Playing by the rules? Gender relations in a football and mental health project.

Spandler, Helen ; Roy, Alastair ; McKeown, Mick 等

In England there has been a recent public health trend towards using football (soccer) to support the engagement of men in health and welfare programmes. This paper builds on an earlier theoretical exploration of this subject (Spandler & McKeown, 2012) and uses empirical data from an evaluation of a mental health project which used football analogy to support men's engagement in a therapeutic programme (Spandler, McKeown & Roy, 2012; Spandler, Mckeown, Roy, & Hurley, 2013; Spandler, Roy, & McKeown, 2013).

We argue for an exploration of the use of football in public health initiatives, which sees gender as thoroughly and consistently "relational" (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). In particular, constructions of masculinities are to a significant degree constituted both through the repeated invocation of normative ideals about the ways in which men should, can and do interact with other men, as well as with women (Butler, 2011; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; Pascoe, 2007). This means, that in analysing our data, we view gender not as given but as constantly performed, negotiated and contested, in relation to men and women (Connell, 1995). The involvement of small numbers of women (both as project participants and in the focus groups we convened) enabled us to reflect on how gender was constructed. This offered us a lens onto women's experiences of the project whilst the main critical emphasis remained on "studying men and masculinity" (McKay, Messner, & Sabo, 2000, p. 5).

We argue that, if "engaging men" cannot be separated from gender as an embedded social relation, then the practice of using football cannot be understood in isolation from wider social relations either. The use of football and professional sports clubs to engage men in health and welfare programmes is double edged. The game of football is literally a game of winners and losers, in which one team succeeds at the others expense. Also, an extensive pro-feminist critical sports literature demonstrates how football plays a significant role in reproducing dominant social relations (Bryson, 1987; Caudwell, 2011; Messner, 2007). Somewhat ironically, it is arguably these very social relations that lead many of the people who attend projects like these to feel excluded, marginalised and unwell in the first place. Indeed the game of football has a tendency to marginalize, subordinate and exclude men, as well as women, on the basis of social divisions such as disability, ethnicity and sexuality (Robertson, 2003).

However, football is also a contested field, one in which dominant gender relations are reproduced and maintained, as well as resisted, through sports-specific practices such as "chanting" (Caudwell, 2011) and "football talk" (Nylund, 2004). The paradoxes of football are well illustrated in a recent paper (Stasi & Evans, 2013), which uses the idea of "glitter-ball tactics" to refer to the complex ways in which gender is performed by gay men in a gay Icelandic football club. For example, the authors describe how one of the pictures from the club's website portrays the team's float taking part in the 2009 Gay Pride parade in Reykjavik. The image shows players in uniform, complete with corporate sponsorship, but also includes the rainbow symbol of the gay rights movement and a huge football, partially coated in glitter (associated with "camp" and often seen at gay discos). Stasi and Evans note the doubled character of the identifications of the players. They argue that the gay football players enacted a convincingly hegemonic masculinity through their athletic performance and the misogynistic tendencies they demonstrate in informal settings, but also articulate a different set of (non-heteronormative) identifications through the club's ethos of inclusivity and non-competitiveness (based on strict "fair-play" rules) and through their articulation of gay politics. The idea of "glitterball tactics" encapsulates this doubled character. In a similar way, in this paper, we argue that initiatives that use football in welfare projects also need to be seen as contested gendered spaces.

We begin in the next section by setting out the methods employed in the study. The following section uses data from our study to analyse gendered talk within the project. The discussion section relates our analysis to the idea that the men in the project had to negotiate three different types of talk associated with the (sometimes conflicting) "rules of the games" of football, gender and therapy. We conclude with some thoughts about how our analysis relates to current debates about masculinity (A. Adams, Anderson, & McCormack, 2010; Anderson, 2005; McCormack, 2011; 2012; Pascoe, 2007).

METHODS

In 2010-11 we evaluated a small mental health project based on football metaphor (Spandler, Mckeown, & Roy, 2012). This 18 month pilot project, based in the North West of England was funded as part of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative. IAPT is an NHS programme across England, which attempts to increase the uptake of psychological interventions for people who experience mental health problems, but are seen as difficult to engage in therapy. The North West region is characterised by a high popularity of football, being home to the largest concentration of big Premier League clubs in the country (for example, Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United and Manchester City) and numerous other long-established clubs.

The project consisted of a weekly group therapeutic programme, framed around football metaphor, and delivered in football venues. The majority of people who accessed the programme were white working class heterosexual men, who were often unemployed and suffering from various psycho-social difficulties such as depression and anxiety, anger, low confidence and self-esteem, and/or problems with drug and alcohol use. A very small minority of women accessed the project (13, out of a total of 214). Of these, 7 women completed the intervention, a similar completion rate to the men. The age of people who attended the project ranged from 17 to 70. 18% were 46 or over; the majority, 52.5%, were aged between 18 and 35, with approaching 30% in the 36-45 age band.

Our evaluation included administering a "before and after" well-being measure and focus group interviews. We facilitated six focus groups with people who had completed the programme, who were called "players" (40 in total) and one focus group with those who delivered the project, who were called "coaches" (6 in total). All the project coaches were men. The three members of the research team (the authors of this paper) were all football fans and consisted of one woman and two men. Each focus group was facilitated by two members of the team. The woman researcher co-facilitated six of the groups with one of the male researchers (including the focus group with the coaches) and one group was co-facilitated by the two male researchers. Two women attended the focus groups (one woman in two different focus groups). Each focus group lasted between one and a half and two and a half hours, and all were audio recorded and transcribed.

Our evaluation suggested a range of positive mental health benefits for those engaged with the project (Spandler et al., 2013). Well-being scores for those who completed the programme improved from significantly below national averages to close to the national average. These improvements were very similar for both men and women, although the numbers of women were so low that we could not establish whether the changes in well-being scores reported by women were statistically significant.

For the purposes of this paper we iteratively re-analysed the qualitative focus group data, drawing out what we considered to be gendered themes. It is important to be clear that the arguments put forward in the paper are not a critique of the project, nor a critique of using football or sport to engage men in health and welfare programmes. Indeed, our evaluation supports other literature demonstrating the specific value of football metaphor as well as this project (Jones, 2009; Pringle & Sayers, 2004, 2006; Spandler et al., 2013; Spandler, Roy & McKeown. 2013). Also, we do not think that the issues we identify in relation to gender relations and gendered talk are unique to this project. It does, however, involve a unique combination of football, gender and therapy talk and because of this, it offers a useful vehicle to reflect on modern gender relations.

GENDER TALK IN THE PROJECT

The constitutions of the focus groups reflected the therapeutic groups during the project, and we think it likely that the focus groups also mirrored the gender dynamics in the project. Most of the therapeutic groups were all male and only a few were mixed. Therefore, the number of women participating in both the therapeutic groups and the focus groups was always very small, meaning that women were always a distinct minority. Despite this, discussion about the involvement in, and participation of, women in the project offered us a useful point of reflection and the merits of mixed and single-sex groups was a useful discussion point within the focus groups. For example, most men who had been in all male groups in the project felt that this had made a difference to the group dynamics, as well as the forms of talk which predominated in sessions. The following quote was typical amongst many of the men: "We did get a bit off-key at times and this may not have happened if women had been there [pause], but perhaps it would."

What the men were referring to is the forms of behaviour, interaction and talk that they perceived as unacceptable in mixed gender groups, things like "swearing, farting, piss-taking and political [incorrectness." These men were articulating a demarcation in the lines of acceptable interactions and talk, with other men and "in front of women." At least on one level, this appears to be about politeness and not wanting to offend or upset any women attending. What the men seem to be suggesting (although this is not made explicit) is that women are more likely to get upset and easily offended than men by certain forms of talk, or that men feel less inhibited and more free to "get a bit off-key" in front of other men. At the same time, what is interesting is that at the end of this quote, the man seems to question his own assumptions about this issue. He goes on to describe his participation in a mixed gender group in drug treatment, suggesting that some of the women in that group had been "more off-key than the men."

It is possible that our probing about issues of gender and the inclusion of women actually allowed for greater reflection, debate and uncertainty than might have been possible when the groups met during the project. Indeed, the question of whether the groups in the project should have been all-male became a contested subject within the focus groups. Some felt that being in an all-male group had allowed them to relax and be more open, and this had helped them to gain more therapeutic benefit: "We could talk openly mainly I think because it was all fellas and it was a subject we all knew, say 90% of fellas like football."

Others who had attended all male groups felt that had women been present it would have potentially been beneficial in challenging certain prevailing gendered norms. For example, it may have allowed women to see men expressing their emotions: "Maybe we (men and women) would have been more respectful of each other and actually learn about each other ... [that] men can open up too!"

Perhaps equally important, this also raises the possibility of men seeing that women can also struggle to express their emotions. This, in turn, challenges prevailing binary assumptions about gender and emotion i.e. that men are "rational" and unable to do emotion whereas women are "irrational" and always able to be emotional (Robertson, 2007).

The above two quotes also raise important questions about the performance of gender within the project and how the spaces opened up within it may have differed from those in traditional health settings. Many of the men positively contrasted this project with their experiences of traditional health care. For a start, these men saw football clubs as acceptable places to go, in comparison to health care spaces which many saw as stigmatising: "It felt special to be here, to walk through the door and just say hi and to walk these corridors with other people and feel part of the club."

In addition, some men highlighted their perception of unequal power dynamics in other spaces, and specifically within health and mental health settings. These were viewed, paradoxically, as spaces where professionals and "people in suits" were seen as in control, and yet also as feminised spaces where women were seen as in control. It appeared to us that the men were not referring to women "in suits", but rather male doctors, psychiatrists and other men in positions of professional medical power. There are a number of ways of viewing this. Given the gendered power gradient in services (where men still tend to hold more seniority, despite the fact they make up a smaller proportion of this workforce) and the devaluation of so called "women's work" or "emotional work" (T.L. Adams, 2010; Davies, 1996; Witz, 1992), perhaps this is projection on the men's part, rather than due to women occupying powerful positions. However, what matters here, is less the objective "truth" of such assertions, but more the impact of these perceptions on gender relations in this project.

Some men specifically recalled feeling out of place in health settings where they found it hard to engage in the forms of emotion-talk they thought expected of them. The following quote was typical of some of the men in the project:

   it doesn't matter who the tutor is, if it's a woman I wouldn't open
   up. If it's a man I would tell him how I really think. I've seen
   psychologists, they've always been women and they've, I can't open
   up, I need to talk, but as to talking to a woman there would be
   loads of things in my mind that I couldn't get out.

Some presented these professional and/or "female" characteristics of health spaces as barriers to their help seeking and therapeutic engagement. The implication was that in these spaces, more feminised/emotional ways of communicating were privileged, a situation they found alienating. This represents an interesting inversion of perceptions of gender power and inequality (which we explore further in the discussion).

These men often contrasted the characteristics of health care spaces with the football club locations in which this project took place, where they felt more at home and included. As well as the football club environment, this was also because of the more familiar and safe characteristics of the facilitators who they felt were men "like us" and who '"we could relate to': He's [the coach] a normal guy, I'm not saying people in hospital aren't normal but they are more highly educated and it's different."

Indeed, this was one of the reasons why those who designed the project decided to refer to the facilitators, not as therapists or mental health workers, but as "coaches." For similar reasons, those who used the project were called "players," rather than service users or clients. In health care spaces, the terminology of "client" added to their gendered perceptions of the spaces, embodying a sense of passivity or femininity which men often found off putting. A smaller number of men said they actually preferred speaking to a woman, a view which may have been less acceptable to express in the context of these (pre-dominantly male) groups. Notwithstanding this, several men reported that taking part in the project had actually helped them to talk more to their (male) peers.

The two women who took part in the focus groups had both attended and completed the project. Neither of them reported being enthusiastic football fans. Yet, despite their limited interest in the game, both women said that they could relate to the football material, although not necessarily in the same way as the men. It is highly likely that many other women would have been put off by the football focus of the project and would not have attended in the first place, or dropped out. Hence, it is not clear how representative the views expressed by these two women necessarily were (of the views of other women who had taken part, those of women who knew about the project but decided not to attend, or women in general). However, these two women had found a way to exist within the project and to use the setting and the football theme in pursuit of their own therapeutic ends.

Football is the national game in England, an important interest and discussion point in many families, a key cultural emblem and the subject of extensive popular media coverage. This means football carries a certain cultural ubiquity in public consciousness. This tacit knowledge of the game meant that those women who took part could still find a way to relate to it. In fact, the situation was replicated for a small number of men who took part in the project who also professed little affinity for football. This helped to challenge assumptions about men's natural interest in football. Those men and women with little interest in the game still found that they could use their--culturally acquired--understandings of the game to pursue their own personal objectives. As one woman put it: "Yeah, I didn't find it a problem.... Everyone knows something about football because it's everywhere isn't it?"

An interesting discussion emerged when we asked men whether women could have been coaches, as well as players in the project. This resulted in quite divergent responses. Some men suggested that they did not think they would have attended in the first place had they known, in advance, it would be run by a woman:

   Football relates to men, a lot of men relate football to men, I
   don't think I would have come if it had been a woman.

   I think it wouldn't be natural [if the coach was a woman], you
   would always be watching what you said, what you were saying before
   you said it, and that wouldn't be a good thing.

Men in one particular focus group suggested they would not have been able to open up in the same way if the coach had been a woman. In some ways these suggestions were confusing, not least because they were expressed in a focus group co-convened by a woman in which several men had discussed quite personal issues about their lives. Also, our reflections on the focus group that was co-convened by two male researchers suggested that there was little difference in the levels of personal disclosure in this group when compared to the other focus groups involving a female researcher. In the same all-male focus group, a discussion of these issues between three of the men went further:

GEOFF: It is a trust issue, men trust men in small groups....

ROB: On your side kind of thing.

GEOFF: Men up the town having a bevvy [a drink],

BEN: It's a tribal thing.

GEOFF: Yes, it's a tribal thing. And if you talk about women, a lot of men think the woman is the weak link and you know "you can't really say nothing here".

These views suggest attachment to essentialised notions of fixed, natural and unequal differences between the sexes. The comments also make clear that some men saw football as a part of this separation. However, even in this specific focus group, one of the men interjected in this particular discussion by saying "I've got no problem with women," a statement which prompted laughter from the rest of the group and which dissipated some of the apparent tensions around this issue. This interjection can be interpreted as demonstrating that whilst some men held strong attachments to binary ideas about sex and gender, others were able to destabilise such notions using humour to de-legitimise the dominant presentation of these issues within the group. At the same time, we felt that the laughter which accompanied the comment, "I've got no problem with women," was actually understood within the rest of the group to mean "I like women" (i.e. I'm not a homosexual). In other words, regardless of its original intention, the interjection was re-framed by the men in the group as signalling collusion with heteronormative ideals. Indeed, banter about the assumed attractiveness or otherwise of women was quite common, often before or after the focus groups were convened, meaning that such comments were often not formally recorded.

There was a further twist to the discussion about women coaches. Many men suggested that in principle it would not have mattered whether the group had been run by a man or a woman. On the surface, these viewpoints appeared to demonstrate an attachment to more inclusive and equality-driven values. However, what interested us was the ways in which men constructed their responses to these issues. For example, when we asked them to discuss the possibility that the coach could have been female, the men's responses often included statements such as:

   It might have been weird if I had come in and the coach had been
   female, but if they had known what they were talking about, and had
   been a football fan, it would have been OK...

   Yeah, if she actually knew something then I could listen to her.

These quotes suggest that knowledge of the game would be the ultimate prerequisite for the acceptability of a woman in the "coaching" role. On one level, this seems entirely reasonable in a project based on the use of football metaphor and suggests some men's acceptance of the idea of a female facilitator, even if they thought this possibility unlikely. Nevertheless, in reflecting on the characteristics of male coaches that they had admired, knowledge of football was never mentioned. Rather, personal characteristics such as "sharing his own life experiences" and "taking a personal interest" were the valued attributes referred to. Again, on one level, this is understandable because some men may feel they would be more likely to relate to a (male) peer. However, the subtext was that a female coach would need to pass the knowledge test whereas a male coach would always be assumed to know enough. In this way, even those men whose views seemed congruent with an equality-driven value base, still positioned themselves--and other men--as the natural arbiters of football knowledge. Having said that, a few of the men did explicitly comment on very knowledgeable female football fans they knew: "Yeah, you know, my mum knows more about football than most of the guys I know."

There were other ways in which dominant gender dynamics were apparent in the project. First, the women who took part in the focus groups referred to themselves as "girls", which seemed to suggest a level of deference, or at the very least an absence of contest of the dominant gender dynamics (they were both adult women, and the men were not referred to as "boys"). Second, the women spoke very little in the focus groups and when we specifically asked about their participation they tended to emphasize how they were not "real" football fans, didn't know much about football and sometimes commented on the attractiveness of the male footballers, reinforcing a certain idea of women's role in relation to football. The following is an example of how these issues emerged in one of the focus groups:

JENNY: Well I wasn't really into football but it wasn't really a problem for me, I was just listening to the different people and the different players and that, I mean, I mean I'm open minded.

FEMALE Researcher: So you could sort of relate to it?

JENNY: Well a little bit.

FEMALE Researcher: [laughs]

JENNY: I do quite like some of the players.

JOE: She looked at some of the pictures [of football players].

JENNY: I thought "he'll do" [several people laugh].

This quote, which includes an interchange between Jenny and Joe (who had been in the same group on the project), provides an insight into the construction of heteronormativity in this group. The researcher opens up the possibility for Jenny to offer a reflection about the way she related to the theme of football within the project. Partly because the female researcher is interested in football, she hoped that Jenny would offer a response showing how she had made use of football metaphor for herself. But, between them, Jenny and Joe co-constructed a response, which seemed to preclude this possibility. Of course, male fans may also be attracted to male football players. After all, an underlying homoeroticism in the "beautiful game" has often been observed. However, what interested us was the different ways that men and women talked about their relationship to the game. Our interpretation is that women may have felt the need to primarily frame their interest in football around attraction to men, whilst men primarily framed their interest in terms of the game itself (none of the men talked about being attracted to male players). It is also interesting that Jenny uses the term "listening" to characterize the way she interacts within the project. This might be seen to reinforce certain dominant ideas within sport generally, in which men "do" and women "watch". For example, women tend to be viewed as passive recipients of football or "consumer fans", rather than "real" active fans, or even players in the game (Pope, 2011).

Some of the examples presented here can be read as the co-construction of what has been called "defensive heterosexuality" or "heteromasculinity" (A. Adams et al., 2010; Anderson, 2005; Pronger, 1990). This refers to attempts by men to prove and reinforce their masculinity via the "expressive signalling of heterosexuality through a variety of repeated mechanisms" (A. Adams et al., p. 345). These attempts seemed particularly evident at times of heightened anxiety and perhaps when dominant forms of masculinity appeared to be at risk from the more explicit therapeutic talk within the project (e.g., from too much disclosure, vulnerability or homosocial bonding). In other words, defensive heterosexuality may be a defence against feelings aroused in the men by expressing their emotions and vulnerability to each other. If this is seen as somehow un-masculine, men sometimes feel that they need to demonstrate that they are still "real men" (i.e. heterosexual).

However, our data also identifies women's performance of "defensive heterosexuality" too. This might relate to "emphasized femininity," which refers to women's compliance with gender inequality, in order to accommodate the interests and desires of men (Connell, 1987; see also Caudwell, 2011). Here women often emphasize their heterosexual femininity in order to appear unthreatening to the male heterosexual orthodoxy; so their presence does not upset, subvert or challenge dominant gender relations. In this project, whilst men may defend against seemingly "feminised" displays of vulnerability and emotion through defensive heterosexuality, women may use emphasised heterosexual femininity to ward off worries that their interest in football may situate them as "too masculine" or lesbian (cultural stereotypes about women footballers often position them as lesbian; see Caudwell, 2002; Macbeth, 2006; Skogvang & Fasting, 2013).

Finally, whilst the expression of "defensive heterosexuality" was quite common, explicit homophobia was less evident, but certainly not non-existent. This exposes some of the tensions in depictions of a culturally dominant non-homophobic masculinity (A. Adams et al., 2010; McCormack & Anderson, 2010). As far as we were aware, there was only one "out" gay man in the project and in our focus group interview with the coaches, reference was made to some of the men making homophobic remarks to one another in his presence ("yeah like, they said 'careful, backs against the wall' type of thing"). More subtle homophobia was also evident. For example, the researchers noted reluctance amongst the coaches to talk about certain issues, such as sexual abuse and (non-hetero) sexualities. Indeed, some coaches expressed the view that people who were struggling with these issues might be best "referred elsewhere" (i.e., to a different project or service). There was an apparent sense that the groups might find it hard to tolerate and talk about what they perceived as difficult and painful issues.

On the other hand, men in the project did talk about being victims of physical violence, albeit often in a humorous way. For example, one of the coaches described how a man had talked about being beaten by his father with a belt. Whilst still very difficult to talk about, perhaps men find it easier to discuss this type of victimization (than for example sexual abuse) because it can have associations with endurance and emotional strength. Indeed despite, or perhaps even because of these dynamics, many of the men developed valuable emotional connections with one another, and with the women. Many of the players had been seriously isolated, depressed and anxious prior to the project and the experience had enabled them to develop genuine concern for themselves and each other. Some found they could be emotional with other men in the project, unlike within their existing male friendships.

Overall, the gender norming behaviours in the group must be seen in the context of the wider project, its therapeutic goals and those of the players. The coaches were under pressure to recruit and maintain referrals, and keep the project going. This was difficult, especially in the initial stages, with limited resources and pressures on funding. These personal and institutional conditions might have made certain forms of self-compromise feel necessary. Some women (and indeed some men) may have felt they might not survive the group (or the group would not survive them) if they demonstrated certain values, identifications or knowledge. In other words, both men and women may have felt pressure to subdue elements of themselves in order to sustain the group.

Moreover, these initial identifications and performances may have been felt as necessary, in order to bond and connect in a safe and seemingly harmless way. However, whilst the groups were extremely valuable to many of the men, these interpersonal and contextual constraints may inadvertently have excluded some conversations (e.g., about sexual abuse and sexuality) and other identities. What is important here is that these issues can have a profound impact on men's (and women's) mental health and prevailing gendered dynamics can prevent certain kinds of conversation which participants might ultimately find helpful.

DISCUSSION: PLAYING BY THE RULES?

In analysing the gender talk within the project, we use the notion of "playing by the rules" in order to analyze the performance of gender within the project. In Games People Play Eric Berne (1964) pointed out that people often structure their lives around an idea of games. In our analysis, we note three different sorts of "games" at play within the project: football, gender and therapy. Of course, the rules of all games are contestable and there are lots of different ways of playing these three particular games, but there tend to be certain dominant and privileged ways of playing (which are culturally hegemonic). Using Bourdieu's (1986) notion of "fields" (another sports-related metaphor), we argue that each of these three fields has different field-specific rules. In other words, each field demarcates the forms of behaviour and talk that are seen as acceptable, or necessary for success, within the accompanying game or field of play. These rules are often informal and implicit, but culturally necessary, for the re-production of dominant social relations.

What is interesting is that the ways of being which are privileged in each of these games often conflict with each other. So, for example, in the gender game we might say that dominant forms of gender relations and expressions of masculinity and femininity are privileged. In the therapy game we might say that emotions and reflection are privileged over action. The football game is complex because there is a strong emphasis on action (performance and agency), although acts of cooperation (involving team bonding and team work) must be combined with acts of competition (involving power and strength) in order to be successful (Sennett, 2012).

It is easy to see, for example that the rules of football (emphasizing action, strength and competition) may conflict with the rules of therapy (favouring emotions, expression of vulnerability and concern). This project was interesting because it allowed us to explore the tensions within and between these intersecting fields. After all, it was these various rules that participants had to negotiate. We wanted to explore if the men played by the gender rules, or subverted them, and also whether the rules of therapy and football influenced this. Not surprisingly, it turns out that men both play by the rules and subvert them, often simultaneously.

In some respects, the men "played by the rules" privileged within both the dominant gender and football fields of play. However, it was not that simple. The men who used the project had mental health problems, most were unemployed, under-confident and experiencing low self-esteem. This meant that is some ways they were seen (and saw themselves) as having "failed" in relation to dominant rules of masculinity embodied in prevailing gender and football cultures. In other words, they might be considered to embody "subordinated masculinities" or masculinities that are not privileged in wider cultures (Connell, 1995). Despite, or perhaps because of this, the men in the project were still keen and able to engage in football talk (an important part of the gender order: Nyland, 2004). Yet, in this project, doing football talk helped them transgress their own existing perceptions about the modes of relating privileged in health and welfare interactions, and to engage in the "therapeutic" field (and this was the purpose of the project).

In turn, men's engagement in the therapy game helped to offset at least some of the prevailing norms within both the gender and football fields. It seemed that many men wanted to experience and enact an attachment to hegemonic notions of masculinity, embodied in a traditional identification with football, yet were also keen to enact non-hegemonic social relations of care, concern and mutuality (often via football talk). In some ways, we could also say that the project subverted the rules of the therapy game (which is often viewed as very middle class) by using a traditionally working class sport such as football.

This doubled character of gender relations in the project seems to reflect the contradictions in football itself. Playing the game involves acts of competition and aggression, but football is also a space in which men cooperate and in which it is acceptable for them to "do emotion", albeit indirectly (Spandler & Mckeown, 2012).

In some ways, our observations support assertions about the gendered function and popularity of "sports talk" more generally. For example, Nyland has analysed how things like sports talk radio shows, have become an "attractive venue for embattled white men seeking recreational repose and a nostalgic return to a pre-feminist ideal and thus operate to restore masculine hegemony" (2004. p. 139). The participants in this project were primarily disenfranchised white men who were often keen to assert that football was "their" territory, one of the few places they had left for them "to be men" in the company of other men. On the other hand, it was more than this too; by its very nature, as a facilitated therapeutic project, it valued emotionality, communication and connection with others, which undermined some of the worst excesses of men's investment in traditional masculine values (such as homophobia and sexism).

For our purposes here, the power imbalance that some men perceived in health settings, may also relate to the type of (emotion) talk that they see as privileged in health and mental health settings. Indeed the fact that women make up a larger proportion of the workforce in the helping professions contrasts with many other settings (especially in sport and football) where they are much less visible (Caudwell. 2011). In these health settings, women may at least appear to have more power, in part because they have a more visible presence, in day to day service provision and also because women (or professionals) are seen as defining the boundaries of acceptable talk in these settings.

Hence, the success of the project appears to emerge on the basis that the rules of gender division--of which football is an intrinsic component--are simultaneously maintained and transgressed. For example, the fact that women need to pass the football knowledge test to be acceptable as leaders demonstrates a strong attachment to traditional hegemonic ideals about football and shows the ways in which players reinforce the rules. However, the views men express about the characteristics of male coaches that they admire also demonstrates the ways in which they transgress the rules. Men seemingly admire male coaches who enact care and concern and self-disclose their own vulnerabilities.

Of course, we should also point out that they also liked the coaches because they were more "like them" than other health care workers, both because they were male and because they were not professionals. Our reading of this is that the players implicitly recognize the changing nature of masculinities in contemporary societies in which it is necessary in some circumstances to perform care and concern and to be able to share their emotions in order be seen as a "real man".

In this project we saw how men co-constructed a heteronormative gender order, with other men, and also with women. Indeed, in this context, women seemed to play their part in maintaining (or at least not challenging) the prevailing order. Whilst it is important to acknowledge that women did use the project and did report similar benefits, the women who completed the project didn't seem to "compete for the turf' in the same way as men. Rather, many of the women carefully kept themselves "in their place" as "girls", rather than presenting themselves as knowledgeable football fans and equals. In this way, the presence of women did not appear to upset, subvert or challenge the dominant gender order.

We have wondered how these issues might have played out if either the project had recruited equal numbers of men and women or if the women who attended did express their football knowledge. This is especially the case because "when women demand the right to play, control, judge, report on or change football ... their struggle is not just about equal access.... It's about redefining men and women. It's about power" (Burton Nelson, 1994, p. 11).

It is not possible to answer this question at this point, but the views expressed about female coaches offer some indication of the competitive dynamics that might have been unearthed and the normative ideals that might have been challenged by the presence of female football fans in the project. One view is that the women's positive experience of, and involvement in a project like this might mirror changes happening in football more generally. It might even prefigure the possibility of greater equality and participation of women in football at all levels of the game. Their involvement might also challenge the essentialised links that are often made between men, masculinity and football (i.e., the assumption that it is somehow "right" and "natural" than men like and play football, and women do not).

CONCLUSION

We have used the notion of "playing by the rules" to explore the way prevailing gender relations and identities were re-enforced and challenged in a mental health project based on football analogy. The prevailing dominant rules of the gender and football games were re-reinforced to some degree, for example, through defensive heterosexuality and binary ideas about sex and gender. However, some of the dominant rules of masculinity were transgressed, at least in part, via the different terms of engagement within a therapeutic programme.

Through initial identification with the masculine ideals embodied in football, men found it possible to engage in the project by bonding with one another and enacting mutual care and concern. Supporting one another through personal difficulties was a central way in which some of these disenfranchised men were able to rediscover their agency. We conclude that the dynamic interaction between the project's design and location, and the actions of those who took part in it, co-created a "paradoxical space" of gender reinforcement and transgression (Spandler & Mckeown, 2012).

However, as in the "real" game of football, it is equally possible that the cost of some winning (taking part and feeling better) through this project is of others losing out (being marginalised and excluded). Our discussions about the involvement of women and gay men in the project are just two indications of this. Whilst this is not a critique of the project by any means, it is an acknowledgement that the very popularity of football means, despite it being an attractive tool, sensitivity is needed around how gender is institutionalised, constructed and played out within such initiatives.

In the meantime, there has been considerable recent discussion about the nature of current masculinities. In particular, a heated debate has emerged about whether "inclusive masculinity" is becoming the culturally dominant and privileged expression of masculinity in western societies. Inclusive masculinity is characterised by inclusivity, equality and acceptance of diversity and sexual difference (Anderson, 2005; McCormack, 2011, 2012). Any attempt to over-generalise or universalise from small-scale research is highly problematic--either from our findings presented here (based predominantly in northern English, white working class communities), or studies used by proponents of "inclusive masculinity" (based predominantly in more privileged, younger, educated and middle class communities in England, e.g. McCormack, 2011).

Whilst we agree that there has been an important and valuable shift away from overt homophobia (or "homohysteria") and misogyny, we concur with Pascoe (2007) about the enduring cultural significance of homophobia and unequal gender relations. On the analysis presented here, the situation is typically too complex to simply endorse (or indeed reject) wholesale the cultural prevalence of a new "inclusive masculinity". What seems clear is that culturally dominant forms of masculinities and gender relations are still evident, if also sometimes challenged and subverted in specific contexts.

In many ways, this is nothing new. Our analysis reinforces a lot of feminist and critical masculinity studies literature that interrogates gender relations through a study of language and interaction (Cameron, 2006). In particular, the idea of gendered talk reproducing hegemonic masculinity and women's role in "socialising" men has been around in the feminist literature for over thirty years. This paper contributes to the literature about modem masculinities and gender relations by analysing gendered communication within a specific micro context, which uniquely combined football talk and therapeutic conversations. The often-competing "rules of engagement" at play in this setting offered an interesting vehicle in which to explore gendered communication. Perhaps not surprisingly, this setting did not just reinforce dominant norms of masculinity, as is often the case in primarily sporting arenas (A. Adams et al., 2010), but neither was it unproblematically a site of "inclusive masculinity."

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HELEN SPANDLER *, ALASTAIR ROY *, and MICK MCKEOWN **

* School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire.

** School of Health, University of Central Lancashire.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Helen Spandler, School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. Email: hspandler@uclan.ac.uk

DOI: 10.3149/jms.2202.140