AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF PAIN AND INJURY IN PROFESSIONAL RUGBY UNION

Abstract

In the professional game of Rugby Union the elimination of injury to players has become a paramount performative, and therefore financial, concern. The recognition that professional contact sports entail the potential for significant injury is becoming increasingly evident in the disciplines of sports medicine and the sociology of sport. Among the complex of factors that comprise the habitus of a rugby club will be the expectation and accommodation of factors relating to injury. This article makes conceptual distinctions between pain and injury. Much of the extant literature of pain and injury uses qualitative interview techniques to good effect. This article uses the methodology of participant observation to offer a more felicitous social understanding of pain and injury in a distinctive sporting context. Ethnographic research was undertaken at Pontypridd Rugby Football Club in Wales over a period of two years. This approach enables an increased diachronic understanding of pain and injury within this particular sporting context and how the personal and social experience of these phenomena are transformed through the process of professionalization.

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