Amateur Clubs Research Articles

A cross-sectional study of the prevalence of neck pain, decreased cervical range of motion and head repositioning accuracy in forwards and backs in rugby union

Summary Objective The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of neck pain, decreased cervical range of motion and head repositioning accuracy in forwards and backs in amateur rugby union. As forwards in rugby union have a more physical role, we theorise that they will have a higher prevalence of neck pain and decreased cervical range of motion and head repositioning accuracy. Design Analytical cross-sectional study. Setting Amateur rugby union clubs in Bournemouth and Bristol, England. Subjects Thirty-five active, adult amateur male rugby union players, 18 forwards, mean age 28.39 years (S.D. 8.83) and 17 backs, mean age 25.88 years (S.D. 4.41) from two amateur rugby clubs. Methods Subjects were required to complete a pain questionnaire which included indicating their average pain over the preceding four weeks on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (VAS). Cervical range of motion was measured using a CROM device and proprioception by the subject's ability to accurately relocate the head on the trunk to a subjective straight ahead position following a near maximal rotation movement. Results There was an 83% prevalence of neck pain in forwards compared to 41% prevalence for backs. Decreased cervical range in motion was present for all of the backs and forwards. Decreased head repositioning accuracy occurred in 33% of forwards and 35% of backs. Conclusions The prevalence of neck pain was higher in forwards; however, the prevalence of decreased head repositioning accuracy was not statistically different from that of backs. All the forwards and backs demonstrated decreased cervical range of motion.

A Comparison of the Attitudes and Beliefs of Professional Rugby Players from one Club and Parents of Children Playing Rugby at an Adjacent Amateur Club to the Wearing of Mouthguards

To assess the knowledge that professional rugby players have with regard to the benefits of wearing an oral mouthguard and the importance that they give to wearing the appliance during play, then to compare these views with those of the parents of children who are beginning to play the sport. Questionnaires and covering letters were sent to the parents of children who played rugby at Malton & Norton Rugby Union Football Club (RUFC), which has teams for all age groups from under 7-8 years to adult. Similar questionnaires were sent to the first team squad of Leeds Tykes, a Zurich Premiership rugby union club. The questionnaires asked a series of questions on the use of mouthguards and knowledge of their importance in the prevention of injuries. The overall response rate was 76%. Seventy-four of the 100 questionnaires sent to the parents and 25 of the 30 sent to the professional players were completed and returned. Both the professional rugby players and parents felt that mouthguards were essential when playing rugby. The professionals seemed to have a much greater understanding of the benefits that mouthguards provided. Although parents agreed that children should begin to wear mouthguards as soon as possible, very few actually did. The barriers to providing mouth protection were mainly financial combined with the difficulties of taking the child to the dentist. If the results from this small study are representative of the current situation, with regard to the wearing of mouthguards by professional players and children, it appears that there is a need for all those involved to ensure that rugby-playing children wear mouthguards. Rugby clubs could consider the appointment of honorary dental advisers and devise systems to ensure that cost is not a factor in preventing children from wearing mouthguards.

The Borderlands of Professionalism: <i>Cooperative Clubs and the Formation of the National League</i>

Baseball in the 1860s presents modern historians with a pyramid of clubs. A handful of clubs clearly occupied the top: the Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Mutuals of New York, and the Athletics of Philadelphia were the standouts. Below the top tier was a larger number of lesser clubs, including the Stars of Brooklyn, the Keystones of Philadelphia, and the Olympics of Washington. The pyramid's base comprised a large number of clubs largely forgotten today: the Harmonics of Brooklyn, the Brandywines of West Chester, Pennsylvania, the Fairmounts of Marlboro, Massachusetts, and many more. There are no clear divisions. Competition was not segregated into tiers based on level of play or geography the way organized baseball is today. While the Mutuals are clearly of more interest than the Brandywines, the slope from one to the other is gradual, and there is no systematic way to draw a line between clubs of interest and clubs not of interest.This status changes with the formation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA) in 1871.1 The formation of the NA draws a clear line between the professional clubs (numbering from eight to thirteen over its five seasons) and the uncounted amateur clubs constituting everyone else. The history of baseball from 1871 forward becomes almost exclusively the history of the NA and its heirs.But this streamlining is illusory. Large numbers of clubs did not disappear in 1871. That they seem to do so is more a product of modern taxonomy than historical circumstance. The division of clubs into NA and non-NA is neither arbitrary nor anachronistic, but neither is it the sole useful division. Treating it as if it were distorts the organization of baseball at that time, as well as the transition of organized baseball with the formation of the National League (NL) in 1876.This article presents a twofold thesis. First, there were in the NA era nominally amateur clubs, with the best being similar to the weaker members of the NA. Second, taking the broader organization of baseball into account sheds light on the reasons for the formation of the National League-the primary reason being to exclude from membership the weaker class of clubs.The article has three sections: 1) an overview of the organization of baseball in the early professional era; 2) an examination of two clubs-a weak professional club and a strong, nominally amateur club, showing their similar histories, organizations, and competitive strengths; and 3) an examination of the formation of the National League in light of its larger contemporary context.Professional and Amateur; Salary and Co-opThere arose in the 1860s an informal and ad hoc championship system. It was a challenge system, much like that of (and likely modeled after) boxing. A club would issue a challenge to the champion club, with the matter settled in a best-of-three series. This system worked reasonably well as long as the serious competitors were within the New York metropolitan region. By mid-decade the system was starting to fray. In 1869 it was obvious that the Red Stockings of Cincinnati were the best team in the country, and yet they never competed for the championship. The system was clearly broken.The 1869 season also brought the end of the de jure amateur era. Clubs were given the option of declaring themselves professional, with 12 clubs doing this.2 In 1871, 10 clubs took the next step and formed the professional NA. The NA featured a radically innovative championship scheme: Each club would play a series of championship games against every other club, with the pennant going to the club with the best overall performance. This system was without precedent in team sports, and is essentially the system used in all team sports today.3In the old challenge system, championship games were special occasions. They were relatively rare, by definition included at least one top team, and every game mattered. The fans responded. …

International Prospective Student-Athletes and NCAA Division I amateurism

This paper summarises a research stream dealing with the US system of amateur intercollegiate sport and its relation to International Prospective Student-Athletes (IPSAs). Crucial differences exist between the US 'clear demarcation' of commercial pro sport and amateurism as applied by National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I (NCAA DI) on one hand, and the International club-based federalised structure, with more connections between professional and amateur clubs on the other. Thus, IPSAs, NCAA staff, and member institutions experience problems. As litigation has not resolved these challenges, regulatory evolution and policy recommendations are in order to achieve greater balance among NCAA DI membership.

Revenge of the Crouch End Vampires: The AFA, the FA and English Football's ‘Great Split’, 1907–14

When the Football Association legalized professionalism in 1885 it unleashed commercial forces that progressively eroded the influence of gentleman amateurs on the English game. Self-appointed custodians of amateurism fought a long rearguard action against these developments. This culminated in a crisis in the FA's affairs and the secession in 1907 of a large number of amateur clubs, mainly based in London and the south-east. These clubs played under the aegis of the Amateur Football Association for the next seven seasons. This essay explores the origins of this association, its brief history as an independent governing body, and the reasons for its re-integration with the Football Association in 1914.

A pilot randomised controlled trial of eccentric exercise to prevent hamstring injuries in community-level Australian Football

Hamstring injuries are the most common injury sustained by Australian Football players. Eccentric training has been proposed as a potential preventative strategy. This pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) evaluated the effectiveness of a pre-season eccentric training program for preventing hamstring injuries at the community level of Australian Football. Seven amateur clubs (n=220 players) were recruited. Players were randomised within clubs to the intervention (eccentric exercise) or control (stretching) groups and randomisation was stratified according to previous history of hamstring injury. Five exercise sessions were completed over a 12-week period, three during the pre-season and two during the first 6 weeks of the season. Compliance was recorded and players were monitored for the season to collect injury and participation data. There was no difference between the control (n=106) or intervention (n=114) groups with respect to baseline characteristics. Only 46.8% of all players completed at least two program sessions. Compliance was poorest for the intervention group. Intention-to-treat analysis suggested that players in the intervention group were not at reduced risk of hamstring injury (RR 1.2, 95% CI: 0.5, 2.8). When only control and intervention group players who participated in at least the first two sessions were analysed, 4.0% of intervention and 13.2% of control group players sustained a hamstring injury (RR 0.3, 95% CI: 0.1, 1.4; p=0.098). The findings suggest that a simple program of eccentric exercise could reduce the incidence of hamstring injuries in Australian Football but widespread implementation of this program is not likely because of poor compliance.

Dancing to Utopia: Modernity, Community and the Movement Choir

Established by dance and movement theorist Rudolf Laban, the Bewegungsch6ren or 'movement choirs' of the 1920s and 1930s were a spectacularly visible element of German national culture. A network of amateur clubs, each run by a graduate of Laban's schools, the choirs were modern, urban phenomena, operating in cities and large towns against the backdrop of German industrial society. Their membership represented that society's diversity, for although choir leaders and many dancers were drawn from the educated middle class, those traditionally concerned with cultural generation and preservation, anecdotal evidence suggests they also recruited from the industrial working classes. Their amateur status was central to their aims, such that, as initially conceived, choir works were to have no audience. Although groups quickly became involved in public performance, taking part in community festivals and celebrations, their works were originally envisioned as an end in themselves, an experience for those taking part.' Historically, movement choirs have attracted specific forms of critical attention, and hence been construed in particular ways. Most often they have been addressed as a side issue in studies of Laban's life or work' or, less frequently, as part of the wider phenomenon of German K'drperkultur, placed alongside the practice of Bodean3 or 'Swedish' gymnastics,5 and contemporary fads for health food, body building, racial 'hygene', nudism and 'wilderness' experiences'. Rarely have choir events been addressed as acts of performance. It is in this light that I shall consider Bewegungsch6re work in the following piece not as the child of Laban's authorial genius but as live cultural representation, whose significance was a function of the socio-historical relations in which it was enmeshed. In pursuing this project, the perspectives offered by Raymond Williams prove particularly apt. If the aim of his cultural materialism is to illuminate artifacts in terms of the social relations in which they are embedded and the cultural consciousness they display, he nevertheless warns against the dangers of seeking such consciousness solely in explicit utterance. He states:

Blue Chicago: the search for authenticity in urban blues clubs

Blue Chicago takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how iconic - yet empty - images of the blues are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, David Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increasing frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of over-played blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest.

Baseball Fever. Early Baseball in Michigan

Baseball seems tailor-made for the historian, yet even today, after almost a century and a half of organized play, baseball's origins remain unclear. Most accounts focus on Eastern teams and the advent of professionals, but how the game spread across a predominantly rural America to become our national pastime is a question still largely unresolved.In this well-researched study of Michigan baseball from the 1830s to the 1870s, baseball scholar Peter Morris offers many answers. Drawing on such sources as personal memoirs, period photographs, and an extensive, often hilarious variety of newspaper accounts, he paints a vivid portrait of a game that was widely---if erratically---played well before the Civil War and gradually evolved from an informal amusement into an activity for local groups of young men and finally into a serious, organized sport.Baseball began with pick-up raisin' games---so called because they took place after rural roof-raisings---played purely for fun by any number of participants, with myriad local variations. The first clubs appeared in the 1850s and were often ridiculed for playing a child's game---baseball fever was then a term of mockery---but as they persevered and issued challenges to other teams from nearby towns, rivalries developed, rules began to conform, and a tradition started to take shape.Tournaments, often connected with county fairs, and increased newspaper coverage gave the game new momentum after the Civil War, and what had been sociable matches became serious contests, sometimes marred by bad blood. Enclosed grounds changed the nature of the game--most notably with respect to home runs--and allowed teams to charge admission, which introduced a new element of commercialism, community involvement, and a heightened sense of competition. Ultimately, it brought about a level of play that made the best amateur clubs able to challenge professional teams from the East when they toured the country.As he traces the exploits of clubs like the Excelsiors, the Wahoos, and the Unknowns, season by season and often game by game, Morris adds a wealth of new detail to the story of baseball's early days, showing how decades of at least nominally play prepared the way for the advent of the National League in the 1870s, and with it the true beginnings of the professional sport we know today. In the process, he also paints a fascinating portrait of the attitudes, values, and lives of rural Americans in the mid-nineteenth century.Peter Morris, a former English instructor at Michigan State University, is a specialist in nineteenth-century baseball and an active member of the Society for American Baseball Research.

When Johnny came sliding home: the post-Civil War baseball boom, 1865-1870

As the Civil War ended, the thoughts of many Northern soldiers turned to a game that some had learned about for the first time during the war--baseball. Their newfound interest in the sport, combined with the postwar economic boom and the resultant growth of many cities, took the game from one practiced by a few amateur clubs in New York City before the war to a professional sport covering almost the entire northeastern United States. Researched from primary sources, the game of the late 1860s is described season-by-season: the fields, the crowds, the strategy, the rules, the style of play, and the confusing struggles to crown a national champion, with all the chicanery and machinations of the contenders. Such landmark events as the Washington Nationals pioneering 1867 tour and the Cincinnati Red Stockings undefeated 1869 season are covered.

Methods of Popularizing Astronomy in Various Countries

AbstractSome interesting methods of popularizing astronomy in various countries were reviewed, and may be divided into two types: active and passive methods. Active methods include: 1.Astronomy in the countryside. Astronomical camps for both children and grownups, who normally live in towns, to learn basic astronomical facts. (Italy)2.Astro-puppets. Visitors to an observatory are greeted by puppets (Copernicus, Galileo, etc.) who not only give talks, but also converse with the audience. (Argentina)3.Hand-operated devices. A simple orrery showing the movement of the Earth, and other devices that viewers operate for themselves. (India)4.Graphical calendars. Several popular observatories collaborate to produce a yearly calendar showing planetary rising and setting times, etc. (Czechoslovakia)5.Amateur clubs. High-school and university students became so interested in astronomy that they formed their own group and now produce a magazine and carry out observing, etc. in a country where there is no professional astronomical institution. (Paraguay)6.An interdisciplinary approach. Various meetings and workshops are arranged to bring together astronomy, physics, biology, geology, etc., leading to a better understanding of modern science. (Japan)7.Astronomical competitions. Everything from children’s drawings to special tests and papers, sometimes connected with special events. Also awards for the best work of popularization in a given year. (Worldwide)Passive methods are far more traditional, and include planetarium shows, including special ones for pilgrims (India); special exhibitions; radio and television programmes; public lectures; popular magazines usually edited for special groups of readers. Finally, what about humorous astronomical stories or pictures, is that active or passive?

Peking Opera Today: Some Views of Performers

(1982). Peking Opera Today: Some Views of Performers. CHINOPERL: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 96-125.

A History of Amateur Club Rowing in the New York Metropolitan Area 1830–1870

A History of Amateur Club Rowing in the New York Metropolitan Area 1830–1870

For the attention of all members of Trade-Union amateur moving-picture studios and clubs, as well as houses and places of culture and all amateur movie-makers of the Soviet Union

For the attention of all members of Trade-Union amateur moving-picture studios and clubs, as well as houses and places of culture and all amateur movie-makers of the Soviet Union