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The aim of this paper is to explore track cycling through visual and aural sensory modalities. We draw on Pink's work on emplacement and of the researcher serving an apprenticeship by engaging through first-hand experience and learning track practices and routines in which we reflected on our visual and aural senses to account for understanding the body and the transformations it undergoes when riding track. This speaks to Hockey and Allen-Collinson's call for a 'fleshy perspective' by reintroducing the body into sporting practice. Undertaking an auto-ethnographic method, we use diarised notes drawn from six track cycling sessions to account for sensory experiences by reflecting on aural and visual senses in the context of the skills we acquired during track sessions. In this, the emergent narrative situates the body as a place of contestation and transition, whereby our visual and aural modalities are the senses by which we narrate our improving aptitude, and attained physical capital, on the track. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the contribution that mixed-sex football can make to the development of female football players. Girls' choices about participating in physical exercise may be influenced by a number of factors, but I want to address specifically the traditionally 'masculine' sport of football to consider the extent to which binary gender is a limited construct. Using a method of narrative interviews for data collection, I draw on the experiences of eight women ranged from aged 23 to 58. There was an emergent tension between the objective construction of gender both materially and symbolically and the subjective experiences of participants. This was evident in underlying anxieties apparent in fieldwork, in terms of the physical learning environment and acquisition of football capital, but mixed-sex football showed to be a positive environment for developing female football players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines meeting on cycling cultures held at Manchester Metropolitan University. Topics include focus on gender and race in relation to cycling, and a common theme that cycling does not only improve physical and mental health, but also mirrors social divisions, and promotes social change.

This article examines friendships and social networks in the context of amateur women’s football. Studies of intimacies and friendships tend to situate women’s same-sex friendships around emotional support. The aim of this research seeks to account for more depth in understanding diversity in female friendships. The traditionallymasculine(football) environment is peculiarly distinctive because it contrasts with traditional spaces found in private, domestic context that have traditionally associated with the formation and negotiation of ‘feminine’ friendship identities. Utilising 10 narrative interviews, the paper examines social and friendship networks in two main areas. Firstly, although non-traditional social groupings were evident, it was apparent that some participants had to negotiate a dual private/public role. Secondly, there were friendships based on sociability and these were integral to the connectedness of groups not defined by conventionally gendered roles, defined by emotional ties, but instead on collective interest focused around playing sport. These groupings are of interest because they are contrary to conventionality that frame emotional femininity, and foreground social activities that accentuate cultural complexities rather than confine friendship groups in terms of either masculine or feminine cultural practices. Drawing on the grounded experiences of female football players, we found that female friendships are much more layered and complex than represented in broader cultural discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will examine the ways in which female football players negotiate and contest gender conventions practised in English football. I look at female participation through the application of Bhabha’s ‘third-space’ thesis, and argue that Bhabha’s work has utility in the context of this case study for understanding complexities and nuances ordinarily ignored by gendered discourse performed in English football culture. I utilize semi-structured interviewees with women who have or are still currently playing football across an age range of 17–45. I draw on a feminist ‘standpoint’ in order to attain critical narratives. Critiques arise in two key areas. Firstly, the impact of changes in governance under the Football Association. Secondly, the agency of players themselves to actively contest gender conventions, whether through playing football despite the negative connotations attached to female physicality, or through the provision of mixed football. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]