Preventing Violence In Sports: An Essay.

On-field Violence, Fighting, and Injuries

Discuss about the On-field Violence Fighting Injuries.

The prevention of Violence in the sports activities is a concept that has at present become inextricably associated with the sports events in near about each and every country. Violence in sports is referred to as physical assault which is intended at causing physical injury and pain to the other players (Felson, 2017). It involves the execution of the aggressive behaviours which harm other individuals and happens out of the set rules and regulations of sports. As per the recent survey, there has been an increase in the frequency and severity of violence in sports. However, although the violence in sports is often stem from the players, the other people like media, fans and coaches too have at present contributed to the outbreak of violence in the sports (Schneider, 2015). They make riots and contribute to public disturbance.

This paper is going to elaborate on the same- On-field Violence, Fighting, and injuries. It would research about this social problem of violence in sports and would examine the same with a detailed case study on it.

The research questions for this paper are as follows:

• Does on-field sports violence behaviour results in off-field violence?
• Can Fan violence be prevented?
• Do violence and fight in between the players in the field depicts superiority of one over other?

On 15^th June, 2011, a public riot broke out in the downtown core of Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada (Dawson & Davies, 2018). It took place right after the announcement that Boston Bruins had win over Vancouver Canucks in the game seven of Stanley Cup finals that won the Stanley Cup for Boston (Demers, 2015). It was reported that around 140 people were injured at the time of this incident. The Canucks jersey and the Boston Bruins flags were set to fire and some of the rioters again overturned some vehicles in front of the post office. People were jumping over these vehicles and they ultimately set that afire after it was over tuned (Franks & Evans, 2015). Around 4 people were injured, a total of 9 police officers were stabbed and more than 100 people were arrested and seized by the police men. After the riot, the people were eager enough to see the role that social media might play in fuelling up the entire riot. It indeed played a very crucial role both before and after the riot (Rizza, Pereira & Curvelo, 2014). By means of this and police investigation, it was found that a large number of people who were involved in the riot were under the age of 18 years. More than 880 charges were laid against 300 people and four years after the incident, the police finished their investigation on the case and end up with charges against 2 suspects (Dawson & Davies, 2018). Furthermore, about five million dollars of property was damaged, 140 non-fatal injuries were been recorded and several people were stabbed but yet the violence on the hockey field is still encouraged and glorified.

The Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of 2011

Apart from this, one of the more memorable yet significant fights till date is the fight that took place in the year 2010 when the wide receiver of Houston Texans- Tennessee Titans and Andre Johnson cornerback Cortland Finnegan engaged into a fight in the mid of the play. Both of them had been going at it all day long and in the play right before the fight, Andre Johnson pushed Cortland Finnegan and this made his helmet to come off. In the next play again, both of them were pushing each other and they pull their helmets off before making a few punches towards each other. Due to high tensions in this sport, most of the interactions end with the other teammates who were involved in it so that they could protect their teammate.

Sadly, there are many instances as such where the football players act violently on field.

Conclusion and proposed solution

Hence, it can be stated from the above discussion that violence in sports depicts aggressive behaviours against the sports’ rules and regulations. It has been found from the mentioned case study of Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of 2011 that majority of the people who were involved in the riot were belonging from the age range of below 18 years. However, not only violence takes place in hockey, but in each and every sport and mostly, it happens in football. It is also regarded as one of the most violent sports of all times. The players in the football field run around each other and hit each other every now and then and this makes the possibility of getting physical altercation of them on the field. From the second case study provided, it was because of the football players who act out very violently on field. Today the violent and aggressive fan behaviour has become a game day tradition that each and every sports security professionals are working hard to limit and to eliminate.

• In order to prevent such sports violence, it is very important for the players as well as the coaches to manage real situations. A coach could take the role of an arbitrator within the training process and could punish the illegal and unfair actions so that the players could learns how master these situations of extreme reactions as well as understand that the referee could also be wrong at certain situation.
• It is very important for the players to depict an image of non-violence in front of their fans. It is important for the fans to learn sportsmanship by emphasizing that sport is fun for playing and that the outcome or the result of sport could either be in favour or be not. They must understand that the result of the game is not the most vital aspect of the entire game. It is a game, one or the other has to lose. Hence, there is no point of fighting with each other and harming one another for the sake of a game. They must enrol within themselves a non-competitive sense of sports where there is not any score. They must be encouraged for recognising the talent of the opposition parties or players as well and must avoid unethical, aggressive and violent behaviours.
• Using law officials is the best in such cases. The police offices have the entire authority of stopping the happening of violence and for marinating a control of the sporting events. The existence of law officials helps in the prevention of sports violence by means of reminding the participants that there are some consequences for the violence.
• Handing out guidelines and communicating with the spectators about the issue of what the players consider to be the act of violence along with the ramifications of the violent actions. One of the major source of sports violence is regarded to be Hooliganism and that takes place when the fans take some action that could result in harm like rushing a field right after the victory.
• Furthermore, the players, coaches and the parents of the players must sign a code of sportsmanship in order to make sure that everyone who is involved in the very sport is responsible for prevention of violence. With the same, it must also define what could be the consequence of the very action that is against the code of sportsmanship. They must be ensured that each and every one is sure enough and understand when the line from aggressive play to the creation of violence has been crossed. It is also to note that the coaches and the parents must be a very good example of good sportsmanship for the young players.
• Furthermore, from the first case study it has been depicted that the majority of the participants of the very riot were below the age of 18 years. Hence, they must taught what sportsmanship is and must be understood that it is game and it should not be taken so seriously. It is to note that sport is one of the major source of enjoyment as can help in building up of self-esteem, nurturing social contact and teaching various lessons of life. The adolescent take their favourite players as their role models and hence, they react. It is natural but at the same time, it is also true that sports is just a source of enjoyment. It has been emerged with an objective of developing unity instead of creating violence.

References:

Dawson, S. E., & Davies, G. (2018). Who’s Policing the Crowd? A Typology of Officers Who Policed the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.

Dawson, S. E., & Davies, G. (2018). Who’s Policing the Crowd? A Typology of Officers Who Policed the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.

Demers, S. (2015). Riding a probabilistic support vector machine to the Stanley Cup. Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 11(4), 205-218. exclusion in sport. In Sport and Contested Identities (pp. 120-139).

Felson, R. B. (2017). Predatory and dispute-related violence: A social interactionist approach. In Routine activity and rational choice (pp. 103-125).

Franks, P., & Evans, L. (2015, July). Social media and trust in North American local government law enforcement. In Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Social Media 2015: ECSM 2015 (p. 157).

Rizza, C., Pereira, Â. G., & Curvelo, P. (2014). “Do-it-yourself justice”: considerations of social media use in a crisis situation: the case of the 2011 Vancouver riots. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM), 6(4), 42-59.

Schneider, C. J. (2015). Public criminology and the 2011 Vancouver riot: Public perceptions of crime and justice in the 21st century. Radical Criminology, (5), 21-45.