Seeking conceptual clarity in the study of elite professional coaches and managers in rugby union and association football

The study examines how professional rugby union and association football clubs in the UK recruit their first team management and coaching staff. Role clarification is provided on what separates the two positions in regards to how the remits for both roles are devised through interviewing their employers, a population which hitherto have not been sampled in the academic literature. The findings from this study contribute to a broader grounded theory project attempting to examine the career transition between elite athletes and elite coaches within the two sports. In order to sample participants for the broader project, it was important to establish the criteria against which individuals were appointed to coaching and managerial positions. The results draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and symbolic capital in respect to how employers recruit coaching staff. Individuals with a similar habitus to the clubs they represent and with high levels of symbolic capital relevant to the field are more likely to be employed as elite coaches and managers. The importance of candidates upholding elevated levels of symbolic capital are for enhanced player respect to be granted. The preference for a candidate’s habitus being similar to the club’s was based on the employer’s desire that the coaching staff would continue promoting the club’s values through their individual and collective practice. It is suggested that candidates with a prior competitive athletic tenure are the only population which can meet the criteria to be effective elite coaches and managers. Such a train of thought helps to perpetuate the culture of fast-tracking elite athletes into elite coaching and managerial positions. As such, society assigning the term ‘profession’ to these roles is critiqued, thereby offering practitioners and academics with further insight into how these roles might evolve through both their informal education and formalised accreditation processes in the hope of aspiring towards a ‘professional’ status

Poor-Inclusive Urban Sanitation: An Overview

This paper provides an overview of urban sanitation while highlighting the need to address this challenge with emphasis on including slum dwellers and poor communities that have typically been neglected

The Links Between Collective Bargaining and Equaliy

Working paper by Adelle Blackett and Colleen Sheppard, prepared for the ILO, analyzes the links between collective bargaining and equaliy at international level and addresses the efforts to monitor and regulate the right of association and collective bargaining

On the Presence of the Past in the Future of International Labour Law

Professor Blackett presented this talk as the Invited Speaker at the Schulich School of Law’s Horace E Read Memorial Lecture on 9 October 2019. *This contribution has not been peer-reviewed

From elite athlete to elite coach

Since the Rugby Football Union deinstitutionalised amateurism in 1995, professionalism has been fully embraced by all of the major sports in the UK. Consequently, professionalisation has shaped the responsibilities of elite rugby union, rugby league and association football managers. Such individuals are now culpable to an enhanced diligence in respect to ‘off-field’ affairs as well as ‘on-field’ performances. However, a disparity between the job expectancies and the recruitment process for such a role is intensifying. A preference for directly ‘fast-tracking’ elite athletes upon retirement, over to elite managerial roles has continued to be a regular phenomena and directly contradicts the notions of professionalisation for all facets of elite sport. Using the work of Bourdieu, this study explores the reasons for why habitus and symbolic capital attained from athletic performance are foreseen to be transferable into the application of becoming an effective ‘on-field’ and ‘off-field’ manager. The use of a grounded theory research methodology has led to the definition of several key areas requiring further scrutiny. Justification for the collection of empirical data will be provided by elaborating on prior research that attempts to define effective managers. The discussion will show that existing research has focused on surveying data gathered from managers themselves or athletes under their supervision. The paper therefore proposes directions for further empirical study, especially the perceptions of the employers of professional managers whose voices have yet to be heard

Tilings, Chern-Simons Theories and M2 Branes

A new infinite class of Chern-Simons theories is presented using brane tilings. The new class reproduces all known cases so far and introduces many new models that are dual to M2 brane theories which probe a toric non-compact CY 4-fold. The master space of the quiver theory is used as a tool to construct the moduli space for this class and the Hilbert Series is computed for a selected set of examples.Comment: 23 pages, minor changes, references adde

An Open Courts Checklist: Clarifying Washington\u27s Public Trial and Public Access Jurisprudence

Fundamental to the American system of justice is the right to a public trial and a general presumption of openness in judicial proceedings. These values are reflected in the First and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution and in many state constitutions. Washington is one of a number of states whose constitution (unlike the U.S. Constitution) also explicitly guarantees the open administration of justice. Constitutional dilemmas arise when a party requests the closure of a courtroom or the sealing of documents. These requests force courts to harmonize values of open justice with other compelling interests. U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia and Waller v. Georgia have provided guidance to states developing their own public trial jurisprudence. The Washington State Supreme Court used U.S. Supreme Court decisions to develop its own five-factor test for determining the constitutionality of closed proceedings in the criminal context in State v. Bone-Club. Since Bone-Club, however, many trial courts have failed to apply the factors articulated by the Court. This has resulted in many costly, highprofile reversals of convictions because of public trial violations. What could make the Bone-Club factors clearer and more practical for trial courts? This Comment argues that the Bone-Club test should become an “open courts checklist” that begins with a threshold question: Is the proposed action in fact a closure? If the answer is no, the rights to public access and public trial are not implicated. If the answer is yes, there remain six questions a trial court must ask on the record to evaluate the constitutionality of a proposed closure. Checklists have been employed in the fields of aviation and medicine for decades to ensure safety and procedural integrity. In a judicial context, an open courts checklist can provide clear, workable standards that will assist trial courts and leave a clear record for review. The goal is both improved judicial economy and the safeguarding of these essential constitutional rights and values