York St John and the beautiful game – Part two
The FIFA World Cup may be fading into memory but the English 2018-19 domestic season has swung into action and so we continue to explore the role football has played throughout the history of York St John with part two of our blog, York St John and the beautiful game.
If you missed part one, you can find it here
Alumni and Honorary Graduates
For some of our students university football was just the start of their association with the beautiful game, with some graduates going on to make very successful careers in the sport.
Dick Bate with then England Manager Fabio Capello, credit The FA
Dick Bate, who sadly passed away in April this year, dedicated his life to football. A member of the 1960s cup-final winning university team, Dick went on to be a world-renowned football coach. A recent article by FA Education Content Editor Peter Glynn includes a wide range of tributes to Dick from figures across the footballing community, including former England player and manager Howard Wilkinson. Howard said: “His reputation as a coach educator is world-wide. He’s worked on every continent except Antarctica and he’d have gone there to coach if he’d been asked. Good teachers aren’t as thick on the ground as you’d like; great teachers come along rarely. Dick Bate was a great teacher and a great coach. He loved the game, loved teaching, loved coaching and he loved developing his expertise.”
Matt Messias opens the new pavilion at Hull Road
Matt Messias is another York St John graduate whose footballing career took him all over the world. Matt first took up refereeing in 1982 whilst studying at York St John. Two years later, after injury put an end to his own playing career, Matt focused on progressing as a referee, and by 1992 he was working in the Premier League as an assistant referee. Eight years later he was a Premier League referee and, by 2006, when he retired from refereeing, he had refereed UEFA Cup games and World Cup Qualification matches.
In March 2007 Matt returned to York St John to officially open the new pavilion at the main York St John playing fields on Hull Road, pictured left with then Vice Chancellor Professor Dianne Willcocks.
Howard Webb MBE takes charge at Haxby Road
Matt isn’t the only Premier League referee with strong ties to York St John. In 2011 York St John awarded Howard Webb MBE an honorary degree as a Doctor of Health Sciences, In 2010 Howard became the first person to referee both the World Cup final and the Champions League final in the same year. Howard returned to York St John in 2015 to officially open the new sports site at Haxby Road, officiating a ceremonial match to mark the occasion.
Research
York St John doesn’t just excel at playing sport, we also excel at teaching it and a number of academic staff working for the School of Sport are involved in ground breaking research, some focussing on football.
Former professional footballer Dr Graeme Law is a lecturer in the Sociology of Sports Coaching at York St John University and has recently published his research into the effects of football transfers on players’ private lives. He interviewed 34 professional players from the top four English leagues and discovered that many of them felt that being transferred from club to club and moving around the country left their wives and children feeling isolated and lonely. In many cases these feelings of unrest at home were enough to affect the players’ performance on the field.
Dr Law has also previously published research into the impact of untrustworthy football agents on footballers’ careers, which found that some football agents can jeopardise players’ careers by demanding high sign-up fees or offering them to other clubs without their knowledge.
Dr Esmie Smith’s PhD research looked at academy footballers who aspired to reach the professional ranks, as well as studying footballers with a professional career. In particular, her research investigated the influence of perfectionism on psychological health, with a specific focus on the development of burnout and depression. She recently published a study which revealed that up to 33% of academy players experienced mild to major depressive symptoms, and that perfectionism was found to be a risk factor of burnout if players perceived that perfectionistic standards were imposed on them by others such as parents, coaches and teammates.
Thank you for taking to time to read, if you have any stories about football at York St John then we’d love to hear them! Do get in touch by e-mailing alumni@yorksj.ac.uk
