Roberts and Brodie’s Inner-City Sport: An undiscovered gem?

Abstract

It may seem strange in a book about exemplars of research offering a distinctive contribution to the study of sport to describe Roberts and Brodie’s Inner-City Sport as an undiscovered gem but that is, I think, how it should be viewed. This is not to say that the study and the book that emanated from it have been entirely overlooked but, rather, that the significance of Inner-City Sport has remained largely hidden from the eyes of those having most to learn from it; namely, the many students and practitioners of school physical education (PE), sports development and the like and, for that matter, academics in these fields. If I am correct in this assertion then the significance of Inner-City Sport cannot be measured, straightforwardly, in terms of its impact upon academic understanding, let alone professional practice. Instead, its significance lies in the impact it could have on students, academics and practitioners – specifically in terms of the light the study throws upon what might be termed the ‘recipe’ for becoming ‘locked-in’ to sport.