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Interviewees‘ accounts of their lived experiences highlight the social context in which the enactment of the sport event volunteer role at the WFG‘08 took place and which was enhanced by the social interaction between the volunteers and other group of actors, e.g. the athletes and fellow volunteers:

―I was working in the internet café that was up on the first level, so you could see the whole Arena, you could see what was going on. And you got to meet… obviously a lot of people from different countries came in…. So you got to meet a lot of different people. There were a couple of guys from Germany who were really nice. They came in, chatted and they showed me their website they got about. They were trainers themselves within the fire brigade. And there was a huge contingency from Venezuela. Some of the Venezuelans taught me a few Spanish phrases which I think I have forgotten now.‖ (Dan, p.4, 162-169)

―You did get the chance to chat to other volunteers because like I said, we weren‘t constantly out with jobs. And there was the chance if you were sent out as a pair and quite often you were, because if you were taking heavy equipment, it needed two to do that. So you had a chance then while you were doing the drive to get to know the other person.‖ (Ann, p.4, l. 188-192)

The social interactions between the WFG‘08 volunteers and other people occurred both whilst volunteers were working as well as when they were moving around the venue:

―With the Firefighters Games… I met a lot of friendly people… not only when I was working. I also met people in passing and people said ―hello‖ and ―good- bye.‖ (Sara, p. 9, l. 405-409)

Whilst these social interactions were of fleeting nature for some volunteers, e.g. for Sara, for others it was the origin for social network expansion:

―And it broadens my circle of people. I‘ve met some really nice people that I am still in contact with and we‘ve been out and we‘re going out again. Because I don‘t work, I don‘t have interactions with people that work... so this sort of things is where I do meet people. My social network is expanding this way but in a nice way.‖ (Katherine, p. 3, l. 102-106)

Viewed from a role perspective, these findings relate to the concept of role-set theory (Merton, 1996) that depicts the inter-relationship of members within a specific sphere of the social structure based on their social statutes or position, i.e. the particular position that a person occupies in society brings with it a number of associated roles that links the individual role player to other people within the social system. Merton (1996) gives the examples of a medical student and a teacher. In the case of the former, the position of a medical student entails a role-set that links him to others within his institutional sphere who may be his teachers, fellow students, hospital staff and patients. With regards to the latter, the role-set of teachers relate them not only to their pupils and/or students and their parents but also to other people they work with such as colleagues and superintendants as well as to committees, e.g. assessment or programme validation boards and associations they may belong to such as the union for teaching

as the array of sub-roles that emerge from the script of a particular role within a play thus linking the performing actor with other actors in a play, also referred to by Wilshire (1982) as counter-roles. Relating this concept to the context of the sport event volunteers, the sport event volunteer performs in a number of sub-roles as he/she engage with those in counter-roles such as the event attendees incl. the competitors, superiors, members of the public and fellow volunteers.

Applying Merton‘s role-set theory to the context of this research allowed the identification of relationships between the WFG‘08 volunteers and groups of people that they came into touch with as a result of occupying the sport event volunteer role. For example, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Brigade in its position as the organizers of the WFG‘08 in cooperation with Liverpool City Council were mentioned in the interviews. Following the analysis of the interviews, the event organisers were imagined and referred to as ‗they‘ by research participants. They were represented by both the event staff including the a large numbers of event managers who were each in charge of a respective sport tournament or activity, and the event volunteer coordinators who beside recruiting, selecting, training and coordinating the volunteers, were in charge of a particular tournament activity. Findings suggest that depending on the scope of engagement, the level of contact between WFG‘08 volunteers and the event managers varied. For example, some interviewees were involved in different sport events thus coming across more than one event manager who had established contact with them prior to the event by sending out an information sheet about the event and volunteer activities involved. In cases where interviewees were newly assigned to events on the day or re-assigned at short notice, volunteers had no prior contact. However, all WFG‘08 interviewees had been in touch with one of the event volunteer coordinators who were in charge of the WFG‘08 volunteer workforce and who consequently could be perceived as the interface between the event organizers and the volunteers.

During the WFG‘08, all interviewees came in touch with the competitors and in some case the relatives of these as event participants. Depending on the activities that they had been assigned to, the extent of contact between volunteers and the competitors varied. Similarly, the level of contact between members of the public that attended the WFG‘08, and thus represent another counter-role of the volunteer‘s role-set, differed from one research participant to the other. As highlighted in Ann‘s account, the WFG‘08 volunteer role was also linked to other sport event volunteers. Whilst some interviewees

worked with people they were familiar with e.g. people from work, friends or family members, other did not know the volunteers they would work with or come across during the Games. Last but not least, contractors such as photographers and computer technicians were mentioned in the interviewees as well as members of the public. The latter group entailed people that either attended the event as spectator or came in touch with the event in another way, e.g. through the volunteers or the competitors, as well as the imagined community of the city of Liverpool who some of the interviewees referred to as ‗the people of Liverpool‘. Consequently, the role-set of the WFG‘08 volunteer can be seen as being of complex nature as the volunteer role is linked to a number of counter-roles as depicted in figure 7.

Figure 7: The role-set of the WFG‟08 volunteer

Others

Members of the public; ―people of Liverpool‖, relatives

event competitors

Fellow volunteers Contractors

e.g. IT technicians, photographers

Event organisers

represented by event managers &

volunteer coordinators

Event competitors

The WFG‟08 volunteer