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Description
In sport settings, players develop the ability to cooperate with teammates, develop self-control, display courage, and learn virtues such as fairness, team loyalty, persistence, and teamwork (Weis & Bredemeier, 1990; Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). However, anti-social behaviors, or what can be considered ‘unfair behaviors’, are also existent in the sport world, which harm the learning curve of, and relational dynamics between, players on a pitch (Lemyre, Roberts & Ommundsen, 2002). Different researchers have highlighted the need for more scholarly attention on the topic of fair play during games, and new methods, to be able to fully grasp what causes unfair behaviors during sports matches (Sezen, 2003; Gutiérrez & Ruiz, 2009; Sezen-Balçikanli, 2014).
Based on data collected through a newly developed real-time digital observation tool, this research analyses 201.873 individual match behaviors in 1488 Dutch amateur matches to understand the antecedents for fair play behavior during amateur sport matches. The data shows that more than 90% of the match behaviors can be regarded as fair play behaviors. In 43 percent of the matches, however, excessive forms of unfair behavior, like hitting, spitting, or punching, occur. Excessive unfair behaviors do not immediately turn a whole match into an unfriendly encounter. Only in 4 percent of the matches, excessive forms of match behavior were dominant during the entire game. Most often a game turns into an unfair dynamic if the referee intervenes too rigidly, the coaches of the home team do not show sportsmanship and/or the match seems to end into a draw.
