1986

Background

In 1986, I had the opportunity to have a sabbatical term from St Mary's College to complete the fieldwork for my PhD.

I visited two schools for the whole term to collect qualitative information as a participant observer. My interest was in the teaching of boys' physical education.

My ethnographic experience encouraged me to think much more about observation, recording and reporting. I became very interested in story-sharing at this time and thought that this was the way coaches and players connected as they introduced themselves and got to know each other. My supervisor, Maureen Pope, guided me to some of the personal construction psychology literature that used story-telling as a way of exploring personal constructs. This included works by Don Bannister and Miller Mair. The latter inspired me to think more about poetics and contemplate that "a poetic awareness and attentiveness is fundamental to any pursuit of understanding of ourselves or others". Both authors, through their writing, encouraged me to think about "an imaginative freedom of language".

Two years later, John van Maanen's Tales of the Field (1988) appeared and provided the vehicle to form my narrative style and focussed my attention on "authorial voice, style, truth, objectivity, and point-of-view".

... all of which raised some profoundly important second order questions about my engagement with notational analysis.

I have one notation from the 1986 Five Nations Championship. It reflected my learning journey at this time and my desire to explore a way of sharing thick description in real-time observations.

England v Ireland. 1 March 1986. Referee: Clive Norling (Wales). England won 25v20

England v Ireland

It was a very cold day. The pitch was frozen and there was snow on the ground in the dead ball area (the end of dead ball marked by bollards). Temperature was -1 degree celsius and a strong easterly win adding a win chill factor.

England kicked off at 2:48:35 long into Irish 22 and Ireland for the second half at 3:35:36. Length of game was 86 minutes (42min first half, 46min second half.

I focussed on set piece play at scrum and lineout given the conditions.

Scrums: game total: 51 (first half 23, second half 28). England scrums 23 (first half 12, second half 11):

• First half:England put in sequence 1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23.

Lineouts: game total: 40 (first half 23, second half 17). England lineouts 19 (first half 12, second half 7):

• First half:England throw in sequence 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 21, 23.

My observations of these scrums and lineouts were:

These are not what you might describe as 'thick description' of events. However, I think there is a story in here about the flow of a game on a cold windy day. The story includes, I think:

• England's decision to kick in the first part of the game.
• Lineout accuracy in the windy conditions.
• Ireland scrum under pressure.

There is my positional shorthand too. A lineout labelled 'Ireland 10/22m' is nearer to Ireland's 10. A lineout labelled 'Ireland 22/10m' is nearer Ireland's 22.

The score at half time was England 9 v 10 Ireland. Both teams left the field at half time.

The favourite part of my notes about the game is that at that 02:42 in the first half, the groundsman is still trying to mark the dead ball line at one end of the ground.