An increasing number of female soccer players are playing at the elite level. It is important to encourage these players to remain mindful of the benefits of carrying out a dual career (e.g., higher education and elite sport path). The current study provides an investigation of players' dual career plans and the demands they encounter. The guiding framework used within the research was the Push-Pull theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven participants, encapsulating a variety of players at differing stages of their academic/vocational development. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. All but one player in compulsory and secondary education were found to have a desire to carry out higher education, with three of these players planning to attend university in America.The main reason given by players for planning to continue education was to 'have something to fall back on'. Dual career difficulty was found to increase as players' level of education increased (i.e. from school to university and from university to vocation). Suitable support systems (e.g. university support, family support) were found to play an integral role in the dual career demands faced by participants, with players receiving varying levels of support from their educational institutions and soccer clubs. The current paper advances previous work on the dual careers of athletes, focusing specifically on English women's soccer during a period of key change within the governing body.

This research aimed to understand the coping and wellbeing of dual career athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 159 dual career athletes completed a series of questionnaires that aimed to identify the coping strategies and their impact on the wellbeing of respondents during COVID-19 restrictions. The survey included measures of coping, wellbeing, burnout, and identity along with open-ended questions with the focus of change, coping, and support. Findings identified three coping approaches that have been employed by dual career athletes: positive coping, negative coping, and acceptance. The three coping approaches also showed distinct wellbeing and burnout profiles. The negative coping group showed high indicators of burnout and poor wellbeing, whereas the acceptance group showed the highest scores on wellbeing and low indications of burnout. Based on the findings, it is recommended that dual career support providers and stakeholders consider how best to support athletes that have not coped well and have experienced wellbeing issues during this time. It is also important to recognise the benefit a dual career has provided to some individuals during this period.

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England -one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the 'National Planning Policy Framework' document) -represent the difference between 'rural' and 'urban' and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant 'rural idyll' is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the 'urban sphere' as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. 'Urban' areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive 'Other' to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as 'out of place' within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that 'development' is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/ urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.

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