https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6953-484X
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ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, Croatian soccer clubs have been an important feature of all major Australian cities, and a number of regional towns, with the most significant of these being Melbourne Croatia and Sydney Croatia, both of which played in Australia’s now defunct National Soccer League (NSL) (1977–2004). Effectively barred from the new A-League, from 2005 to 2006, these clubs experienced marginalisation and discrimination similar to that experienced historically by Irish-Catholic clubs in Scotland. This article aims to explore both Croatian-Australian identity and narratives about exclusion through the perspectives of key Melbourne Croatia representatives.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Joe Gorman, The Death & Life of Australian Soccer (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2017), 118.
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3 Gerry P. T. Finn, “Racism, Religion and Social Prejudice: Irish Catholic Clubs, Soccer and Scottish Society - I The Historical Roots of Prejudice,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 8, no. 1 (1991b): 72–95; Bill Murray, The Old Firm: Sectarianism, Sport and Society in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984), 19.
4 Kieran James and Rex Walsh, “The Expropriation of Goodwill and Migrant Labour in the Transition to Australian Football’s A-League,” International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing 18, no. 5 (2018): 430–52.
5 James Skinner, Dwight H. Zakus, and Allan Edwards, “Coming in from the Margins: Ethnicity, Community Support and the Rebranding of Australian Soccer,” Soccer & Society 9, no. 3 (2008): 402.
6 Mark Christian, “Mixing Up the Game,” in Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, ed. Daniel Burdsey (New York: Routledge, 2011), 143; Paul Dimeo and Gerry Finn, “Racism, National Identity and Scottish Football,” in “Race”, Sport and British Society, ed. Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald (London: Routledge, 2011), 34.
7 Christian, “Mixing Up the Game,” 138–39; Dimeo and Finn, “Racism,” 35, 37, 38–43, 45.
8 Dimeo and Finn, “Racism”.
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10 Val Colic-Peisker, Migration, Class, and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and America (Urbana and Chicago: UI Press, 2008), 2–3, 67.
11 Colic-Peisker, Migration, 2–3, 12.
12 Colic-Peisker, Migration, 2, 12, 68.
13 Pave Jusup, group interview by the author, 11 January 2011, Melbourne, Victoria.
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18 Jusup, interview.
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21 Arthur Calwell, cited in P. H. Partridge, “Depression and War, 1929–50,” in Australia: A Social and Political History, ed. Gordon Greenwood (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1955), 406.
22 Partridge, “Depression and War,” 406–7.
23 Partridge, “Depression and War,” 408.
24 Partridge, “Depression and War,” 408.
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26 Daryl Adair and Wray Vamplew, Sport in Australian History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 31.
27 Gorman, The Death & Life, 18; Johnny Warren, with Andy Harper and Josh Whittington, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters: An Incomplete Biography of Johnny Warren and Soccer in Australia (North Sydney: Random House, 2003), 35.
28 Gorman, The Death & Life, 18; Chris Hallinan and Tom Heenan, “Australia, Asia and the New Football Opportunity,” Soccer & Society 14, no. 5 (2013): 758; Warren et al., Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, 36.
29 Hay, “Croatia,” 63, 64, 66 (footnote); Sydney United Football Club, Puma News, 8 November 1998, 12.
30 Gorman, The Death & Life, 24–25.
31 Joe Gorman, “Former Socceroo Captain Mark Viduka Will Never Forget his Roots,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 2015, https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/.
32 JUST means Jugoslav United Soccer Team.
33 Gorman, The Death & Life, 117–20; Roy Hay, “‘Those Bloody Croatians’: Croatian Soccer Teams, Ethnicity and Violence in Australia, 1950–99,” in Fear and Loathing in World Football, ed. Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 86.
34 Adair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History, 131.
35 Daryl Adair, “Australian Sport History: From the Founding Years to Today,” Sport in History 29, no. 3 (2009): 420–21.
36 Adair, “Australian Sport History”.
37 Jessica Carniel, “Sheilas, Wogs and Metrosexuals: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Australian Soccer,” Soccer & Society 10, no. 1 (2009): 80.
38 Hay, “Those Bloody Croatians,” 88.
39 Christopher J. Hallinan, John E. Hughson, and Michael Burke, “Supporting the ‘World Game’ in Australia: A Case Study of Fandom at National and Club Level,” Soccer & Society 8, no. 2/3 (2007): 283–97.
40 Gorman, The Death & Life, 3; Francesco Ricatti and Matthew Klugman, “‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions, Memories and Communities of Sydney’s Italian Migrants,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 5 (2013): 477.
41 Hallinan et al., “Supporting the ‘World Game’ in Australia,” 295.
42 Hallinan et al., “Supporting the ‘World Game’ in Australia,” 288.
43 Hallinan et al., “Supporting the ‘World Game’ in Australia,” 283.
44 Ricatti and Klugman, “‘Connected to Something’”.
45 Ricatti and Klugman, “‘Connected to Something’,” 470.
46 “In memoriam – Mirko ‘Rus’ Rastocić,” Melbourne Knights FC Official Website, 23 June 2019, https://www.melbourneknights.com.au/news/club-news/in-memoriam-mirko-rus-rastocic/.
48 Ange Cimera, interview by the author, 16 February 2010, Melbourne, Victoria.
49 Melinda Cimera, interview by the author, 11 January 2011, Melbourne, Victoria.
50 Joe Gorman, “The Joy of Six: Australian Football Club Name Changes,” Guardian, 25 August 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/sport.
51 Jusup, interview.
52 Ivo Goldstein, Croatia: A History (London: C. Hurst, 1999), 162.
53 Kova, interview by the author, 11 January 2011.
54 Ricatti and Klugman, “‘Connected to Something’,” 473.
55 Taimur Nazir et al., “Pakistani Support for Glasgow’s Old Firm Football Clubs,” Soccer & Society 23, no. 7 (2022): 784–804.
56 Ange Cimera, interview by the author, 16 February 2010.
57 Australian and British Soccer Weekly, 3 September 1996, cited in Gorman, The Death & Life, 203.
58 Kova, interview.
59 Jusup, interview.
60 Ange Cimera, interview.
61 Cited in Croatia Sydney Soccer Football Club Limited v Soccer Australia Limited, No. 3525/97, unreported 23 September 1997 (Einstein J), 71, cited in L. Nimac et al., More than the Game: 50 Years of Sydney United (Edensor Park: Sydney United FC, 2008), 202.
62 Melinda Cimera, interview by the author, 11 January 2011, Melbourne, Victoria.
63 Gorman, The Death & Life, 274–78, 295–96.
64 Renato Rosaldo, “Cultural Citizenship in San Jose,” PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17, no. 2 (1994): 57.
65 Jusup and Kova, interview.
66 Debbie Weekes, “Shades of Blackness: Young Black Female Constructions of Beauty,” in Mirza, Black British Feminism, 163–64.
67 Gorman, The Death & Life, 274.
68 bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (London: Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1989); Sara Ahmed, “‘It’s a Sun Tan, Isn’t It?’ Auto-biography as an Identificatory Practice,” in Black British Feminism: A Reader, ed. Heidi Safia Mirza (London: Routledge, 1997), 163–64.