An exploration of the organisational stressors encountered by international disability footballers

Abstract

Presently, disability athletes remain under-represented in organisational stressor research. Our study sought to bring novel insights to this area by determining the organisational stressors experienced by international disability footballers. Twelve current international disability footballers (10 male, 2 female) from a range of UK impairment squads took part in the study. Semi-structured interviews were completed with each participant, and data were analysed by content analysis procedures. Organisational stressors data were abstracted into Arnold, Wagstaff, Steadman, and Pratt's (2017) concepts, and Arnold and Fletcher's (2012) four general dimensions: leadership and personnel issues, cultural and team issues, logistical and environmental issues, and performance and personal issues, revealing a series of football specific nuances. Our study is the first exploration of the prevalence of organisational stressors within international disability football. Our study also provides practitioners with an understanding of the common and unique organisational stressors faced by international disability footballers. Finally, we suggest a series of practical recommendations for policy development within disability football organisations to aid athletes to effective manage organisational stressors.

Organizational stress and well-being in competitive sport: a systematic review

“…Fletcher et al, 2012a;Kristiansenet al, 2012b). Common interpersonal issues included communication (Whittingham et al, 2020;Woodman & Hardy, 2001), team issues (e.g. lack of role clarity or interactions with team-mates; Leprince et al, 2018;Mellalieu et al, 2009), perceptions of sport relationships (e.g.…”

Exploring the perception of barriers to a dual career by student-athletes with/out disabilities

“…On the other hand, the attitude of the family is also one of the personal and environmental barriers for athletes with disabilities [28]. In this regard, previous research has found that athletes with disabilities experience organizational stress related to their parents in adulthood, whereas these stressors stop at around 18 years of age in athletes without disabilities [31]. Furthermore, Ferrari [46] highlights that parents of disabled athletes tend to be more critical, having more difficulty managing their children's emotional-motivational levels in the face of failure.…”

“…Another internal barrier where athletes with disabilities showed significantly higher scores than athletes without disabilities was my current job does not allow me to study enough. In this sense, it is important to note that the lack of professionalization that sport often has, especially in the case of sport for people with disabilities, means that student-athletes must look for a job that allows them to generate income with which to live [9,31]. This complicates an already difficult situation, as student-athlete-workers must find compatibility in a triple career, dividing their time between studies, sport and work [9,31].…”

“…The sports career of elite athletes ends prematurely as compared to other professional careers, as the elite sport career entails five to ten years dedicated to sport, reaching the mastery of their athletic level before the age of 30, when the discontinuation period begins, so it is common to find that in many cases, it is necessary to opt for another type of work activity after retiring from sports [1][2][3]. To make this possible, the dual career of student-athletes, understood as the clubs [26], the absence of policies for the promotion of disabled sport [27], the difficulties in traveling and the distances between activities [28,30,32], or lack of support from family, friends or the community as a consequence of their dependence extending into adulthood [28,29,31].…”

“…However, the absence of studies that have analyzed barriers to the success of dual careers in student-athletes with disabilities means that there are no data on some internal barriers that have showed a lot importance in the dual career of non-disabled athletes such as the interference of sporting performance with their studies and vice versa, as well as the need to prioritize one over the other o the distribution of time between study and training [13,28]; or the disregard of their rights under existing national and international policies for the protection of dual careers [33]. This can also be made more difficult by the fact that some student-athletes need to work in order to earn an income due to the lack of professionalism in the sports field, which causes a new internal barrier to appear in reference to the need to distribute time between these three demanding activities (studies, sport and work), having to sacrifice one in order to achieve success in the others, which often leads to failure in the academic field [9,31]. However, there has been no analysis of how this might affect disabled students-athletes-workers.…”