals. For professional sporting organisations, winning increases the bottom line, with clubs profiting from revenues generated by increased gate receipts, memberships, merchandise sales and sponsorships (Duncan 2016). By contrast, losing can be detrimental to both the player and the organisation they play for. So often in the ruthless business of sport, losing equates to failure. It means players are less certain of their futures, or for some, where their next pay-cheque is coming from. It also significantly reduces an athlete’s ability to attract sponsors and for sports organisations, losing more often than winning will lead to drastically reduced crowd attendances, 1 merchandise sales and memberships. It will also make the task of attracting and maintaining sponsors more difficult. Ultimately, losing will more often than not generally lead to reduced revenues and profits, or increased financial losses (Bradbury 2016). For team sports this has seen an explosion of coaching and the analysis of play. Because the outcomes of sporting matches now have such drastic financial consequences, ‘play’ is now scrutinised and examined more than at any other time in history. Coaches of sporting teams have multiplied in numbers to prepare and train athletes and devise rigid team structures, tactics, game plans and set plays designed to provide their team with the best possible chance of winning (Duncan 2016). Players are expected to carry out their coach’s instructions or risk being punished or omitted from the team. Thus, the problem with modern sport is that while play can indeed be serious, structured and disciplined it has become so serious, structured and disciplined that it has corrupted notions of fun, freedom, flair, spontaneity and creativity. While play can be utterly absorbing and serious within the play contest, it is now overtly serious and more so, the seriousness of sport now seems to freely extend beyond the play contest into ordinary and real life. Therefore, in the commercial world of professional sport, Huizinga’s play element appears to be all but lost. Play is corrupted and manipulated. Notions of fun and freedom have been significantly compromised – there are too many instructions and tactics for it to be truly free and the fact athletes are playing to earn money further diminishes the idea that play is ‘voluntary’ or ‘free’ (Duncan 2016). Likewise, the seriousness of sport and the consequences of winning or losing means that the idea that ‘we’re only playing’ has also been significantly marginalised. The serious, structured, commercialised nature of the professional sports industry almost instantly dismisses Huizinga’s rather simplistic approach to defining play as redundant and totally inadequate to understand the play element in professional sporting competitions. If 2 Huizinga argues that sport must be fun and not serious; free with no financial reward; creative and spontaneous with few constraints or restrictions; and separate to real and ordinary life where the play battle has no significant consequences beyond the contest itself, how can Huizinga’s discussion of play be useful today? This paper will highlight that even in the professional world of sport, Huizinga’s play characteristics of fun and freedom still have an important role to play in ensuring professional athletes and teams can reach their full potential. Encouraging the spirit of play within a team allows professional players to be more creative and to express and enjoy themselves more, which adds a second, and equally important outcome of upholding the spirit of play – that it connects individual players and binds the team into a community. Indeed, the confrontation between Huizinga and professional sport leads us to re-think Huizinga’s account of play. Using the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) as a case study, this paper will highlight how making the club environment and playing the game as fun and free as possible assisted the Tigers in winning their first AFL Premiership for 37 years in 2017, followed by back to back premierships in 2019 and 2020. However, before we can understand how upholding the spirit of play can stimulate success in professional sport it is first necessary to understand what exactly is meant by the notion of play. Rethinking Huizinga: For Huizinga play was essentially fun, free, voluntary, spontaneous and separate from the ordinary and real. In Homo Ludens, Huizinga listed the four key characteristics of play as (1950, 7-13): ‘Play is free; in fact, it is freedom.’ 3 For Huizinga, ‘Play is free; in fact, it is freedom.’ This relates to Huizinga’s initial assumption that a player feels free when they are playing and they are bound by no restriction other than, perhaps, a player’s ability to carry out a skill or level of fitness to play at a certain, desired level of intensity. Play is a voluntary action; one that a player should not feel obliged or forced to partake in and, according to Huizinga, it should also be free of cost and financial reward. Huizinga states in his study of the play element that citizens should never play for a wage, nor should it cost them anything to play. Play, he states, is free. ‘Play is not ordinary or real.’ Play, according to Huizinga, is distinctly different from and separate to ‘real life’. For Huizinga, play was inferior to real life, thus, while play could be serious, it should only be so during the play contest. No matter how intense, passionate or serious a battle when playing, its importance in real life was minimal as the players were ‘only playing.’ In the first chapter of his book, Huizinga writes that “the contest is largely devoid of purpose – that the action begins and ends in itself and the outcome does not contribute to the necessary life processes of the group (1950, 49).” Fundamental to this characteristic is the assumption that play was autonomous from the rest of society and that players were acting autonomously from the roles, responsibilities or power he or she may have in other parts of their life. ‘Play is secluded and limited.’ In extending his second characteristic of play, Huizinga argued that play was separate to real or ordinary life as it was limited in its locality and duration. Play, especially within games, could not go on forever, nor could they be played wherever. Games, such as Australian Football are played on a particular type of field for a particular length of time. Thus, these restrictions of locality actually enhance the distinction between play and real or ordinary life. 4 Furthermore, because play was limited in its duration and locality, it created a sense of certainty – not of what was going to happen when play commenced, for that was based on spontaneity and creativity – but of ‘when’ one could play and ‘where.’ It was this sense of certainty that underlines Huizinga’s fourth characteristic of play.