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Female fan experiences and interpretations of the 1958 Munich air disaster, the 1966 World Cup finals and the rise of footballers as sexualised national celebrities

Pope, S.

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Authors



Abstract

The experiences of female sports fans have largely been neglected in academic research to date with socio-historical accounts focusing almost exclusively on male fans. Through an excavation of the sporting histories of female football fans this article aims to make one contribution towards changing this. Drawing on Glaser and Strauss’s ‘grounded theory’ approach, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with female football fans in England, aged between 50 and 80 years old. My findings begin by examining female fans’ memories of the 1958 Munich air disaster. I move on to examine female experiences and interpretations of the 1966 World Cup finals, before finally discussing the rise of football players in England as sexualised national celebrities. To conclude, I call for further socio-historical research to explore female experiences of football in earlier decades.

Citation

Pope, S. (2016). Female fan experiences and interpretations of the 1958 Munich air disaster, the 1966 World Cup finals and the rise of footballers as sexualised national celebrities. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 51(7), 848-866. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690214558284

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Nov 23, 2014
Publication Date Nov 1, 2016
Deposit Date Jan 14, 2015
Publicly Available Date Jan 21, 2015
Journal International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Print ISSN 1012-6902
Electronic ISSN 1461-7218
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 51
Issue 7
Pages 848-866
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690214558284
Keywords Fandom, Football, Footballers, Munich air disaster, Women, World Cup.
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1447253

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Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).





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