 Welcome to the sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Dr. Victoria Silverwood, a sports researcher and academic at Swansea University in South Wales of the United Kingdom. As a trained criminologist, she has conducted research on violence and hockey and violence as impact on athletes. Let's get to it. Welcome Dr. Silverwood. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, thank you for joining us. I know it's later in the evening in the United Kingdom, so we appreciate your time. You have a PhD in criminology, which is the study of crime and criminal behavior. Violence in sports is often accepted in a sporting arena. So I'm curious, what does violence and hockey have to do with the study of criminology? Well, it's a strange one, and I understand why it would be slightly difficult for people to comprehend. I take quite a broad view of criminology to consider issues such as social harm and some of those sort of more broader concepts. So much of the work is quite sort of sociological rather than criminological. But I'm still, my focus is looking on the individual behavior of players who are working on any particular crime already focused. Well, that's interesting that you look a lot at the sociology aspect. I know from the criminal perspective, there are opportunities where violence and sports can cross the threshold into criminal behavior. So there's actually a really interesting sports model, the sports violence model from Dr. Michael Smith. And he sort of delineates violence into four categories. The brutal body contact, which is physical contact within the rules of sport. Another category is borderline violence, which is more violating the rules but more accepted by participants and spectators. There's the quasi criminal violence, which violates the rules and could possibly violate some criminal law. And then the most serious category is criminal violence, which causes severe physical harm or death and is likely going to involve some criminal sanctions. So according to the sports violence model, not all violence and sports is considered criminal. You mentioned you do a lot of sociological studies. There was a case where hockey player Marty McSorley did actually receive a one-year ban from hockey and was found guilty for assault with a weapon for slashing Donald Burshear with his hockey stick, causing him to sustain a serious concussion, triggering grandma's seizure. So what point does violence become criminal versus maybe just social harm? I'd love to say that there is a specific point. And just like the case with the typology that you talked about from Michael Smith, things don't actually neatly fit into categories. Then it's the same whether something's borderline violence or whether it's criminal or quasi criminal, according to his typology, isn't really as neat as that. And it's a little bit like that with crime and sport as well. So we really look beyond the definition of criminal and start looking at wider social behavior. So the courts have been quite reticent to get involved in cases of violence that have happened on the ice. McSorley is one of the examples of that. And he actually came over to the UK to play for a while when he was first banned in the States. And his sort of focus that the courts did decide that it was way beyond the rules of the sport and that they were going to see it as a criminal offence. But it's down to individual courts to decide whether they're going to accept the kind of legal principle that you can consent to violence by engaging in a violent sport, or whether they're going to decide that something has gone beyond that and look a little bit more about investigating it with a kind of focus of pursuing a criminal case. But they don't tend to like to get involved with things that they feel like can be settled within the sport. And so there are rules in sport, as you mentioned, and typically a player that violates the rules is going to be sanctioned. And hockey's been a little bit different. They've been a little looser with allowing violence in the sport. Can you tell us a little bit about their looseness in sanctioning the rules, enforcing the rules? I mean, hockey very much subscribes to the idea that you're going to have tension in a game if it's played in an enclosed arena and it's played at speed. And players are going to be hitting each other because the sport allows it, but the sport perhaps allows it because of the fact that it's in such an enclosed space and the speeds that the players themselves are travelling at. So it's tended to take on the view that contact is part of the game and that occasionally people's frustration with that spills over. And it kind of tacitly accepts the need for players to be able to resolve things with the form of a fight as well and being able to sort of almost self-police themselves weirdly with more violence. But that's been very much the argument that you're going to have a conflict if you're putting people in an enclosed space in a competitive situation. So allowing there to be violence kind of might help deal with that. OK, interesting. You've done some really interesting research. You've spent some time observing and studying professional hockey players. So in the UK, talk to me about your research on violence and hockey and what did you find? Well, actually, it's been 15 years now that I've been conducting research on this point of view from various sort of different angles from the spectators to people who sort of own the league and work in the league. And then moving on to kind of quite a deep understanding by spending a year with a group of players, with a team of players to get an understanding of their culture and their behavior and how they justify their use of violence. But also some of the other impacts the culture has bringing in the more sociological elements. It's been I've been very fortunate to have the access that I have had to the teams that have allowed me to do research, which has enabled me, even though I don't play hockey myself, certainly not professional male hockey player, which is the group that I research, but it allowed me to get a really clear understanding of them and their lifestyles and the impact it has on them. And by studying it for 15 years now, it's enabling me to see potentially what life is like for them as they retire and as they sometimes suffer some long term physical effects from the sport. You mentioned this justification that they have to engage in violence and sport. I think we need to talk about the role and position of enforcers. You were actually interviewed in a documentary called Ice Guardians where they highlighted this position that really is includes key players who their purpose is to start fights on the opposing team for the purpose of protecting valuable skill players on their own team. So historically, this has been a really accepted position in hockey. So what can you tell us about the role of enforcers and their justification for this valuable position in the sport? Yes, so the role of enforcer has been around for probably since hockey existed in the first place. I know certainly in the first organised professional game of hockey, there was a fight and that's something that's sort of been considered. And as players became more professionalised and faster, that role tended to fall on one or two players, often due to their size. And they began to sort of market themselves based on their ability to be able to protect their teammates by fighting a member of the opposition who may have challenged them or by sort of keeping the game clean in that respect. And it became a thing of sort of like a moral story or certainly an element that's interesting to people. The amount of movies that sort of discussed the role, sort of goon and slap shots and all the sort of different hockey movies have kind of bring that sort of element in and that understanding. But it's changed massively over time, you know, from building up to being something that was really very much part of the game in the last 15 years has dwindled sort of year on year in terms of what's accepted. So it's gone from where teams could keep somebody on the roster whose main purpose was to engage in that enforcer role to now what you see with teams having to have a couple of players who can take on that role if needed. But they're also playing a really important part in the defense or the offensive of their team as well. How recently has that trend been changing towards more technical skilled players and moving away from the enforcer position? There's been big changes since about 2010 or 2011. We had a sort of large number of things and it does depend on the league. So the changes started to happen in the NHL. And then that has kind of distilled down to players now no longer training for that role so much, no longer realizing it's part of the role and gradually seeing less and less. But many hockey players certainly they're surveyed regularly by the players organization and by other groups still talk about the need to have that physical presence. Even if the role of enforcer has gone because the players are also playing a skillful role. So in your view, if you're in your view of the top organization, the professional league, national hockey league is saying we no longer value this position that I'm hearing you say that trickles down to the minor leagues and maybe even the junior and youth leagues. But I think I'm also hearing you say it hasn't quite made it all the way through yet. So what are your thoughts on changing the role for the younger generations? I think it's a really difficult line and I think partly because there has been no clear message continually removing it. They introduced a rule called the instigator penalty, which was often used against enforcers and did hurt a team. But unfortunately, that's often used incorrectly because quite often the instigating act will be the nasty assault or hit or something that was went too far, which isn't called and the player that tries to deal with it is the one who is called. So we're still seeing problems in hockey that need to be addressed and no clear message that this is the end of sport. They're still an element where particularly we see in less traditional hockey states, so such as the more southern states, but also in other countries such as the UK, where there's still such a demand for that kind of role and that in sort of entertainment aspect of the sport as well. Also, while the NHL is trying to sort of what it sees as being to clean up the game to try and remove enforcers from the game, it's not actually getting rid of a lot of the harm in the game. And a lot of the injuries and the problems we're seeing with concussion weren't caused by the fights. They were caused by things such as the body checking, such as the jitima hit, the fact that the equipment protects the wearer and not the person who's receiving a hit from the player. So it's my understanding with the instigator position, the person who initiates the body check or whatever the initiates the action is not necessarily the one who gets the penalty. Is that correct? It's more the person that responds and retaliates to those circumstances, right? Is that correct in your understanding of the rule? Yes, it's definitely seen as them was trying to get rid of that sort of fighting element because they believe that to be the problem. But the fighting always most enforcers, most players who fight who also regular players will say that the element of being able to fight to being able to sort things out with the players is missing now because people are scared about how the referees are going to call the instigator penalty. In the documentary, the ice guardians, they indicated that the enforcers are there to protect their skill level players and that they protect them from injury. So essentially, does that leave all players wide open to be subject to more violence without the enforcer role in place? I think that's certainly the argument of a lot of players that actually, you know, there is an element of protection about having somebody who's physical on your line. You do see a lot of skill players getting really nasty sort of injuries, sort of really brutal checks, but also other things when the referee isn't looking. So despite having two referees and two linesmen on the ice, you're still getting people, you know, you missed hits. You're still getting people being missed when they've intentionally targeted a smaller or more skillful player. And you still have a need for them, the more physical players on the team to be able to stand up. But they worry about doing so because of how the instigator rule will be called. Let's talk a little bit more about the injury sustained. So Bill Daley, the National Hockey League's deputy commissioner was quoted as saying that fighting raises the incidence of head injuries and concussions, which raises the incidence of depression on set, which raises the incident of personal tragedies. So it's been reported that hockey players Derek Boogard died from a drug overdose and both Rick, right. And Wade Bellac died by suicide. So all of the three of these players played the role of enforcers in hockey. And so what can you tell us about the long-term effects that you've seen or researched regarding long-term harm to these athletes? I think the case of the three players known for their physical role who all died in the case of one summer is certainly overplayed. And I think that's been used to push through some legislation and some policy changes like the instigator rule without realising that those three cases are all individually very different and very specific. To blame fighting for the cause of the massive problem that the sport has with concussion is a bit of a red herring. It's a bit like throwing that one aspect that seems a little bit sort of atavistic. It kind of seems a bit like reminiscent of gladiators. It's easy to see that as being the problem, but you realise the majority of injuries that players are getting, the majority of players who are suffering with these concussions and head injuries, they're not occurring in fights. They're occurring due to the regular contact of the game, the speed of acceleration and deceleration, causing those concussions. So they are still rising massively, even though fighting is decreasing. So I don't say it's a good idea for you to go around sort of hitting someone in the head with a fist. I'm not saying it's going to be good for your head, but I think a lot of other play can actually be a lot more dangerous. And to assume that it's all down to fighting is a sort of misnomer. And players' shoulder pads can cause injury to others, as you mentioned, versus the athlete who is wearing the shoulder pads. So do you think that the equipment that they're wearing, the protective equipment should change? Yes, absolutely. I mean, the equipment is entirely there to protect the joints of the player. So for example, the elbow pads and the shoulder pads. So they're soft on the inside, as they need to be to absorb the pressure. But it means that they're very hard for another player to make contact with in regular parts of the game. So they certainly need to be looking at the facts. And with American football, for example, there's a lot of evidence now to suggest that the more equipment players wear, the more likely they are to be injured because they kind of feel they're a bit more invincible. So if you know you're wearing that really hard sort of outside, hard protection, then you're much more likely to engage in behavior that could be more injurious because you feel a bit more sort of infinitely powerful or more protected. But it's not protecting the people that you're hitting or the things that you're hitting. Let's revisit a little bit about violence in youth hockey. The USA Hockey Player Safety Initiative was put in place in 2012. And since then has reduced some unnecessary violence in junior leagues. In 2014, a law went into placing that the penalty for fighting in the US HL and North American Hockey League is a five-minute major, plus a 10-minute misconduct penalty. So do you think those type of enforcements or rule changes, is that enough to reduce the unnecessary violence in the sport? No, I don't think that's enough because I think what they're focused on then is reducing fighting. They're not actually looking at reducing violence. So they're assuming that all violence is fighting when that's not necessarily the case. So I would say absolutely youth hockey, we need to come down more and more on this problem of injury, concussion, fighting. We certainly need to stop children modelling the behavior that they've grown up watching in terms of normalising that in junior hockey. But I don't think that it's fighting alone that's the problem. I think there's a lot of evidence now to show that the contact of the game, just like the contact of the game in football in America, is shown to be, say, that as a Brit, so I don't want to say soccer. But in American football, that's not due to fighting. The head injuries there, they're due to the contact, which remains part of a contact sport and would be very difficult to remove from hockey. I hear you describing violence as something broader than just fighting in sports. So how would you define violence in hockey or in any sport? I think there's so many different types. And initially I looked at Smith's typology, the four areas, and I thought a bit more about bringing in some of the violence that might occur in youth hockey through hazing or initiation. I thought of bringing in the physical banter play that you see and even some of the spoken homophobia or misogyny and the kind of comments the players make to each other. But actually, for me, I think there's a lot of violence in telling a player that they have to go and put their body on the line and therefore potentially risk their future health. And there's a lot of players we see now developing massive problems with concussion, potentially CTE, certainly different forms of brain injury and massive mental health crisis that is also incredibly violent. But that violent is being perpetuated by the league and by the sport rather than by the individual players. So can and should violence be eliminated from the sport of hockey? So advocating, if you could boil it down for us and specifics, what should be done or if anything? You certainly can't get rid of violence in a violent sport and that it's very much the way that society works to want to be able to use your body in a physical way even if that would appear to be violent in another sort of different scenario. So we're never going to get rid of violence in sport. My sort of argument is that you need to have a broader definition of violence that looks at players' welfare, the looks at their health and safety as employees of their own teams and of the leagues and looks at the kind of broader harms. We definitely need to focus on hand injuries. You know, we are already, leagues are continually building in different sort of ways of looking at head injuries and understanding that recovery takes time. But it's very, very slow. We need to be speeding that up. And the best way to do that is to understand more about the players about themselves while they're playing and after they finish playing, which is what I aim to do in my research and many others do as well. What should players and players associations, parents, family, what should they be advocating for on behalf of the players who are involved in the sport? So in terms of youth players and their parents, that's where my opinions get a little bit more determined. I don't think that you, as a child under the legal age of 18, I don't think that you can consent to the level of violence that you get in some sports. And certainly until they're professionalised, I think that we need to be massively raising the age at which contact can happen in hockey as we're beginning to see in other games such as rugby and football. So I think, but for children, it's very different. But for adults, I think it's a case of just being aware that the head is something we're still learning so much about. And we need to protect the brain and we need to try and eliminate those releases of nasty head injuries and injuries the players aren't expecting. Do you think then that parents and coaches and the leagues should be responsible for violence in youth sports? I think at some point they will be. I think there will be cases that continue to emerge. But there seems to be a little bit of a sort of delay on how this comes about and that teams don't necessarily want to kind of think about things in advance and prepare for it rather they're waiting almost for the time that cases come across when saying that people should prepare. So what they should be doing now is thinking potentially are we going to put ourselves in a difficult legal position in the future? What can we put into place now? And certainly in lower leagues to have 13 and 14 year old children involved in full contact with their brains are developing and they don't really know what they're consenting to. That needs to sort of be something that's focused on. But more education about concussion about the brain and about the impacts of it are really what's needed. When youth are not able to fully appreciate the harm that may they may befall them by participating in the sport in the long term consequences. So what about outside of hockey leagues and teams? What can be done to decrease violence in the sport? I think it's about having a progressive kind of idea about what's appropriate. And it's something that we're seeing in a whole range of different sports. Certainly I've had some involvement in that kind of movement within rugby more recently as well. And looking to say that now we know what we know about the brain which is still a tiny amount. Now we know what we know. We need to be able to change things and not keep things that way because that's how it's always been. So it's about being aware that we can't keep things as they are when our knowledge of what's harmful changes and put these changes in place through communication, through proper science, through proper research to understand it and to communicate that effectively to players that is not trying to please them is actually trying to protect their safety. So I'm hearing you say more research. So scientific based research that can help support and provide information to make more educated decisions. What about the government or any other entity should there be any other third party entity that kind of steps in and says this is not acceptable. This is what needs to happen. And this is how it has to be done. Do you foresee any groups that can step in and provide that guidance or mandate? Yeah. I think at the moment we're lacking the mandate because we see even sort of high professional levels of hockey such as NHL. There's still an issue with things like concussion spotters being able to take a player out of the game and we see that across all international contact sport as well. But I certainly think there's potential for saying that teams can't continue to please themselves and leagues can't continue to please themselves in the same way. So we need to have external investigators, scientists, researchers, doctors, lawyers, a whole range of people come in and actually say this is what we need to do from the start and an independent body that can investigate that that's beyond the teams themselves. I think we all know that players necessarily aren't the best judge of whether they're ready to play because they're so desperate to play even when they're maybe not able to. And we need to have people actually say this is coming out of your hands. It's not your choice whether you're playing anymore. We need to focus on your safety and we need to change the structure of the game. But it doesn't need to be really combative. It doesn't need to be about being a killjoy. It just needs to be about grounding proper understanding of the sports culture of the society, of the law, but also of the medical science as well. So community of advisors coming together to help influence sport in a positive way. What other sports do you think could also benefit from such a community of advisors? Well, I'd actually say all sports because even when it's not about violence it's still very much focused on there's a lot we're becoming aware of. I mean, 10 years ago, we weren't aware of any of the problems with initiation or hazing. We weren't aware of the problems of the wide scale abuse in certain sports, particularly things like sort of gymnastics that we now very much aware of because of people being brave enough to come forward. So I think that all sports need some kind of ethics group made up of a variety of different people who don't have a vested interest in making money for the sport but very much a focus on that broader support for players. So one final question for you. I know you have a chapter in a book coming out powerplayed a critical criminology of sports. The book is now available on Kindle and will be available in hard copy this summer. So what can readers expect from your chapter that you contributed? So this chapter was a little different from some of my research but it was focused very much on the National Hockey League and it was looking to provide an understanding about harm more broadly. So a lot of players are blamed for some of the problems with the game and players are seen as being difficult because they may be seen as having problems with their mental health, with their behavior, their impulses, drug use, alcohol use and things. But actually when you boil down to it a lot of these are risen out of the game and the league is consistently making money from these players playing and there's potential elements of harm there. So the chapter really calls for us to consider a broader understanding of violence than just the violence that happens in sport but also look at the violence that happens outside of the players but throughout the whole league system and asks that we understand that as being violent as well and understand it as being important and worthy of research. Well, Dr. Silverwood, thank you for challenging the sports community to reconsider and redefine violence and expand their definition of harm and look for ways to make everything safer for athletes. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to talk. Absolutely. Thank you to our viewers for joining us today on the sports playbook. In two weeks our guests will be meteorologist Wade Stettner who will be discussing monitoring the weather for sporting events. So we will see you then. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.