The dialectics of interpersonal relating in a sports team

Abstract It is well-established that amateur sports teams constitute a site of pervasive contradictory dynamics, with affable solidarity and camaraderie offset by ubiquitous competition between players. While these qualities have been identified in sport psychology and sociology, their in-situ accomplishment through players’ endogenous interpersonal relations has not yet been explored. In this article, I explore this issue, investigating how players in an amateur Australian football (soccer) team utilise conversational teasing to enact relational camaraderie and competition in subtle, nuanced ways. Examining naturally occurring data collected using ethnographic methods and analysed through a CA-informed lens, I demonstrate the endogenous co-constitution of these relational qualities, connected to the negotiation of teasing sequences. In this way, the in-situ accomplishment of camaraderie and competition as a relational dialectic, in line with the players’ dynamic interpersonal relationships, is elucidated.