The end of December saw the deadline for clubs offering young players a place on their Professional Development Programme. That isn't the end of the recruitment, but it does mean that many young players, along with their parents, guardians, and other family members, are now thinking about what life will be like as a scholar. Never fear! On this site, you'll find a free guide to understanding what life will be like as a scholar from research conducted with 303 players who went before. Over the next 4 weeks, there will be a blog a week outlining some of the central aspects of that guide. Today, we look at 'banter'. Whether you think it's a good or a bad thing, you need to prepare for it because, as a first-year scholar, it's coming your way!
What is Banter?
Let's start with a definition. Professor Andrew Parker was researching, among other things, banter in football as far back as the 1990s. He has a good definition of ‘banter’ that I think is a good starting point for us here. Parker (writing in 1996) argued that banter revolves around:
‘administering verbal “wind-ups” to the point where work-mates failed to cope with the pressures in hand and ultimately “snapped”’ (Parker 1996, p. 224)
He went further and related this to professional football. He said
"To accumulate any kind of peer-group credibility, individuals were not only required to “take” the insults of others but to “give” as good as they got, thereby proving their masculine worth". (Parker 1996, p. 224)
We've probably all come across forms of banter in the workplace, and football is no exception. Indeed, although Parker was writing nearly 30 years ago, things haven't changed. As one group of players from my research, when talking about their 'downtime, said:
3. You can just relax because obviously you are out of football and like you get your time to relax like after football all the time.
4. Just be yourself ...
6. Banter.
3. Yeah, a lot of banter. You’d just see everyone being happy and that ...
2. It’s just banter; it is just football banter ... like you don’t feel like you are at school ... you are around your teammates and you are thinking, ‘I just can’t be bothered to do any work’.
(Year 1, Club 20)
Banter and a Coach
Banter will be evident in a significant number of the social relationships players have while in a professional football club's Academy. Here is a group of players talking about the coach using 'banter' as a way of critiquing players:
2. He’d probably just kick off big style then, send you in.
4. One thing you learn is you’re never right, never right. Doesn’t matter what happens, you’re never right.
Q. Why is that?
2. Because it’s linked to your attitude, because if you bite back you leave yourself nothing, digging a bigger hole for yourself.
4. You’re best just accepting and moving on.
1. Our coach has been there so he knows like, he’s got a lot of experience ...
3. With the banter as well, you couldn’t really do that in like a working job or something ’cos you’d probably get done for discriminating or something.
(Year 1, Club 18)
Banter and the Pro's
If professional players interact with the academy players, it is also likely that banter will form part of that relationship, too. And, a little bit like the point made by the players in relation to their coach, the use of banter by professional players is often (perhaps unconsciously) designed to make sure the younger players know their place in the hierarchy of the club.
7. They just prove a point that we gotta respect them ...
5. Because we are the youth team.
4. They’ve gone through hard work, like we have, to get to where they are so I think we have got to go through that as well ...
8. You just get used to it.
7. Yeah, I don’t really mind it now.
4. It’s a bit of banter though innit?
1. I don’t really mind because I think I would do the same if I was a pro.
7. Yeah, it’s just banter really.
(Year 1, Club 10)
That's Football!
Whether this environment should be like this is a matter of wider debate, and plenty of debate exists. For us, however, at this point, what is important is that it is like this. This is an environment that you will have to thrive in to succeed in football and it is an environment that you will have to thrive in so you can make the most of your scholarship. Another writer on this topic is Professor Martin Roderick and, when analysing his work around banter, he argued that
‘despite being couched in humorous and seemingly harmless terms, each joke contains a more serious implicit but more generally understood meaning’ Martin Roderick (2006, p. 72)
It seems fitting to finish by leaving the final point, as always, to the players who were part of my research. In reflecting on what banter was and how it fitted into their daily lives, they said:
1. We have to, it’s like we have to work our way up. We’re at the bottom. We have to do jobs and that ...
5. That’s the thing in football clubs like, people batter you all the time and you just got to take it like as a joke. You can’t take it seriously.
3. Like last season I used to go crazy ... didn’t I? Q. What happens if people don’t take it?
2. Aye, you’ll crumble like.
3. If you answer back then you are gonna be in even more shit aren’t you? If you answer back to the first team like.
2. You need to show it doesn’t affect you.
3. Once they know you’re biting they’ll just keep doing it to you. Like last year I used to get caned all the time for biting and that so I don’t do it this season.
(Year 2, Club 18)
