3 Family Dynamics
Lynn: Michael was in the Middlesbrough Centre of Excellence from 10 years old until he was 13. Newcastle by this time were really interested in him, but he was really happy at Middlesbrough and said he wanted to stay there. And in this time, Graeme was coming through and doing exactly what Michael was doing but at Newcastle.
People were saying ‘Michael’s a good player. Graeme’s a good player too…’ and that kind of thing. I guess I looked at it slightly differently being their mum. It was a case of they just really loved playing football.
Michael:We played just at the top of the street really didn’t we?
Graeme: Yeah top of the street or the garden. When I was 5 or 6 our garden was the home of the block. It wasn’t big looking back now but at the time…
Michael: It was a 2 bedroom flat wasn’t it, but we had the corner garden and it was a decent sized garden.
Graeme: It was the biggest garden on the block.
Michael: Massive! Obviously now not that big… but you look back and it’s one of those where you get clouded, but it felt like every day we were in the garden playing football, kicking the ball at each other in goal. Just constantly playing football. It was that bad, my dad used to go mad because there was a big mud patch where the goal used to be.
Sibling Play
There is good evidence that families play a crucial role in socialising individuals into sport and shaping their sporting experience. We’ve already looked at parental support, but siblings can also play a vital role. A detailed examination of the career progression of 31 world class performers from a range of sports showed early signs of a competitive nature for all the athletes, with sibling play contributing to the early development of this characteristic.
“I love competing. I’ve got an older brother and my dad, you know, used to encourage me to beat my older brother. . . . so it was never easy. So yeah, from a sort of athletic perspective and on a needs basis, you know, there was a sequence of events through those early days that created in a way my personality now, and it’s ideal for a javelin thrower.”
“If his older brother – 2 years older - did 20 press ups, he would do 21. You know he was that type of kid and he was a competitor, he wanted to do one better.”
In his 1996 book, ‘Born to Rebel’, Frank Sulloway argues that the oldest sibling is more likely to conservatively follow his parents patterns of behaviour, with younger siblings forced to strive harder and do something different to catch their attention.
However, later born children also have the opportunity to play with and copy their older siblings. In sport this can be especially helpful and as in the quotes above, many top athletes report the beneficial effect of this. Although there has been no systematic study of birth order effects on sporting attainment, evidence shows that boys with older brothers are more likely to participate in school sports than those without.
Daniel Coyle, author of ‘The Talent Code’, points to the fact virtually all of the fastest sprinters were amongst the youngest in their families. They had to strive to keep up. Asafa Powell was 6th out of 6, Maurice Green was 4th out of 4, Carl Lewis was 3rd out of 4 and, guess what, Usain wasn’t the oldest either! It turns out that when you review all of the World’s fastest sprinters, they were born on average 4th out of 4.6 children.
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