Articoli di riviste sul tema "Tournaments, 1890"

Abstract:This article addresses the question as to how Jane Guyer's seminal explorations of special traits of West African economies in Marginal Gains (2004) can help us understand variations within the region. This question acquires some urgency—for instance in the Cameroonian context, but elsewhere also—since the dimensions she emphasizes (reciprocity, gain, rank) play a crucial role in quite vicious ethnic stereotypes that increasingly dominate people's perceptions of economic developments. The challenge may be, therefore, to determine how an analysis in terms of disjunctures as an asset for marginal gains can steer clear of the ethnic stereotypes through which people themselves perceive discontinuities in everyday life. Starting from the historical example of the wild-rubber boom in southern Cameroon under German rule (1890–1913) and its chaotic effects at the local level, the article considers how Arjun Appadurai's notion of “tournaments of value” might help us understand such variations.

Tennis and golf, as well as numerous other sports, found their way to Germany in the era of the Wilhelmine Empire. Hoteliers in German health resorts, operators of private sports grounds or commercial playground companies, among others, played a significant role. Uhlenhorst, a district of Hamburg since 1894, was already the venue for major tennis tournaments with international players in the early 1890s. At that time, the London merchant, tennis player and sports official Walter Howard donated a silver cup to the Ice Rink Club on Uhlenhorst (Eisbahnverein auf der Uhlenhorst), which was used as a prize for the “Championship of Hamburg”. This article goes into Walter Howard’s biography and outlines his commitment to Hamburg tennis, which also gave important impulses to women’s tennis.

In those early days, some sports were played as a variation of another. Rugby was one of the sports which was played as a variation of football. Codification of rugby rules took place only in the middle 1800 century and hence, participants of rugby games were a mixture of players from other sports such as tennis and cricket. Also, there was no formal rugby association or players with Singapore representation. The players that played for Singapore were members of the SCC and employees of the BEIC. Back then, they competed in tournaments against the Malayan states and other teams.

Penalties, free-kicks (direct-indirect), throw-ins, corner kicks and goal kicks are known to be as set-pieces. In this study; examination of set-pieces’ effects on scoring goals were targeted and, in this context, the competitions of Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup were analyzed. As a part of this study, 64 competitions of Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup were analyzed depending on penalties and set-pieces (free-kicks, corner kicks and throw-ins etc.) ending with goals. “E-Analyze Soccer” computer program were used to analyze the set-piece organizations in the competitions at the tournament. The findings were registered and interpreted via SPSS (18.0) program upon calculations of frequencies and percentages. 21 (%12.43) of the all goals scored in this tournament were from penalties, 23 (%13.61) from free-kicks, 22 (%13.02) from corner kicks and 2 (%1.18) from throw-ins. Throughout the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup, 169 goals were scored in total with an average of 2.64 goals per game and, 68 (%40.24) of all the goals were recorded as score following the set-pieces. In the tournament, 21 (%72.41) penalties out of 29 resulted with goals. A major part of the goals scored from corner kicks were completed via headings (%77.27) and rest with kicks (%22.73). A great amount of completing goal scoring kicks following corner kicks were recorded with right foot (%81.82) and the rest with left foot (%18.18). As a result, the goals scored after the set-pieces amongst the all goals scored during the World Cup are to be rather important to effect the game and to reserve a considerable place on the scoreboard. Thus, in order to achieve the success through the tournaments and to complete the competitions as aspired, the set-pieces’ effective use and, in defense, the countermeasures to exercise against the set-pieces of opponent teams emerges as a crucial matter. Hereby, it is momentously suggested to accommodate more tactical trainings about set-pieces during the trainings as it might most likely to contribute a lot to team performance. ​Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. Özet Penaltılar, serbest vuruşlar (direkt-endirekt), taç atışları, köşe vuruşları ve kale vuruşları, futbolda duran toplar olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Bu çalışma, futbolda duran topların, maçlarda atılan goller üzerindeki etkisinin incelenmesi ve bu kapsamda Rusya’da düzenlenen 2018 FIFA Dünya kupasındaki müsabakaların analiz edilmesi amacıyla yapılmıştır. Çalışmada, 2018 FIFA Futbol Dünya kupasında oynanan 64 müsabakada, kullanılan penaltılar ile duran top sonrası golle sonuçlanan serbest vuruş, köşe vuruşu ve taç atışlarının analizi yapılmıştır. Turnuvada oynanan müsabakalarda, kullanılan duran top organizasyonlarını (penaltı, serbest vuruş, köşe vuruşları ve taç atışları) analiz etmek için bilgisayar ortamında “e-analyze soccer” futbol analiz programı kullanılmıştır. Elde edilen veriler SPSS 18.0 programında kaydedilmiş, frekans ve yüzde değerleri hesaplandıktan sonra yorumlanmıştır. Turnuvada atılan gollerin %12.43’ü (21 gol) penaltıdan gelirken, %13.61’inin (23 gol) serbest vuruş, %13.02’sinin (22 gol) köşe vuruşu ve %1.18’inin de (2 gol) taç atışı sonrasında olmak üzere, maç başına 2,64 gol ortalaması ile 2018 FIFA Futbol Dünya kupasında atılan toplam 169 golün 68’inin (%40.24) duran toplar sonrasında gerçekleştiği belirlenmiştir. Turnuvada kullanılan 29 penaltının 21’inin (%72.41) golle sonuçlandığı, köşe vuruşu sonrası atılan gollerin %18.18’inin sol ayakla, %81.82’sinin sağ ayakla kullanılan köşe vuruşları sonrasında oluşurken, gollerin %77.27’si kafa vuruşu ile, %22.73’ü ise ayakla kaydedilmiştir. Sonuç olarak, dünya kupasında atılan goller içerisinde duran top organizasyonları sonrasında meydana gelen gollerin oldukça önemli bir yer tuttuğu görülmektedir. Takımların turnuvalarda başarılı olabilmesi ve müsabakalardan istenilen sonuçlarla ayrılabilmeleri açısından, duran topların etkili kullanımı ve kullanılan duran toplara karşı alınacak önlemler üzerine hazırlanmış taktiksel antrenmanlara çalışmalarda daha da fazla yer verilmesinin takım performansına oldukça önemli katkılar sağlayacağı söylenebilir.

This paper focuses on some ethical issues of companies operating in the field of competitive sports including in particular: limited liability vis-à-vis creditors of the companies that discontinued their activities, but were not subject to liquidation, nor bankruptcy petition has been filed; hampered recognisability of individual companies due to frequent changing of their names and names of teams participating in the tournaments; legal and financial status, rights and duties of contestants of these companies are underdefined; company identity is violated due to the pursuing of merger and acquisition strategy. It was decided that the above issues exemplify broader problems between labour and capital in the contemporary enterprise. Addressing of the above issues is a tough and complicated process, and sometimes simply impossible in the situation where sports have been recognised as equal sphere of business activities and where basic rules of market economy are respected also with reference to this sphere of life.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a subject of great interest to both theoreticians and practitioners of management as well as to international organisations that promote this idea among existing enterprises. Despite many years of research on CSR, there is no single binding definition of this concept, therefore for the needs of this publication, the definition of Archie B. Carroll, and the resulting approach to CSR implementation in companies, has been adopted. The aim of the article is to analyse CSR activities undertaken by FC Barcelona in the framework of a system derived from Carroll’s CSR pyramid, therefore its activities have been divided into four groups corresponding to the dimension of financial, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. Due to the commercialisation of football, FC Barcelona is treated as a global enterprise, considering, however, the specificity of regulations governing the sports sector as well as goods and services offered by the club. The research has been based on an analysis of literature and available documents published by the club itself as well as by international organisations regulating football tournaments on national and international levels. The study has indicated that FC Barcelona is taking action in all the dimensions of social responsibility highlighted in Carroll’s pyramid and can be seen as a socially responsible organisation, at the same time meeting expectations of its stakeholders.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of technical trainings applied 10-12 age tennis players on their stroke performances. 16 male tennis players joined to the study who are in Isparta and match in tournaments as individuals regularly. These were detected from players that mean of age was 10,62±,80 years, mean of height was 144,06±8,28 cm and mean of weight was 38,75±9,04 kg. Trainings were applied to the players as technical 3 days a week and as condition 1 day a week. ITN test (International Tennis Number) were applied to test the stroke performances. Datas were compared by using “Paired t Test” at SPSS 18.0 statistic programme. Differences were found to be statistically significant at result of comparing stroke performances’ pre-posttests (p<0,05). This study shows the regular technical and conditional trainings’ positive effects on performance and provides recommendations to trainers and sport scientists about planning, programming a training and defining performance criteria.

Purpose: To determine and compare the external match load, according to sport class (FT), of footballers with cerebral palsy (CP) during the International Federation of CP Football World Championships Qualification Tournament. Methods: Forty-two international male footballers with CP participated in the data collection. The footballers with CP were classified according to their FT into 3 groups (ie, FT5/6, FT7, and FT8). External match load (ie, total distance covered, distance covered at different speeds, accelerations, decelerations, player load, peak metabolic power, and changes of directions) was collected for both halves during official matches with global positioning system devices. Results: Players with lower impairment (FT8) covered more distance (effect size = 0.30–0.60) at high-intensity running (13.0–18.0 km·h−1) and sprinting (>18.0 km·h−1) and performed more (effect size = 0.29–1.08) accelerations, decelerations, and changes of direction at high intensity in matches than did other players (ie, FT5/6 and FT7 groups). Conclusion: Because high-intensity actions are relevant to football performance and there are differences caused by players’ impairments, the International Federation of CP Football classification protocols should include high-intensity actions during the technical assessment as part of the procedures for determining the sport class of football players with CP.

AbstractThe comparative, differential phenomenology of play and games has a critical political point. A mainstream discourse identifies – more or less – sport with play and game and describes sport as just a modernized extension of play or as a universal phenomenon that has existed since the Stone Age or the ancient Greek Olympics. This may be problematical, as there was no sport before industrial modernity. Before 1800, people were involved in a richness of play and games, competitions, festivities, and dances, which to large extent have disappeared or were marginalized, suppressed, and replaced by sport. The established rhetoric of “ancient Greek sport”, “medieval tournament sport”, etc., can be questioned.Configurational analysis as a procedure of differential phenomenology can help in analyzing sport as a specific modern game which produces objectified results through bodily movement. This analysis casts light not only on the phenomenon of sport itself, but also on the methodological and epistemological challenge of studying play, movement, and body culture.

This study has been undertaken to perform the game analysis, to determine an efficacy difference in an offence of four first placed woman handball national teams at the Olympic games in Tokyo. One of the problems, which undergoes scientific research, is competition between teams and an efficacy in the mentioned sport. The performance of any technical element in the handball is impossible to perform without the adequate motoric ability, as well as the quality of the motoric ability is impossible to perform without the rational technique. In this study, based information were obtained from first THIRD handball national teams of France, Russia and Norway during eight matches at the Olympic games in Tokyo. The total of 12 offence’s variables were obtained from 8 matches of woman’s handball national teams and analysed: total number of shots (sut_uk), precise - efficient number of shots (sut_pre), total number of shots from 6 meters (sut_m6_uk), precise - efficient number of shots from 6 meters (sut_m6_pre), total number of shots from wings (sut_kril_uk), precise - efficient number of shots from wings (sut_kr_pre), total number of shots from 9 meters (sut_m9_uk), precise - efficient number of shots from 9 meters (sut_m9_pre), total number of shots from 7 meters (sut_m7_uk), precise - efficient number of shots from 7 meters (sut_m7_pre), total number of fast centres (brzc_uk) and total number of precise - accomplished fast centres (sut_brzc_pre). Based on the analysis in this study, it is evident that the game of national teams was based on shots from 9 m, shots from 6 m, and on the fast performance of the fast centre. By analysed results, could be concluded, that these variables significantly determinate the game in offence on this tournament. Keywords: Women, handball, national teams, Olympic games

ObjectivesTo determine whether a team illness prevention strategy (TIPS) would reduce the incidence of acute illness during the Super Rugby tournament.MethodsWe studied 1340 male professional rugby union player seasons from six South African teams that participated in the Super Rugby tournament (2010–2016). Medical staff recorded all illnesses daily (126 850 player days) in a 3-year control (C: 2010–2012; 47 553 player days) and a 4-year intervention (I: 2013–2016; 79 297 player days) period. A five-element TIPS was implemented in the I period, following agreement by consensus. Incidence rate (IR: per 1000 player days; 95% CI) of all acute illnesses, illness by main organ system, infectious illness and illness burden (days lost due to illness per 1000 player days) were compared between C and I period.ResultsThe IR of acute illness was significantly lower in the I (5.5: 4.7 to 6.4) versus the C period (13.2: 9.7 to 18.0) (p<0.001). The IR of respiratory (C=8.6: 6.3 to 11.7; I=3.8: 3.3 to 4.3) (p<0.0001), digestive (C=2.5: 1.8 to 3.6; I=1.1: 0.8 to 1.4) (p<0.001), skin and subcutaneous tissue illness (C=0.7: 0.4 to 1.4; I=0.3: 0.2 to 0.5) (p=0.0238), all infections (C=8.4: 5.9 to 11.9; I=4.3: 3.7 to 4.9) (p<0.001) and illness burden (C=9.2: 6.8 to 12.5; I=5.7: 4.1 to 7.8) (p=0.0314) were significantly lower in the I versus the C period.ConclusionA TIPS during the Super Rugby tournament was associated with a lower incidence of all acute illnesses (59%), infectious illness (49%) and illness burden (39%). Our findings may have important clinical implications for other travelling team sport settings.

In judo tournaments, matches for each weight category are held on the same day and athletes competing at the finals have to compete at different times of the day. This study aimed to investigate the effect of time-of-day on judo specific performance and the changes in physiological load following judo specific performance. Fourteen male judo athletes (age 19.1±1.4 years) voluntarily participated in the study. At the 1st visit, anthropometrical measurements and familiarization procedures were conducted and the athletes’ chronotype was determined. Athletes performed the Special Judo Fitness Test (SJFT) during 2nd and 3rd visits. Athletes randomly performed two consecutive SJFTs with 15 min intervals at 10:00h, which is the official start time of matches, and at 18:00h which is the time when the finals start. During SJFT applications, athletes heart rate (HR), blood lactate (bLA), body temperature and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were monitored. The changes in total throw numbers (F1, 13= 1.32, p=0.27) and SJFT index (F1, 13= 0.30, p=0.59) were not different between morning and evening. There were similar changes in bLA (F4, 52=0.66, p=0.63), RPE (F1, 13=1.42, p=0.26) and body temperature (F1.4, 18.0=1.18, p=0.31) which were measured before and after the tests. However, HR measured in the evening were higher compared to morning measurement at all measurement times (F1, 13=10.28, p=0.01), but there was no difference in SJFT throws (F3.8, 48.8=0.49, p=0.74). In conclusion, different times of the day did not affect judo specific performance as well as physiological variables in judo athletes.

We consider current problems of scientific and theoretical representations development about competitive infrastructure of Sports and ballroom dancing which are not provided with sufficient scientific comprehension. The purpose is to determine the basis of division used in the world practice of international organizations for sports and ballroom dancing for the classification of competitions, performers, their skills, etc. Interest in sports and ballroom dancing, as a form of social, cultural and leisure activities, increases every year not only abroad but also in Russia. Sports and ballroom dancing in its structure have two programs: Latin American, which includes dances – Cha-cha-cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive, Pasodoble and European, dance – slow waltz, Viennese (fast) waltz, Slow Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango. Dance and sports clubs cover in their work all age categories from children of three years to people of retirement age. Dance associations are based in cultural institutions, cultural and leisure type, in secondary schools, and in higher educa-tion institutions in the framework of additional education or the organization of cultural and leisure activities. Each dance and sports club, as an element of the structure, is registered in any Russian official organization for ballroom dancing, which, in turn, is a regional and part of the international organization for ballroom dancing. Now, there are actively there are four: 1) WDSF – World DanceSport Federation; 2) WDC – World Dance Council; 3) IDSU – International Dance Sport Union; 4) IDSCA – International Dance Studios and Clubs Association. Each of the organizations provides, contests, competitions, tournaments, Championships of Europe, Asia, world, etc. To analyze the material, we use a comparative typological method. We discover the similarities features and differences in the international organizations activities in sports and ballroom dancing, this information is scientifically investigated for the first time. We define the importance of sports and ballroom dancing competitive and amateur infrastructure for the development of culture and strengthening of a population healthy lifestyle. Also, for the first time in scientific circulation we introduce a systematic material on the activities of international organizations in sports and ballroom dancing.

Wrestling normally places extreme demands on the body and thus may cause various kinds of injuries. An in-depth understanding of the episodes of injured sites, types, timings, and treatment modalities would help participants be aware of wrestling-related injury occurrences so as to develop effective preventive measures. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the gender-specific injuries among elite wrestling athletes. Subjects were selected from the 2009 Taiwanese National Wrestling Sport Championship. Participants were adolescent wrestling athletes, ages 16–18, who must have received at least one bronze medal at national level tournaments in 2008. A total of 118 respondents, 96 males and 22 females, completed and returned the questionnaire in which demographic data and information about the types, sites, and timings of injuries suffered and treatment modalities adopted were elicited. The data were analyzed with independent t-tests. The questionnaire results revealed a significantly higher injury rate for males than for females. The top three injured sites for males were waist (11.1%), ankle joint (10.1%) and finger (9.6%); while for females were ankle joint (13.6%), knee (12.5%) and waist (11.3%). Contusions were the most frequent type of injury: for males (73.5%) and for females (70.6%); followed by tendon inflammation for males (10.7%) and accumulated injuries for females (15.2%). During training and matching periods, the frequency of injuries for males (69.0%) is lower than that for females (81.8%). Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with acupuncture and moxibustion was the most common treatment modalities used for males (51.8%) and for females (68.0%); followed by orthopedics: for males (29.5%) and for females (18.0%). The present study contributed as the first effort to reveal the potency of using TCM with acupuncture and moxibustion in wrestling competitions. To prevent possible brain and body injuries in wrestling, safety education, skills and rules, and scoring systems may require further revision. Increased training of wrestling health professionals and advanced research and development of auxiliary training devices and protective equipment for wrestling athletes are also recommended.

Marine recreational spearfishing is practiced by a small proportion of recreational fishers and ecological, social and economic aspects of such activities are poorly understood with respect to recreational angling. The Italian Federation of Sport Fishing and Underwater Activities (FIPSAS) started in 2009 the collection of catch data related to Italian spearfishing tournaments. Here, we provide the first snapshot of this catch data regarding 48 tournaments organized in 29 different Italian localities from 2009 to 2020. We also developed a survey to collect social and economic information that has been administrated to participants to the tournaments. We retrieved 8843 specimens caught by spearfishers, which accounted for 33 species and a total biomass of 5665 kg (mean individual mass ± standard error; 0.64 ± 0.01 kg). The five most frequently species represented 78% of the specimens caught (white seabream, Diplodus sargus 48%; brown wrasse, Labrus merula 12%; brown meagre, Sciaena umbra 9%, green wrasse, Labrus viridis 5%; salema, Sarpa salpa 4%). The overall catch per unit effort for all the tournaments was 0.47 ± 0.01 kg/spearfisher/h, and we showed interesting effects of type of tournaments and type of displacement on it. We also assessed the accuracy of participants to catch fish in accordance to tournaments-specific minimum weight limits. The five most caught species showed that spearfishers committed errors around 50 g below the weight limit. The survey showed that spearfishers participating to tournaments are trophy-fish oriented (i.e., they would rather catch one or two big fish than ten smaller fish), but not particularly catch oriented (i.e., they are just as happy if they do not shoot the fish they see and a fishing trip can be successful even if no fish are caught). Regarding the motives for fishing, they fish for experiencing adventure, excitement and new and different things as well as to be underwater. Participants spent from 2 to 26 days in the tournament locations (median equal to 7 days), which implies a total expenditure to solely participate to the tournaments ranging from 800 to 3500 Euros (mean ± standard deviation; 1800 ± 591 euros). This study represents the first ecological, social and economic baseline knowledge for an integrative management of contemporary spearfishing tournaments.

The aim of the study. To systematize factual data on the formation and development of the competition system components in professional tennis before the beginning of the "tennis open era". Material and methods. Facts from the history of the formation of systematicity in professional tennis competitions and the formation of key competitions in the period up to 1968 was the main material of the research. The results. The era of modern tennis begins in the second half of the 19th century. It was found that the game began to be commercialized already in 1894, and this process began with the sale of tennis training equipment and textbooks. The first competitions, which were open to everyone, including professional tennis players, were held in Great Britain (Wimbledon tournament, 1875), but they cannot be called professional, since in British society attention was focused on the development and popularization of amateur sports. Summarizing the facts made it possible to find out that tennis began to develop as a professional sport in the United States, where were favorable economic and geopolitical conditions for this. Here, in 1926, the promoter K. Pyle held exhibition tours exclusively for professional tennis players with whom he concluded contracts. It was found that in the late 20s – early 30s of the XX century, three professional tennis majors of those times were created – U.S. Professional Championship, Wembley Professional Championships and French Pro Championship. These competitions actually set the pace for the development of the direction. It is established that characteristic for that time was a constant change in the number of participants, the format of holding and the surface of the tournament courts. The key barrier (separation between amateur and professional tennis) was overcome in 1968. In addition, the experience gained in the past in organizing professional tennis tournaments gradually received a new level of adaptation in the “Open Era tennis”. However, the period until the 1980s remained difficult to determine a unified attitude of the leading tennis organizations in the world to the process of its further professionalization. Conclusions. Tennis as a type of professional sport began to form in the US at the end of the 19th century and immediately developed dynamically, at the same time separated from the amateur (until 1968). The main tournaments (majors) of that time were the U.S. Professional Championship, Wembley Professional Championships and French Pro Championship, However, others tournaments developed too and they were even a priority for many leading professional tennis players periodically. The competition system was not stable, competition formats often changed, but professional tennis gained popularity and increasingly became a source of income for the athletes themselves and entire organizations.

The aim of the study was to identify the situational factors of a game which (a) might affect the victory or defeat in the game; (b) were common for matches played in a tournament for the hearing or deaf, including matches won or lost. The analysis included 37 matches of national deaf teams (5th World Deaf Basketball Championships, Poland) and 92 matches of national hearing teams (18th Basketball World Cup, China). During both tournaments, the matches played were divided into won and lost. We also presented analyses concerning 31 game situational variables related to the performance of national basketball teams at both events. All situational variables were subject to statistical analysis, including calculation of their means and standard deviations, and determination of minimum and maximum. Discriminant analysis was performed, too. The analyses showed no statistically significant differences in almost all game aspects between matches won by deaf and hearing basketball players. Statistically significant differences in situational variables were observed between matches won during the 5th World Deaf Basketball Championships and matches lost during the 18th Basketball World Cup. The discriminant analysis allowed to determine the situational variables that affected the winning or losing of a game: missed shots for 2 or 3 points, free throws, defensive and offensive rebounds, as well as assists, steals, and turnovers. A classification matrix indicated 21 results of direct match competitions achieved by deaf teams (winning and losing), which allowed to qualify these teams as hearing ones in terms of the values of game situational variables. Literature analysis revealed lack of scientific reports on deaf sport.

Lincolnshire, England. The crowd cheer when the ball breaks loose. From one end of the field to the other, the players chase, their snouts hovering just above the grass. It’s not a case of four legs being better, rather a novel way to attract customers to the Woodside Wildlife and Falconry Park. During the matches, volunteers are drawn from the crowd to hold goal posts at either end of the run the pigs usually race on. With five pigs playing, two teams of two and a referee, and a ball designed to leak feed as it rolls (Stevenson) the ten-minute competition is fraught with tension. While the pig’s contributions to “the beautiful game” (Fish and Pele 7) have not always been so obvious, it could be argued that specific parts of the animal have had a significant impact on a sport which, despite calls to fall into line with much of the rest of the world, people in Australia (and the US) are more likely to call soccer. The Football Precursors to the modern football were constructed around an inflated pig’s bladder (Price, Jones and Harland). Animal hide, usually from a cow, was stitched around the bladder to offer some degree of stability, but the bladder’s irregular and uneven form made for unpredictable movement in flight. This added some excitement and affected how ball games such as the often violent, calico matches in Florence, were played. In the early 1970s, the world’s oldest ball was discovered during a renovation in Stirling Castle, Scotland. The ball has a pig’s bladder inside its hand-stitched, deer-hide outer. It was found in the ceiling above the bed in, what was then Mary Queens of Scots’ bedroom. It has since been dated to the 1540s (McGinnes). Neglected and left in storage until the late 1990s, the ball found pride of place in an exhibition in the Smiths Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling, and only gained worldwide recognition (as we will see later) in 2006. Despite confirmed interest in a number of sports, there is no evidence to support Mary’s involvement with football (Springer). The deer-hide ball may have been placed to gather and trap untoward spirits attempting to enter the monarch’s sleep, or simply left by accident and forgotten (McGinnes in Springer). Mary, though, was not so fortunate. She was confined and forgotten, but only until she was put to death in 1587. The Executioner having gripped her hair to hold his prize aloft, realised too late it was a wig and Mary’s head bounced and rolled across the floor. Football Development The pig’s bladder was the central component in the construction of the football for the next three hundred years. However, the issue of the ball’s movement (the bounce and roll), the bladder’s propensity to burst when kicked, and an unfortunate wife’s end, conspired to push the pig from the ball before the close of the nineteenth-century. The game of football began to take its shape in 1848, when JC Thring and a few colleagues devised the Cambridge Rules. This compromised set of guidelines was developed from those used across the different ‘ball’ games played at England’s elite schools. The game involved far more kicking, and the pig’s bladders, prone to bursting under such conditions, soon became impractical. Charles Goodyear’s invention of vulcanisation in 1836 and the death of prestigious rugby and football maker Richard Lindon’s wife in 1870 facilitated the replacement of the animal bladder with a rubber-based alternative. Tragically, Mr Lindon’s chief inflator died as a result of blowing up too many infected pig’s bladders (Hawkesley). Before it closed earlier this year (Rhoads), the US Soccer Hall of Fame displayed a rubber football made in 1863 under the misleading claim that it was the oldest known football. By the late 1800s, professional, predominantly Scottish play-makers had transformed the game from its ‘kick-and-run’ origins into what is now called ‘the passing game’ (Sanders). Football, thanks in no small part to Scottish factory workers (Kay), quickly spread through Europe and consequently the rest of the world. National competitions emerged through the growing need for organisation, and the pig-free mass production of balls began in earnest. Mitre and Thomlinson’s of Glasgow were two of the first to make and sell their much rounder balls. With heavy leather panels sewn together and wrapped around a thick rubber inner, these balls were more likely to retain shape—a claim the pig’s bladder equivalent could not legitimately make. The rubber-bladdered balls bounced more too. Their weight and external stitching made them more painful to header, but also more than useful for kicking and particularly for passing from one player to another. The ball’s relatively quick advancement can thereafter be linked to the growth and success of the World Cup Finals tournament. Before the pig re-enters the fray, it is important to glance, however briefly, at the ball’s development through the international game. World Cup Footballs Pre-tournament favourites, Spain, won the 2010 FIFA World Cup, playing with “an undistorted, perfectly spherical ball” (Ghosh par. 7), the “roundest” ever designed (FIFA par.1). Their victory may speak to notions of predictability in the ball, the tournament and the most lucrative levels of professional endeavour, but this notion is not a new one to football. The ball’s construction has had an influence on the way the game has been played since the days of Mary Queen of Scots. The first World Cup Final, in 1930, featured two heavy, leather, twelve-panelled footballs—not dissimilar to those being produced in Glasgow decades earlier. The players and officials of Uruguay and Argentina could not agree, so they played the first half with an Argentine ball. At half-time, Argentina led by two goals to one. In the second half, Uruguay scored three unanswered goals with their own ball (FIFA). The next Final was won by Italy, the home nation in 1934. Orsi, Italy’s adopted star, poked a wildly swerving shot beyond the outstretched Czech keeper. The next day Orsi, obligated to prove his goal was not luck or miracle, attempted to repeat the feat before an audience of gathered photographers. He failed. More than twenty times. The spin on his shot may have been due to the, not uncommon occurrence, of the ball being knocked out of shape during the match (FIFA). By 1954, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) had sought to regulate ball size and structure and, in 1958, rigorously tested balls equal to the demands of world-class competition. The 1950s also marked the innovation of the swerving free kick. The technique, developed in the warm, dry conditions of the South American game, would not become popular elsewhere until ball technology improved. The heavy hand-stitched orb, like its early counterparts, was prone to water absorption, which increased the weight and made it less responsive, particularly for those playing during European winters (Bray). The 1970 World Cup in Mexico saw football progress even further. Pele, arguably the game’s greatest player, found his feet, and his national side, Brazil, cemented their international football prominence when they won the Jules Rimet trophy for the third time. Their innovative and stylish use of the football in curling passes and bending free kicks quickly spread to other teams. The same World Cup saw Adidas, the German sports goods manufacturer, enter into a long-standing partnership with FIFA. Following the competition, they sold an estimated six hundred thousand match and replica tournament footballs (FIFA). The ball, the ‘Telstar’, with its black and white hexagonal panels, became an icon of the modern era as the game itself gained something close to global popularity for the first time in its history. Over the next forty years, the ball became incrementally technologically superior. It became synthetic, water-resistant, and consistent in terms of rebound and flight characteristics. It was constructed to be stronger and more resistant to shape distortion. Internal layers of polyutherane and Syntactic Foam made it lighter, capable of greater velocity and more responsive to touch (FIFA). Adidas spent three years researching and developing the 2006 World Cup ball, the ‘Teamgeist’. Fourteen panels made it rounder and more precise, offering a lower bounce, and making it more difficult to curl due to its accuracy in flight. At the same time, audiences began to see less of players like Roberto Carlos (Brazil and Real Madrid CF) and David Beckham (Manchester United, LA Galaxy and England), who regularly scored goals that challenged the laws of physics (Gill). While Adidas announced the 2006 release of the world’s best performing ball in Berlin, the world’s oldest was on its way to the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Hamburg for the duration of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The Mary Queen of Scot’s ball took centre spot in an exhibit which also featured a pie stand—though not pork pies—from Hibernian Football Club (Strang). In terms of publicity and raising awareness of the Scots’ role in the game’s historical development, the installation was an unrivalled success for the Scottish Football Museum (McBrearty). It did, however, very little for the pig. Heads, not Tails In 2002, the pig or rather the head of a pig, bounced and rolled back into football’s limelight. For five years Luis Figo, Portugal’s most capped international player, led FC Barcelona to domestic and European success. In 2000, he had been lured to bitter rivals Real Madrid CF for a then-world record fee of around £37 million (Nash). On his return to the Catalan Camp Nou, wearing the shimmering white of Real Madrid CF, he was showered with beer cans, lighters, bottles and golf balls. Among the objects thrown, a suckling pig’s head chimed a psychological nod to the spear with two sharp ends in William Golding’s story. Play was suspended for sixteen minutes while police tried to quell the commotion (Lowe). In 2009, another pig’s head made its way into football for different reasons. Tightly held in the greasy fingers of an Orlando Pirates fan, it was described as a symbol of the ‘roasting’ his team would give the Kaiser Chiefs. After the game, he and his friend planned to eat their mascot and celebrate victory over their team’s most reviled competitors (Edwards). The game ended in a nil-all draw. Prior to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, it was not uncommon for a range of objects that European fans might find bizarre, to be allowed into South African league matches. They signified luck and good feeling, and in some cases even witchcraft. Cabbages, known locally for their medicinal qualities, were very common—common enough for both sets of fans to take them (Edwards). FIFA, an organisation which has more members than the United Nations (McGregor), impressed their values on the South African Government. The VuVuZela was fine to take to games; indeed, it became a cultural artefact. Very little else would be accepted. Armed with their economy-altering engine, the world’s most watched tournament has a tendency to get what it wants. And the crowd respond accordingly. Incidentally, the ‘Jabulani’—the ball developed for the 2010 tournament—is the most consistent football ever designed. In an exhaustive series of tests, engineers at Loughborough University, England, learned, among other things, the added golf ball-like grooves on its surface made the ball’s flight more symmetrical and more controlled. The Jabulani is more reliable or, if you will, more predictable than any predecessor (Ghosh). Spanish Ham Through support from their Governing body, the Real Federación Española de Fútbol, Spain have built a national side with experience, and an unparalleled number of talented individuals, around the core of the current FC Barcelona club side. Their strength as a team is founded on the bond between those playing on a weekly basis at the Catalan club. Their style has allowed them to create and maintain momentum on the international stage. Victorious in the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship and undefeated in their run through the qualifying stages into the World Cup Finals in South Africa, they were tournament favourites before a Jabulani was rolled into touch. As Tim Parks noted in his New York Review of Books article, “The Shame of the World Cup”, “the Spanish were superior to an extent one rarely sees in the final stages of a major competition” (2010 par. 15). They have a “remarkable ability to control, hold and hide the ball under intense pressure,” and play “a passing game of great subtlety [ ... to] patiently wear down an opposing team” (Parks par. 16). Spain won the tournament having scored fewer goals per game than any previous winner. Perhaps, as Parks suggests, they scored as often as they needed to. They found the net eight times in their seven matches (Fletcher). This was the first time that Spain had won the prestigious trophy, and the first time a European country has won the tournament on a different continent. In this, they have broken the stranglehold of superpowers like Germany, Italy and Brazil. The Spanish brand of passing football is the new benchmark. Beautiful to watch, it has grace, flow and high entertainment value, but seems to lack something of an organic nature: that is, it lacks the chance for things to go wrong. An element of robotic aptitude has crept in. This occurred on a lesser scale across the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals, but it is possible to argue that teams and players, regardless of nation, have become interchangeable, that the world’s best players and the way they play have become identikits, formulas to be followed and manipulated by master tacticians. There was a great deal of concern in early rounds about boring matches. The world’s media focused on an octopus that successfully chose the winner of each of Germany’s matches and the winner of the final. Perhaps, in shaping the ‘most’ perfect ball and the ‘most’ perfect football, the World Cup has become the most predictable of tournaments. In Conclusion The origins of the ball, Orsi’s unrepeatable winner and the swerving free kick, popular for the best part of fifty years, are worth remembering. These issues ask the powers of football to turn back before the game is smothered by the hunt for faultlessness. The unpredictability of the ball goes hand in hand with the game. Its flaws underline its beauty. Football has so much more transformative power than lucrative evolutionary accretion. While the pig’s head was an ugly statement in European football, it is a symbol of hope in its South African counterpart. Either way its removal is a reminder of Golding’s message and the threat of homogeneity; a nod to the absence of the irregular in the modern era. Removing the curve from the free kick echoes the removal of the pig’s bladder from the ball. The fun is in the imperfection. Where will the game go when it becomes indefectible? Where does it go from here? Can there really be any validity in claiming yet another ‘roundest ball ever’? Chip technology will be introduced. The ball’s future replacements will be tracked by satellite and digitally-fed, reassured referees will determine the outcome of difficult decisions. Victory for the passing game underlines the notion that despite technological advancement, the game has changed very little since those pioneering Scotsmen took to the field. Shouldn’t we leave things the way they were? Like the pigs at Woodside Wildlife and Falconry Park, the level of improvement seems determined by the level of incentive. The pigs, at least, are playing to feed themselves. Acknowledgments The author thanks editors, Donna Lee Brien and Adele Wessell, and the two blind peer reviewers, for their constructive feedback and reflective insights. The remaining mistakes are his own. References “Adidas unveils Golden Ball for 2006 FIFA World Cup Final” Adidas. 18 Apr. 2006. 23 Aug. 2010 . Bray, Ken. “The science behind the swerve.” BBC News 5 Jun. 2006. 19 Aug. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5048238.stm>. Edwards, Piers. “Cabbage and Roasted Pig.” BBC Fast Track Soweto, BBC News 3 Nov. 2009. 23 Aug. 2010 . FIFA. “The Footballs during the FIFA World Cup™” FIFA.com. 18 Aug. 2010 .20 Fish, Robert L., and Pele. My Life and the Beautiful Game. New York: Bantam Dell, 1977. Fletcher, Paul. “Match report on 2010 FIFA World Cup Final between Spain and Netherlands”. BBC News—Sports 12 Jul. 2010 . Ghosh, Pallab. “Engineers defend World Cup football amid criticism.” BBC News—Science and Environment 4 Jun. 2010. 19 Aug. 2010 . Gill, Victoria. “Roberto Carlos wonder goal ‘no fluke’, say physicists.” BBC News—Science and Environment 2 Sep. 2010 . Hawkesley, Simon. Richard Lindon 22 Aug. 2010 . “History of Football” FIFA.com. Classic Football. 20 Aug. 2010 . Kay, Billy. The Scottish World: A Journey into the Scottish Diaspora. London: Mainstream, 2008. Lowe, Sid. “Peace for Figo? And pigs might fly ...” The Guardian (London). 25 Nov. 2002. 20 Aug. 2010 . “Mary, Queen of Scots (r.1542-1567)”. The Official Website of the British Monarchy. 20 Jul. 2010 . McBrearty, Richard. Personal Interview. 12 Jul. 2010. McGinnes, Michael. Smiths Art Gallery and Museum. Visited 14 Jul. 2010 . McGregor, Karen. “FIFA—Building a transnational football community. University World News 13 Jun. 2010. 19 Jul. 2010 . Nash, Elizabeth. “Figo defects to Real Madrid for record £36.2m." The Independent (London) 25 Jul. 2000. 20 Aug. 2010 . “Oldest football to take cup trip” 25 Apr. 2006. 20 Jul. 2010 . Parks, Tim. “The Shame of the World Cup”. New York Review of Books 19 Aug. 2010. 23 Aug. 2010 < http://nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/aug/19/shame-world-cup/>. “Pig football scores a hit at centre.” BBC News 4 Aug. 2009. August 20 2010 . Price, D. S., Jones, R. Harland, A. R. “Computational modelling of manually stitched footballs.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part L. Journal of Materials: Design & Applications 220 (2006): 259-268. Rhoads, Christopher. “Forget That Trip You Had Planned to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.” Wall Street Journal 26 Jun. 2010. 22 Sep. 2010 . “Roberto Carlos Impossible Goal”. News coverage posted on You Tube, 27 May 2007. 23 Aug. 2010 . Sanders, Richard. Beastly Fury. London: Bantam, 2009. “Soccer to become football in Australia”. Sydney Morning Herald 17 Dec. 2004. 21 Aug. 2010 . Springer, Will. “World’s oldest football – fit for a Queen.” The Scotsman. 13 Mar. 2006. 19 Aug. 2010 < http://heritage.scotsman.com/willspringer/Worlds-oldest-football-fit.2758469.jp >. Stevenson, R. “Pigs Play Football at Wildlife Centre”. Lincolnshire Echo 3 Aug. 2009. 20 Aug. 2010 . Strang, Kenny. Personal Interview. 12 Jul. 2010. “The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots February 8, 1857”. Tudor History 21 Jul. 2010 http://tudorhistory.org/primary/exmary.html>. “The History of the FA.” The FA. 20 Jul. 2010 “World’s Oldest Ball”. World Cup South Africa 2010 Blog. 22 Jul. 2010 . “World’s Oldest Soccer Ball by Charles Goodyear”. 18 Mar. 2010. 20 Jul. 2010 .

At last year’s Tour de France—the three-week cycling race—the winner of one stage was disqualified for allegedly obstructing a competitor. In newspapers and on social media, cycling fans immediately started a heated debate about the decision and about the actual course of events. They uploaded photographs and videos, which they had often edited and augmented with graphics to support their interpretation of the situation or to direct attention to some neglected detail (Simpson; "Tour de France").Due to their competitive character and their audience’s partisanship, modern media sports continuously create controversial moments like this, thereby providing ample opportunities for what Jason Mittell—with respect to complex narratives in recent TV drama—called “forensic fandom” ("Forensic;" Complex), in which audience members collectively investigate ambivalent or enigmatic elements of a media product, adding their own interpretations and explanations.Not unlike that of TV drama, sport’s forensic fandom is stimulated through complex forms of seriality—e.g. the successive stages of the Tour de France or the successive games of a tournament or a league, but also the repetition of the same league competition or tournament every (or, in the case of the Olympics, every four) year(s). To articulate their take on the disqualification of the Tour de France rider, fans refer to comparable past events, activate knowledge about rivalries between cyclists, or note character traits that they condensed from the alleged perpetrator’s prior appearances. Sport thus creates a continuously evolving and recursive storyworld that, like all popular seriality, proliferates across different media forms (texts, photos, films, etc.) and different media platforms (television, social media, etc.) (Kelleter).In the following I will use two examples (from 1908 and 1966) to analyse in greater detail why and how sport’s seriality and forensic attitude contribute to the highly dynamic “transmedia intertextuality” (Kinder 35) of media sport. Two arguments are of special importance to me: (1) While social media (as the introductory example has shown) add to forensic fandom’s proliferation, it was sport’s strongly serialized evaluation of performances that actually triggered the “spreadability” (Jenkins, Ford, and Green) of sport-related topics across different media, first doing so at the end of the 19th century. What is more, modern sport owes its very existence to the cross-media circulation of its events. (2) So far, transmedia has mainly been researched with respect to fictional content (Jenkins; Evans), yet existing research on documentary transmedia forms (Kerrigan and Velikovsky) and social media seriality (Page) has shown that the inclusion of non-fiction can broaden our knowledge of how storytelling sprawls across media and takes advantage of their specific affordances. This, I want to argue, ensures that sport is an insightful and important example for the understanding of transmedia world-building.The Origins of Sport, the Olympics 1908, and World-BuildingSome authors claim that it was commercial television that replaced descriptive accounts of sporting events with narratives of heroes and villains in the 1990s (Fabos). Yet even a cursory study of past sport reporting shows that, even back when newspapers had to explain the controversial outcome of the 1908 Olympic Marathon to their readers, they could already rely on a well-established typology of characters and events.In the second half of the 19th century, the rules of many sports became standardized. Individual events were integrated in organized, repetitive competitions—leagues, tournaments, and so on. This development was encouraged by the popular press, which thus enabled the public to compare performances from different places and across time (Werron, "On Public;" Werron, "World"). Rankings and tables condensed contests in easily comparable visual forms, and these were augmented by more narrative accounts that supplemented the numbers with details, context, drama, and the subjective experiences of athletes and spectators. Week by week, newspapers and special-interest magazines alike offered varying explanations for the various wins and losses.When London hosted the Olympics in 1908, the scheduled seriality and pre-determined settings and protagonists allowed for the announcement of upcoming events in advance and for setting up possible storylines. Two days before the marathon race, The Times of London published the rules of the race, the names of the participants, a distance table listing relevant landmarks with the estimated arrival times, and a turn-by-turn description of the route, sketching the actual experience of running the race for the readers (22 July 1908, p. 11). On the day of the race, The Times appealed to sport’s seriality with a comprehensive narrative of prior Olympic Marathon races, a map of the precise course, a discussion of the alleged favourites, and speculation on factors that might impact the performances:Because of their inelasticity, wood blocks are particularly trying to the feet, and the glitter on the polished surface of the road, if the sun happens to be shining, will be apt to make a man who has travelled over 20 miles at top speed turn more than a little dizzy … . It is quite possible that some of the leaders may break down here, when they are almost within sight of home. (The Times 24 July 1908, p. 9)What we see here can be described as a world-building process: The rules of a competition, the participating athletes, their former performances, the weather, and so on, all form “a more or less organized sum of scattered parts” (Boni 13). These parts could easily be taken up by what we now call different media platforms (which in 1908 included magazines, newspapers, and films) that combine them in different ways to already make claims about cause-and-effect chains, intentions, outcomes, and a multitude of subjective experiences, before the competition has even started.The actual course of events, then, like the single instalment in a fictional storyworld, has a dual function: on the one hand, it specifies one particular storyline with a few protagonists, decisive turning points, and a clear determination of winners and losers. On the other hand, it triggers the multiplication of follow-up stories, each suggesting specific explanations for the highly contingent outcome, thereby often extending the storyworld, invoking props, characters, character traits, causalities, and references to earlier instalments in the series, which might or might not have been mentioned in the preliminary reports.In the 1908 Olympic Marathon, the Italian Dorando Pietri, who was not on The Times’ list of favourites, reached the finish first. Since he was stumbling on the last 300 meters of the track inside the stadium and only managed to cross the finish line with the support of race officials, he was disqualified. The jury then declared the American John Hayes, who came in second, the winner of the race.The day after the marathon, newspapers gave different accounts of the race. One, obviously printed too hastily, declared Pietri dead; others unsurprisingly gave the race a national perspective, focusing on the fate of “their” athletes (Davis 161, 166). Most of them evaluated the event with respect to athletic, aesthetic, or ethical terms—e.g. declaring Pietri the moral winner of the race (as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Daily Mail of July 25). This continues today, as praising sport performers often figures as a last resort “to reconstruct unproblematic heroism” (Whannel 44).The general endeavour of modern sport to scrutinize and understand the details of the performance provoked competing explanations for what had happened: was it the food, the heat, or the will power? In a forensic spirit, many publications added drawings or printed one of the famous photographs displaying Pietri being guided across the finish line (these still regularly appear in coffee-table books on sports photography; for a more extensive analysis, see Stauff). Sport—just like other non-fictional transmedia content—enriches its storyworld through “historical accounts of places and past times that already have their own logic, practice and institutions” (Kerrigan and Velikovsky 259).The seriality of sport not only fostered this dynamic by starting the narrative before the event, but also by triggering references to past instalments through the contingencies of the current one. The New York Times took the biggest possible leap, stating that the 1908 marathon must have been the most dramatic competition “since that Marathon race in ancient Greece, where the victor fell at the goal and, with a wave of triumph, died” (The New York Times 25 July 1908, p. 1). Dutch sport magazine De Revue der Sporten (6 August 1908, p. 167) used sport’s seriality more soberly to assess Hayes’ finishing time as not very special (conceding that the hot weather might have had an effect).What, hopefully, has become clear by now, is that—starting in the late 19th century—sporting events are prepared by, and in turn trigger, varying practices of transmedia world-building that make use of the different media’s affordances (drawings, maps, tables, photographs, written narratives, etc.). Already in 1908, most people interested in sport thus quite probably came across multiple accounts of the event—and thereby could feel invited to come up with their own explanation for what had happened. Back then, this forensic attitude was mostly limited to speculation about possible cause-effect chains, but with the more extensive visual coverage of competitions, especially through moving images, storytelling harnessed an increasingly growing set of forensic tools.The World Cup 1966 and Transmedia ForensicsThe serialized TV live transmissions of sport add complexity to storytelling, as they multiply the material available for forensic proliferations of the narratives. Liveness provokes a layered and constantly adapting process transforming the succession of actions into a narrative (the “emplotment”). The commentators find themselves “in the strange situation of a narrator ignorant of the plot” (Ryan 87), constantly balancing between mere reporting of events and more narrative explanation of incidents (Barnfield 8).To create a coherent storyworld under such circumstances, commentators fall back on prefabricated patterns (“overcoming bad luck,” “persistence paying off,” etc.) to frame the events while they unfold (Ryan 87). This includes the already mentioned tropes of heroism or national and racial stereotypes, which are upheld as long as possible, even when the course of events contradicts them (Tudor). Often, the creation of “non-retrospective narratives” (Ryan 79) harnesses seriality, “connecting this season with last and present with past and, indeed, present with past and future” (Barnfield 10).Instant-replay technology, additionally, made it possible (and necessary) for commentators to scrutinize individual actions while competitions are still ongoing, provoking revisions of the emplotment. With video, DVD, and online video, the second-guessing and re-telling of elements—at least in hindsight—became accessible to the general audience as well, thereby dramatically extending the playing field for sport’s forensic attitude.I want to elaborate this development with another example from London, this time the 1966 Men’s Football World Cup, which was the first to systematically use instant replay. In the extra time of the final, the English team scored a goal against the German side: Geoff Hurst’s shot bounced from the crossbar down to the goal line and from there back into the field. After deliberating with the linesman, the referee called it a goal. Until today it remains contested whether the ball actually was behind the goal line or not.By 1966, 1908’s sparsity of visual representation had been replaced by an abundance of moving images. The game was covered by the BBC and by ITV (for TV) and by several film companies (in colour and in black-and-white). Different recordings of the famous goal, taken from different camera angles, still circulate and are re-appropriated in different media even today. The seriality of sport, particularly World Cup Football’s return every four years, triggers the re-telling of this 1966 game just as much as media innovations do.In 1966, the BBC live commentary—after a moment of doubt—pretty soberly stated that “it’s a goal” and observed that “the Germans are mad at the referee;” the ITV reporter, more ambivalently declared: “the linesman says no goal … that’s what we saw … It is a goal!” The contemporary newsreel in German cinemas—the Fox Tönende Wochenschau—announced the scene as “the most controversial goal of the tournament.” It was presented from two different perspectives, the second one in slow motion with the commentary stating: “these images prove that it was not a goal” (my translation).So far, this might sound like mere opposing interpretations of a contested event, yet the option to scrutinize the scene in slow motion and in different versions also spawned an extended forensic narrative. A DVD celebrating 100 years of FIFA (FIFA Fever, 2002) includes the scene twice, the first time in the chapter on famous controversies. Here, the voice-over avoids taking a stand by adopting a meta-perspective: The goal guaranteed that “one of the most entertaining finals ever would be the subject of conversation for generations to come—and therein lies the beauty of controversies.” The scene appears a second time in the special chapter on Germany’s successes. Now the goal itself is presented with music and then commented upon by one of the German players, who claims that it was a bad call by the referee but that the sportsmanlike manner in which his team accepted the decision advanced Germany’s global reputation.This is only included in the German version of the DVD, of course; on the international “special deluxe edition” of FIFA Fever (2002), the 1966 goal has its second appearance in the chapter on England’s World Cup history. Here, the referee’s decision is not questioned—there is not even a slow-motion replay. Instead, the summary of the game is wrapped up with praise for Geoff Hurst’s hat trick in the game and with images of the English players celebrating, the voice-over stating: “Now the nation could rejoice.”In itself, the combination of a nationally organized media landscape with the nationalist approach to sport reporting already provokes competing emplotments of one and the same event (Puijk). The modularity of sport reporting, which allows for easy re-editing, replacing sound and commentary, and retelling events through countless witnesses, triggers a continuing recombination of the elements of the storyworld. In the 50 years since the game, there have been stories about the motivations of the USSR linesman and the Swiss referee who made the decision, and there have been several reconstructions triggered by new digital technology augmenting the existing footage (e.g. King; ‘das Archiv’).The forensic drive behind these transmedia extensions is most explicit in the German Football Museum in Dortmund. For the fiftieth anniversary of the World Cup in 2016, it hosted a special exhibition on the event, which – similarly to the FIFA DVD – embeds it in a story of gaining global recognition for the fairness of the German team ("Deutsches Fußballmuseum").In the permanent exhibition of the German Football Museum, the 1966 game is memorialized with an exhibit titled “Wembley Goal Investigation” (“Ermittlung Wembley-Tor”). It offers three screens, each showing the goal from a different camera angle, a button allowing the visitors to stop the scene at any moment. A huge display cabinet showcases documents, newspaper clippings, quotes from participants, and photographs in the style of a crime-scene investigation—groups of items are called “corpus delicti,” “witnesses,” and “analysis.” Red hand-drawn arrows insinuate relations between different items; yellow “crime scene, do not cross” tape lies next to a ruler and a pair of tweezers.Like the various uses of the slow-motion replays on television, in film, on DVD, and on YouTube, the museum thus offers both hegemonic narratives suggesting a particular emplotment of the event that endow it with broader (nationalist) meaning and a forensic storyworld that offers props, characters, and action building-blocks in a way that invites fans to activate their own storytelling capacities.Conclusion: Sport’s Trans-Seriality Sport’s dependency on a public evaluation of its performances has made it a dynamic transmedia topic from the latter part of the 19th century onwards. Contested moments especially prompt a forensic attitude that harnesses the affordances of different media (and quickly takes advantage of technological innovations) to discuss what “really” happened. The public evaluation of performances also shapes the role of authorship and copyright, which is pivotal to transmedia more generally (Kustritz). Though the circulation of moving images from professional sporting events is highly restricted and intensely monetized, historically this circulation only became a valuable asset because of the sprawling storytelling practices about sport, individual competitions, and famous athletes in press, photography, film, and radio. Even though television dominates the first instance of emplotment during the live transmission, there is no primordial authorship; sport’s intense competition and partisanship (and their national organisation) guarantee that there are contrasting narratives from the start.The forensic storytelling, as we have seen, is structured by sport’s layered seriality, which establishes a rich storyworld and triggers ever new connections between present and past events. Long before the so-called seasons of radio or television series, sport established a seasonal cycle that repeats the same kind of competition with different pre-conditions, personnel, and weather conditions. Likewise, long before the complex storytelling of current television drama (Mittell, Complex TV), sport has mixed episodic with serial storytelling. On the one hand, the 1908 Marathon, for example, is part of the long series of marathon competitions, which can be considered independent events with their own fixed ending. On the other hand, athletes’ histories, continuing rivalries, and (in the case of the World Cup) progress within a tournament all establish narrative connections across individual episodes and even across different seasons (on the similarities between TV sport and soap operas, cf. O’Connor and Boyle).From its start in the 19th century, the serial publication of newspapers supported (and often promoted) sport’s seriality, while sport also shaped the publication schedule of the daily or weekly press (Mason) and today still shapes the seasonal structure of television and sport related computer games (Hutchins and Rowe 164). This seasonal structure also triggers wide-ranging references to the past: With each new World Cup, the famous goal from 1966 gets integrated into new highlight reels telling the German and the English teams’ different stories.Additionally, together with the contingency of sport events, this dual seriality offers ample opportunity for the articulation of “latent seriality” (Kustritz), as a previously neglected recurring trope, situation, or type of event across different instalments can eventually be noted. As already mentioned, the goal of 1966 is part of different sections on the FIFA DVDs: as the climactic final example in a chapter collecting World Cup controversies, as an important—but rather ambivalent—moment of German’s World Cup history, and as the biggest triumph in the re-telling of England’s World Cup appearances. In contrast to most fictional forms of seriality, the emplotment of sport constantly integrates such explicit references to the past, even causally disconnected historical events like the ancient Greek marathon.As a result, each competition activates multiple temporal layers—only some of which are structured as narratives. It is important to note that the public evaluation of performances is not at all restricted to narrative forms; as we have seen, there are quantitative and qualitative comparisons, chronicles, rankings, and athletic spectacle, all of which can create transmedia intertextuality. Sport thus might offer an invitation to more generally analyse how transmedia seriality combines narrative and other forms. Even for fictional transmedia, the immersion in a storyworld and the imagination of extended and alternative storylines might only be two of many dynamics that structure seriality across different media.AcknowledgementsThe two anonymous reviewers and Florian Duijsens offered important feedback to clarify the argument of this text.ReferencesBarnfield, Andrew. "Soccer, Broadcasting, and Narrative: On Televising a Live Soccer Match." Communication & Sport (2013): 326–341.Boni, Marta. "Worlds Today." World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries. Ed. Marta Boni. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2017. 9–27."Das Archiv: das Wembley-Tor." Karambolage, 19 June 2016. 6 Feb. 2018 <https://sites.arte.tv/karambolage/de/das-archiv-das-wembley-tor-karambolage>.The Daily Mail, 25 July 1908.Davis, David. Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze. 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