SETTING THE NET

I arrive at the club and go into the changing rooms, everyone says hello and we are all catching up about what we have got up to over the weekend as we get changed into our strip (uniform). The socks are the hardest part to put on, this year they got new socks and they are so tight! After we are changed we head down to the field. (Start reading here for word limit) There is an art to putting up a soccer net, as you have to make sure the net reaches the ground on both sides of the goal, and the net must be attached to the top of the goal without any sags or holes that the ball can go though. The best way to insure you achieve this is to start at one side and make it all fit till you reach the other side. While still working together we lift up the goal and quickly tuck the net under the bar hoping our team mates won’t drop it on our fingers. This is all essential to the game to make sure that the ball is trapped when it goes in the net so there is no question a goal has been scored.

A key aspect of this part of the game is communication which we now know links to the framework of affordance but there also a link to Game theory. Which had its beginnings in the 1940’s through the works of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Christiansen and Townsend (2010) discuss the importance of communication and cooperation in the evolution of human capacities and how this helps communities to evolve (Christiansen and Townsend, 2010). This can be related to my soccer team and putting the net up through the communication of older members to younger members of how best to put the net up. The older members know from previous experiences that to put the net up quickly and successfully you start at one side and work along to the other. If the younger/newer team members were left to put the net up without such information it would have taken a lot longer and several attempts to put it up properly. The cooperation is obvious in the lifting of the goal while other team members tuck the net under it. Without this we wouldn’t be able to secure the net to the ground as sufficiently.

Reference list:

Christiansen, C., & Townsend, E. (2010). The occupational nature of social groups. In C. Christiansen & E. Townsend (Eds.),Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.