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Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport

31 May  2002 

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As the World Cup is about to kick off in Japan and Korea, how soccer
evolved from an English village game to the most popular and widely played
sport in the world.

Plus, a fresh look at home advantage. The World Cup has been played 16
times since it began in 1930, and the host team has been a
finalist eight times. New research suggests it’s due to testosterone! Soccer players’ testosterone levels surge to much higher levels before a home game than
before an away game.

And we take a look at the kind of ball the teams will be kicking, and what
the players will be wearing on their feet at the World Cup. The ball is a
brand new type that’s supposed to produce more goals and it’s made of
plastic. And to kick this, the players will be shod in kangaroo skin. It’s
a little known fact that Australia’s national symbol produces the ideal
leather for soccer boots.


Program Transcript

Amanda Smith: And of course we are getting into soccer this morning on The Sports Factor, with some curious features and innovations we’ll see at the World Cup when it kicks off tonight.

THEME

Amanda Smith: One of the things we’ll find out about is the new, space-age ball that’s being used at the World Cup. It’s called the ‘Fevernova’, and word is that it’ll result in more goals being scored. We’ll also find out a little known fact about what the World Cup soccer players’ boots are made from. Plus, how soccer evolved from a street game in English villages, to the world’s most popular and played game. That’s all ahead on The Sports Factor, with me, Amanda Smith.

Before that though, the well-known but little understood phenomenon of home advantage, in soccer and other team sports. Now the World Cup has been played 16 times since it began in 1930. And of those 16 times, the host team has won the Cup, or been runner-up on eight occasions.

The advantage that playing at home gives is actually acknowledged in the qualifying rounds for the World Cup. A goal that’s scored by the away team earns more qualifying points than a goal that’s scored by the home team; it’s the only example in sport that I know of that tries to even up the imbalance caused by home advantage.

Well now, some new research by British psychologists has come up with a rather surprising reason for what might be behind the home advantage in sports like soccer.

Nick Neave: We think that certainly a key factor in the home advantage is a biological factor and that is the male hormone, testosterone.

CHOIR – ‘Zadok the Priest’/APPLAUSE

Amanda Smith: Yes, it’s been discovered that soccer players have much higher levels of testosterone before a home game, than they do before an away game. Nick Neave is one of the psychologists from the University of Northumbria, in the United Kingdom, who’s come up with this finding, which is quite a departure, you’d have to say, from the other sorts of reasons that have been offered in the past to explain home advantage.

Nick Neave: Yes, it is. The home advantage has been well understood for many, many years, it’s a very powerful factor. Many, many teams, football teams, basketball teams, baseball teams, all perform better, on average, at home than they do when away. And sports psychologists have looked at this for many years and come up with several explanations. One of course is the fact that the home crowd can get behind a team and to really kind of stir them into action. We also know that the referees may have an unconscious bias towards the home team, and they may be swayed by the home crowd. Of course there’s also familiarity with the pitch, with the stadium, things like that. And also of course, if an away team has travelled for a considerable distance, then there’s going to be a disruption to their routine. So there’s been many explanations put forward, but none seem to have quite got it right, if you like.

Amanda Smith: OK, Nick, so why did you decide to look at testosterone in relation to home advantage in sports, in soccer in particular?

Nick Neave: Well we know that from research looking at animals that animals also have a home advantage. An animal defending its perceived home territory will fight harder, will often beat an animal that’s bigger and stronger. We know also that in animals the male hormone, testosterone, is related to dominance and aggression. And we thought that maybe there was link between these two things here, and maybe it’s the case that humans who perceive that they are defending the territory also show changes in this hormone level.

Amanda Smith: How did you test this out in human soccer players?

Nick Neave: Well to start with, we did a little pilot study with a Unibond league side, which is a feeder side to the football league, and we tested players, we measured their testosterone through spit, we got them to spit into a little cup just before they played a home game, and just before they played an away game, and we found a huge difference. The testosterone levels were much higher before they played the home game, than they did the away game. So this gave us a clue that there was something going on, so we approached a premier league side and they very kindly gave us permission to use their under-19 side and the 17 side. We tested the lads before two home games, before two away games, and also at two neutral training sessions, and exactly the same thing happened: big rise in testosterone before the home games. And very interestingly, we also asked the lads about the teams that they were playing, and they all said that one team that they played (and they played this team twice, of course home and away) they were a bitter local rival. And lo and behold we found that on the days they were playing the bitter local rival at home, the testosterone rise was even greater.

Amanda Smith: Yes, I can just imagine all that surge in teenage male testosterone. But how do you explain the higher levels of testosterone in soccer players at home games, compared to away games?

Nick Neave: We think that the players are perceiving that they are defending a home territory, and as such as we know from the animal literature, testosterone is involved in aggression, confidence, dominance, assertiveness, and so when they perceive that they are defending their home ground, they’re getting this kind of natural burst of hormones, if you like, that enables them to fight a little bit harder.

Amanda Smith: Well in the case of this World Cup, Nick, I don’t think either of the home teams, Japan or the Korean Republic, are seriously rated to take out the Cup; where does that leave your theory?

Nick Neave: Yes, I mean of course it does depend upon the level of the team that you’re looking at. Now when you get to the World Cup, you’re going to get teams that are obviously vastly superior to other teams. However, we would predict, even while I wouldn’t rush down to the bookmaker’s and put a large amount of money on Japan or Korea winning, we would maybe predict that they would do better than people would have expected them to do.

Amanda Smith: Now so far we have been talking about the link between testosterone and home advantage with male soccer players; what about women, Nick, does the same apply?

Nick Neave: Well it’s a very good question. Female animals also fight hard, and fight for their home ground, fight for their offspring. Now while females don’t have high levels of testosterone, they still do have levels of this hormone. We can measure it, and so one of the things that we’re going to do next year is to look at female soccer players and do the same kind of analysis. We certainly know that home advantage works for female teams. We looked at some of the statistics and it seems to be exactly the same as that for the males.

Amanda Smith: So how significant is testosterone, would you say, compared to all the other factors that have been thought to contribute to home advantage, in soccer and other team sports?

Nick Neave: That’s a very good question. We don’t yet know, because as far as we know ours is the first study in the world to actually look at this. So really, we’re kind of out on a limb here. We know that the other factors are important, and we’re certainly not saying that they’re not important. We think that an additional factor is levels of this male hormone, and we now need to sit down and do a lot more kind of research to try and tease out which of the factors has a major impact, if you like.

Amanda Smith: Nick Neave and the testosterone factor in the home advantage for soccer teams. Nick has just presented these findings in a report to FIFA, the world soccer authority, and to the International Olympic Committee. And he was speaking to me there from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the United Kingdom.

Now at the World Cup, the player who scores the most goals over the duration of the tournament is presented with the Golden Boot Award. But if we look at what the player who wins this award is actually wearing on his feet to kick these goals, well in all probability it’ll be an Aussie icon. According to Cameron Kippen, from the Department of Podiatry at Curtin University in Perth, and the author of ‘The History of the Soccer Boot’, all the World Cup players will be booted up in –

Cameron Kippen: Kangaroo skin, you just wanted me to say that with that Scottish accent. But it’s probably the best-kept secret in Australia, but they’ll all be wearing kangaroo skin.

MUSIC – Band version of ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’

Amanda Smith: And why is kangaroo skin being used now for soccer boots?

Cameron Kippen: Well the interesting thing is it’s been used since 150 years ago and even before then, for quality sports shoes. And the reason for it is that the kangaroo skin offers certain advantages. The kangaroo has no sweat glands, and there’s no, a lovely little muscle known as the erectorum pylori, or pilli, and that these would be flaws in other hides, whereas kangaroo skin is perfect, and so therefore there’s no weakness in it, and that means that it’s a perfect skin for covering feet and particularly feet that are being thumped by other things, such as other feet or balls. So it really does offer a tremendous protection. Not only that, there is elastin, and elastin’s a very special protein which actually gives elasticity to our skin, and the fibres run parallel to the skin’s surface, and all of that makes kangaroo skin extremely well-fitting and extremely hard-wearing. Kangaroo skin finds its way into all kind of elite sports shoes now. North American football for example, the most sought-after boots are actually made from kangaroo skin.

Amanda Smith: Why is kangaroo skin better than cowhide or other leathers, Cameron?

Cameron Kippen: I think there are two reasons why it’s become popular, apart from the fact that the World Cup has given it a focus. And the first is the fear which follows post-foot and mouth disease, and Mad Cow diseases in Europe, and that is that in terms of looking for a safe haven for a leather product, Australia stands out very much, because it is free of these diseases. And from that particular point of view, it would be a great marketing asset. So presumably that’s one of the reasons why it’s taken such a high profile in this recent past.

The other thing of course is that people are concerned that the national emblem of Australia are actually being mowed down in order to provide shoes for foetid football players, but in essence, what reputable firms do is that they will gather the kangaroo hides during the kangaroo harvest, which of course is monitored very clearly by Environment Australia, which is the wildlife protection agency, and what they’re then doing is that they’re doing it legitimately and of course the hides are then processed sufficiently well enough that they enter legitimately again, into the shoe industry.

Amanda Smith: Well there’s been a lot of controversy just lately about a cull of kangaroos that’s going on in Puckapunyal in Victoria, and I’m tempted to say that the skins from those culled could be used for soccer boots. But have any animal rights activists got on to kangaroos being used to make soccer boots?

Cameron Kippen: Oh, absolutely. Quite recently David Beckham, the English Captain, was severely reprimanded by a group of activists because he obviously endorses the product and he was accused of doing unnatural things to kangaroos. Of course it’s really nothing to do with him as such, he just happens to sport the shoes.

Amanda Smith: Although with David Beckham just now, the focus of attention is less on what his boots are made from, and more with the condition of the foot inside the boot.

Cameron Kippen: Well at present moment in time, it’s the most famous left foot in the world, and although I must admit I think I’d be more concerned with his hairstyle. However, there’s no question about the fact that here is one of the most coveted players that there is at the present moment in time, and yet a surreptitious injury from another player was sufficient to actually damage his foot, and I would contend that this clearly indicates that soccer boots haven’t changed that much from 150 years ago. They’re still there primarily to give the player advantage in traction in the ground, as well as some protection, but not very much from bangs and knocks.

Amanda Smith: What have been the major shifts in the design of the soccer boot?

Cameron Kippen: Well again, you can’t really get away from Australia, because the greatest innovations have really come from Australians, or an Australian pastime known as AFL. One of the preoccupations that footy clubs have had, and that’s the injuries that are recorded in their key players that involve knee and twists and turns, and that what they did was they very cleverly looked at the reasons for this and found that the stud formation, or the stud design, or cleat design, as it’s known, referred to, appeared to be critical in terms of the way that it converts rotational forces up the leg. So as the player either takes off and learns as they jump up and come down, there is an apparent twist against the ground, and unless that’s distributed in an appropriate way, then what can happen is that the very stud design that you stand on, can actually accelerate the problem, and to that effect, what’s happened is that many designers are now taking this on board very much. And changing the whole design of the soccer boot.

Amanda Smith: But whichever player in this World Cup ends up winning the Golden Boot Award, Cameron, in all likelihood they’ll have kicked those goals with the help of our Aussie icon, the kangaroo?

Cameron Kippen: Yes, although I would have to say no boot in the world has scored a goal yet, it’s the foot inside.

Amanda Smith: So the Socceroos might be absent from the World Cup, but kangaroos will be there?

Cameron Kippen: Absolutely, I couldn’t have said it better.

MUSIC – ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’

Amanda Smith: Well while the players at the World Cup will be wearing boots made of kangaroo leather, the ball they’ll be kicking won’t be made of leather at all. The new ball, making its debut at the World Cup, will be made from synthetic materials, and gas. And Cameron Kippen says if it does what the manufacturers intend it to do, it’ll change the nature of the game.

Cameron Kippen: Well the Fevernova, which has been produced by Adidas for the FIFA World Cup, is special in that it’s like a sponge rubber that’s contained inside it, and it’s got a plastic coating. Up until this moment in time they really preferred to have leather as the covering, and air inside the bladder. Whereas this one’s quite different. And what it does is because it’s got these individual cells of inert gas, when you kick it, it resists the compression and converts the energy into a better flight path. So that one assumes that this ball will actually be able to go where the player wants it to go, or indeed go where the goalkeeper doesn’t want it to go, and that’s behind the goal. It does, and behaves similarly to a plastic ball, which of course has never been accepted at the professional level, but many amateurs will actually play and prefer to use a plastic ball rather than a leather ball. And what that means is that the intention I think is to make the game far more spectacular for those who are the spectators and the television audiences that are anticipating watching this championship, because the ball will just be able to bend and do all sorts of things. As I understand the weather predictions are such that there may well be rain, and if the grass is kept short, then that ball will become extremely slippery and be a nightmare for even the most adept goalkeeper. So the intention I think is really to entertain.

Amanda Smith: Now just tell me more about what this ball is actually made from? You mentioned inert gases; it all sounds very high tech.

Cameron Kippen: Well it’s not really, it’s just like sponge, but it’s not rubber, it’ll be synthetic materials, and each segment is an inert gas, and the reason why they have inert gas is because it doesn’t have any chemical reaction with the material that it’s made from. And one of the beauties of gas is you can’t pass pressure through it, and so therefore when you kick the ball, then that converts into a spin, and of course this is the thing that actually hoodwinks the defence or the goalkeeper, is that the ball you expect to come in a straight line, if it starts to bend, then all sorts of crazy things can happen: it can be deflected off a defender and so it makes for a very spectacular looking flight pattern, and this is the thing that the South Americans have perfected, and subsequently the lesser able players can now look as though they’re good as. The other thing of course is that many of the players will be wearing boots which again it’s an Australian innovation, actually have a rough surface on the top, and it’s Craig Johnston, the Australian who played for Liverpool, who perfected this and convinced the shoe companies to develop the Predator. And what that does is that again adds greater spin to the ball. So everything appears to wish to have a much more spectacular game, for obvious reasons, it’s the most famous and watched spectacular on the globe at this moment in time.

Amanda Smith: So is this new ball, this Fevernova, potentially at least, because we haven’t seen it in action yet, but is this another example of technology changing the nature of a sport, in the way that the changes in the design and materials for tennis racquets have made for a much faster, more powerful game there, which it must be said, many people think has been to the detriment of top level tennis. But is this new ball similarly going to change the way soccer looks and is played?

Cameron Kippen: I would think so. There’s no question about the fact that one of the criticisms about the world game is that there’s not enough goals, and so therefore this sleeker, faster moving and slippery ball should effectively optimise the number of goals that are scored. Obviously for afficionados like my self who like the game of soccer and the strategy, it doesn’t really matter how many goals are scored, it’s the way that the game’s played. But for others who are new to the game, seeing more goals is good idea, and the ball can do that. There’s no, again, question of doubt in fact that from health and safety there has been much concern levelled at the idea that head contact can and does have detrimental effects. This is not something which would be necessarily agreed from the professional end because obviously they’ve come through literally the hard knocks brigade, and that they’ve perfected it. But for young players coming in, young schoolkids coming in, there is major concern from parents who don’t want the children to have damaged brains as a result of heading a ball. So this softer approach to the ball I think will have a major effect there, and as a contribution from the company I’m sure, to reassure people who invest in their products, that they have the best health intentions, at least, to the forefront. And so subsequently again the circumstances are if you change the ball, you change the game.

Amanda Smith: Cameron Kippen, and the new ball for a whole new ball game. Fevernova makes its first appearance at the World Cup tonight, when France plays Senegal.

Now although the World Cup has been held since 1930, this year is the first time it’s been held in Asia, and the first time it’s been hosted by two countries: Japan, and the Republic of Korea.

Thirty-two national teams have qualified to compete in the 2002 World Cup: from Asia, Europe, The Americas, Africa, and the Middle East. But not from our own region, Oceania. Still, we won’t go on about that any more.

Now how did soccer, Association Football, come to spread so successfully around the globe? Soccer, like rugby and cricket, is an English invention. But in status and popularity, soccer has spread much further round the world than either rugby or cricket have. So why is this? And how did this game evolve, in, and then out of, the British Isles? Bill Murray, another Scottish-born Australian, is the author of ‘The World’s Game – A History of Soccer’.

Bill Murray: Well the codified the game in 1863 when the Football Association was founded, and that Association through to the present day has been the dominant force in football.

Amanda Smith: What was around before that?

Bill Murray: Well, there were all sorts of street games, mob games, football in some form or another, has been played in just about every country in the world. In Asia, China, Japan, various other parts, pre-Columban America, it was played in Russia, all through Europe, some form of football has been played. In Britain of course, we’re familiar with the mob game.

Amanda Smith: Tell me about that.

Bill Murray: Well village against village; 100, 200, 300 people, sometimes one part of the village against the other. One ball, the game played all day, the goal could be a mile apart, very often in conjunction with the Harvest Festival, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, the harvest coming in, or just before seeding, but to do with the seasons.

Amanda Smith: And we’re talking Middle Ages here?

Bill Murray: And now we’re talking up to the 19th century. Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery, equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.

With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields.

Amanda Smith: Yes, so tell me about this kind of evolution or transformation that goes on from a mob street game to something that we would recognise now as soccer.

Amanda Smith: That comes in the 1840s, ‘50s and ‘60s where you get a new middle class coming into being who want to continue the games they played at school, find, in the case of the English if they went to Harrow or Eton, Old Etonians when they went to Cambridge or Oxford, wanted to continue playing football, found that they had different rules. So they’d have to come together and get some sort of rules that were acceptable to all of them. In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code. Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that, was still not known as rugby. But the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling. So the features of the FA at that stage were very limited handling and the offside rule. But no running with the ball. You could handle it, but not run with it.

By 1870, ’71, handling in any form, apart from the goalkeeper, which of course is another feature of soccer, as it would be known from the turn of the century, is the fact that one person has a totally different role from everyone else in the team.

Amanda Smith: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?

Bill Murray: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’.

Amanda Smith: Right, well let’s talk about the way the game spread throughout the world. So you’ve got the formation of the Football Association in 1863, with Scottish, Welsh and Irish equivalents formed in the following ten years or so; how did the game then spread so successfully to the 178 countries that play it now?

Bill Murray: Engineers, British commerce. I mean this is the British Industrial Revolution. Soccer has been called Britain’s most enduring export, and I think it’s true. I mean as they sent out ships, and iron and rails and locomotives, they took with them Scottish engineers. When they arrived in these places, or sailors in ships, the army or the navy, and missionaries. Now one thing that the Brits took everywhere they went in addition to their tools of trade, was a ball, and as soon as they arrived on terra firma, they would organise a game. The locals would look on, see what was happening, get involved, and then the British then might condescend to play a game with the locals, or the Anglophiles in that community or the expatriates would join in and eventually would found their own team.

Amanda Smith: So why did soccer spread further round the world, particularly through Continental Europe and South America more so than rugby or indeed cricket?

Bill Murray: Yes, one of the great ironies, if you like of soccer, is that it is far and away the most popular football code in every country in the world, except the former English-speaking colonies. And if you take in distance from the original connection with Britain, the United States is the least, or has been the least soccer interested. Canada, Australia, white South Africa, not black South Africa by the way, because soccer is the most popular game in South Africa, but not with the whites, and New Zealand. In the English speaking colonies, you had a much bigger middle class. You had welfare people, you also tended to have bit more space in the US or in Australia, so rugby could be taken up or a game with wider spaces and so on.

Soccer is a popular game. It’s the economic democracy of soccer. Anyone can play soccer. Physically you don’t have to be big, even the ball, literally can be made up of a sock filled with paper. The appeal of soccer ultimately is to people in hard grounds, in spaces restricted. Soccer can be played so simply in so many ways, and despite the weather. In the heat, in the cold, and the ice and the show, soccer can be played where other football codes find it difficult.

Amanda Smith: Bill Murray, who’s the author of ‘The World’s Game – A History of Soccer’. And here’s to the whole month of soccer ahead of us from the World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

CHEERS/APPLAUSE

Amanda Smith: The Sports Factor is produced by Maria Tickle, and I’m Amanda Smith.


Guests on this program:

Bill Murray - author of "The World's Game"
Cameron Kippen - Department of Podiatry, Curtin Uni Perth
Nick Neave - Psychologist, University of Northumbria (UK)

Publications:
The World's Game
Author: Bill Murray
Publisher: University of Illiois Press - ISBN 0-252-06718-5

Presenter: Amanda Smith
Producer: Maria Tickle
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