Croatian-Australian Identity as Revealed through Soccer Club Support: A Case Study of Melbourne Croatia Soccer Club (Melbourne Knights)

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Anticommunism
• Australian soccer
• Croatian-Australians
• ethnic identity
• Melbourne
• Melbourne Croatia
• Melbourne knights

Croatian as a Subordinate Ethnic Category

Since the 1960s, if not earlier, 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).¹ Effectively barred from the new A-League, from 2005 onwards, however, these clubs experienced marginalisation and discrimination similar to that experienced earlier by Irish-Catholic clubs in Scotland’s Central Belt. This article aims to explore both Croatian-Australian identity and exclusion through the lens of Melbourne Croatia. My ethnomethodological research has included in-depth interviews with several key participants: the president of Melbourne Croatia, Ange Cimera; his daughter and club secretary, Melinda Cimera; and three leaders of the MCF (Melbourne Croatia Fans) ultras group, Pave Jusup (real name), Kova and Sime.

While the instigators of the new league articulated several possible motivations for cancelling the NSL and starting the A-League in 2005–2006, removing ethnic clubs from the league was not officially one of them. However, I highlight here the sadness, loss and anger felt by players and personnel at Melbourne Croatia, who felt powerless and marginalised by both the end of the NSL and the prevailing discourse of the period, which stigmatised “ethnic” clubs as part of a corrupt and failed multicultural past. While internationalisation and marketability no doubt also motivated the A-League, only Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney Wanderers have experienced undoubted successes in terms of the crowds they attract, with Adelaide United and Sydney FC remaining borderline.

Gerry Finn has documented extensively the difficulties and discrimination likewise faced by Irish-Catholic football clubs in Scotland, including Glasgow Celtic, Edinburgh’s Hibernian, and Dundee United (formerly Dundee Hibernian).² In the case of Dundee United, for example, Finn reveals how the Hibernian name was unattractive and unsettling to Protestant Scots, and it was publicly acknowledged that, unless they dropped their name, the club would struggle to gain widespread support or Scottish Football Association assistance. The new directors were also keen to drop the Hibernian name and its Irish associations. The need in Dundee to sustain another big club, capable of being an effective rival to Dundee FC, was a motivation behind the broader community accepting Dundee United (after the name change). Finn points out how the Irish-Scots showed their willingness to engage with the broader community by forming soccer clubs rather than sticking to traditional Irish sports such as Gaelic football. They were forced to form their own clubs because of the hostility they experienced due to Protestant Scots’ social prejudice. Finn rejects Bill Murray’s claim that Hibernian was the first club to bring “sectarianism” into Scottish football and that the Rangers’ unionism was a response to Celtic’s success.³

A similar story can be told about Croatian soccer clubs in Australia, which, due to their ethnic roots, are effectively barred entry to Australia’s A-League. Unlike the case of Dundee United, however, which was accepted once it removed all ethnic associations from its name, Melbourne Croatia and Sydney Croatia (like the other “ethnic” clubs from Greek and Italian backgrounds) rebadged themselves as Melbourne Knights and Sydney United—but all to no avail. As South Melbourne (formerly South Melbourne Hellas) found out, when it applied for A-League membership and was rejected, merely having a history of being formed by Greek men 60 or 70 years ago was enough to be tarred eternally with the “ethnic club” brush by the Anglo-Australian “mainstream”. Football Federation Australia’s (FFA) decision to ban clubs with even an early “ethnic” (non-Anglo) history from the A-League has so far escaped serious scholarly criticism (other than a 2018 article by James and Walsh) and needs to be interrogated for what it is: discrimination.⁴

Words such as “ethnic” and “non-ethnic”, “mainstream” and “non-mainstream” reflect the more sophisticated style of contemporary racism. I will, however, use these terms here, despite their problematic nature, because they figure prominently in prevailing discourses and have serious practical implications. Taking a different approach, James Skinner, Dwight Zakus and Allan Edwards have asserted: “It is necessary for the FFA to continue to nurture the historical relationship between soccer and its ethnically-based origins, but not to the detriment of mainstream community support.”⁵ These authors use the words “mainstream” and “ethnic” in a non-ironic sense where they appear to believe in the ideas behind the words and also the notion that “mainstream” people should be given taken-for-granted priority over “ethnic” people. Significantly, the biological basis for separate “races” has been thoroughly discredited.⁶ However, despite this reality, many people think and act as though race remains a valid category, which carries real consequences.⁷ For example, returning to the Scottish case, Paul Dimeo and Gerry Finn argue that Irish-Catholic Scots were stigmatised as being religiously and racially inferior by the majority Protestant-Scots in Glasgow, so the Irish-Catholic immigrants were placed in the category of a subordinate racial classification (within “whiteness”).⁸

One reason the Anglo-Australian “mainstream” has so easily been able to achieve this sort of discrimination against “ethnic” clubs has been the alleged fascist tendencies of the Croatian clubs, which were first formed as “countries-in-exile” by anticommunist émigrés who favoured an independent Croatia. The honour paid to World War II Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić (1889–1959), the last leader of an independent Croatia, prior to the 1990s, was seen as convincing evidence of these clubs’ fascist inclinations.⁹ Colic-Peisker explains how the prewar Croatian immigrants were pro-Yugoslav identity, whereas those who arrived in the 1950s through to the early 1970s were primarily Croatian nationalists and anticommunists; these became the bedrock supporter base for Melbourne Croatia and Sydney Croatia.¹⁰ They were largely working class and learned English on the job and for the job, and they generally stayed within their Croatian communities.¹¹ Lastly, the late 1980s and 1990s saw a wave of professional immigrants who could pass the Australian government’s migration points test due to their English skills and professional backgrounds.¹² The soccer tensions tended to involve the first and second groups.

Before an independent Croatia re-emerged in the 1990s, Pavelić was perceived to be the only counter-figure the postwar émigrés had to the Yugoslav communist leader Tito. In fact, to the surprise of many, and the disdain of some, Tito’s picture hung behind the bar at the Perth (Western Australian) soccer club, Spearwood Dalmatinac, for many years, as an unambiguous sign of Yugoslav hegemony. MCF leader Pave Jusup told me that the attraction of Pavelić was that he was the last leader of an independent Croatia, rather than fascism.¹³ As sports historian Roy Hay writes about the 1950s and 1960s, “the fact that many of the early post-war [Croatian] immigrants were fervent anti-communists does not necessarily mean that they were completely susceptible to any kind of right-wing or fascist political appeal”.¹⁴

The Australian national security body, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), estimated that approximately 50 Croatians residing in Australia in 1978 were prepared to engage in acts of violence, while another 200–300 would be sympathetic and willing to assist.¹⁵ These are not large numbers, given the size of the Croatian communities in Australia at the time. In the 2016 Census, 133,268 persons (0.6%) identified themselves as having Croatian ancestry. The allegations of fascism should not distract us from the fact that the Melbourne Croatia community is largely based in Melbourne’s working-class western suburbs, and is powerless and marginalised in the face of discrimination from soccer’s regulators.

The trial against the “Croatian Six”, six Croatian-Australian men, for conspiracy to bomb a Yugoslav travel agent and several other Sydney locations in 1981, was widely perceived to have produced an unjust guilty verdict. John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley, for example, authors of The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO, claim that ASIO would or should have been aware of the UDBA’s involvement, UDBA being the Yugoslav communist regime’s internal security unit. The UDBA (from “Uprava državne bezbednosti” in Serbo-Croatian) was very keen to discredit the Croatian émigrés. Blaxland and Crawley state directly their opinion that the Croatian Six were “wrongfully convicted”, suggesting that while ASIO was not directly to blame, the Croatian Six case “in hindsight demonstrated a lack of insight”.¹⁶

This article aims to explore Croatian-Australian identity through a series of interviews I conducted with senior figures at Melbourne Croatia. A second aim, linked to the first, is to outline the discrimination that both Melbourne and Sydney Croatia have faced from the Anglo-Australian “mainstream”, including the cancellation of the NSL, which forcibly removed both clubs from their rightful positions in the nation’s top tier.

From the perspective of British-Arab activists in the UK, Caroline Nagel and Lynn Staeheli have studied the processes associated with integration,¹⁷ coming to the conclusion that this group views interaction with the host society as essential, but rather than looking at integration as “social cohesion”, they perceive it as a discourse between diverse but equal communities occupying the same geographic space. MCF ultras similarly regard the cancellation of the NSL and the start of the A-League as “the Poms taking over the game”.¹⁸ They recognise Anglo-Australians as just another ethnic group fighting for its place under the sun within contemporary Australia. Within this perspective, only Indigenous Australians can claim special status, whereas Anglo-Australians are just a community (“the Poms”) who are no more or less important than the Croatian-Australians. This viewpoint contradicts the “Australian multicultural agenda”, which, according to John Hughson, has never treated the English as “ethnics” or as an “ethnic group”.¹⁹

My positionality as a researcher is relevant here. Like geographer Lily Kong, I have had exposure to, and some identification with, at least two cultural backgrounds and geographic settings.²⁰ I am a white Australian of Irish descent who moved to Scotland seven years ago after three years spent in Fiji. I grew up in Perth in the 1970s and 1980s, when Perth had no resident NSL team. Perth received hour-long SBS NSL highlight programs on a weekly basis, and in 1990 I began to identify as a Melbourne Croatia supporter during one of the seasons in which Francis Awaritefe and Alan Davidson were stars for the club. Based in Perth, I attended no NSL matches until Perth Glory was admitted to the NSL in the mid-1990s. I remain a Melbourne Croatia fan today, but I am not ethnically of Croatian heritage, as far as I am aware.

In this article, I attempt to answer the following research questions: What does a study of interviews with senior figures at Melbourne Croatia reveal about Croatian-Australian identity? How has Croatian-Australian identity changed or been reinvented after the demise of communist Yugoslavia? And what do the cancellation of the NSL and the introduction of the A-League tell us about the discrimination and marginalisation faced by “ethnic” soccer clubs and their supporters?

Historical Background

Just after World War II, Australia “reinterpreted” the White Australia policy to admit Southern and Eastern Europeans because it was perceived that their labour was needed for postwar reconstruction and for the expansion of industry. As Arthur Calwell, immigration minister in the first Chifley government, said: “If we are to take our rightful place in world affairs; if we are to ensure the future security of our nation, our population must be greatly augmented, both by natural increase and by planned immigration. … The days of our isolation are over.”²¹ The government attempted three strategies: firstly, an agreement with the British government for assisted migration from Britain (the migrant would pay only £10 per person); secondly, an agreement with the international refugee organisation, signed in 1947, that the organisation would provide shipping costs for displaced persons while the Australian government would pay £10 per head; and thirdly, agreements with European governments, including Holland and Italy.²²

The overall target of 200,000 immigrants per year was never reached, with the 1950 number of 174,000 representing the peak. Between 1947 and 1952, 700,000 migrants arrived in Australia, with government financial assistance. Half of these were British, and half were mainland Europeans. Historian P. H. Partridge wrote in 1955 that “most [Anglo-]Australians have always tended to patronise, perhaps even to be contemptuous of, non-British peoples, their institutions and ways”.²³ Despite this comment, Partridge asserted that the absorption and integration of thousands of mainland Europeans “produced very little overt tension” because “most [Anglo-] Australians appeared to be caught up by the interest of a bold and novel experiment”.²⁴ It is better to say that tensions existed, but serious violence between Anglo and non-Anglo migrant cohorts was relatively rare compared to many overseas locations.

By the early 1950s, if not earlier, soccer clubs revolving around a particular ethnic community—such as Greek, Greek Macedonian, Jewish, Hungarian, Italian or Yugoslav—had been formed in all major cities.²⁵ These clubs began to outshine their Anglo-Australian counterparts, both on and off the field, which created a major dilemma for the often prejudiced Anglo-Australian administrators of the sport.²⁶ In fact, it was only a few years before that the Anglo-Australian clubs were unable to compete against the “ethnic” clubs. In Sydney, Jewish-backed Hakoah was barred from rightful entry into the First Division (i.e. Premier League) of the New South Wales Soccer Association (NSWSA).²⁷ Because of this exclusion, a rebel association, the New South Wales Federation of Soccer Clubs (NSWFSC), was established in 1957.²⁸ Anglo-Australian clubs, Canterbury and Auburn, who could see which way the wind was blowing, switched to the rebel association. The European-backed clubs were excelling on and off the pitch. St George Budapest made a significant move by signing promising Anglo-Australian youngster Johnny Warren, from Canterbury, for the 1963 season, and then, in 1964, the English-born Johnny Watkiss left Canterbury for Italian-backed APIA.

Following immediately in the wake of the Italian-backed clubs were the Croatian-backed clubs: Adelaide Croatia was formed in 1952; Melbourne Croatia in 1953 (as Croatia); Croatia (Geelong-based) in 1954; and Sydney Croatia (as Croatia) in 1958.²⁹ Adelaide Croatia appointed the Indigenous Australian activist Charlie Perkins (1936–2000) as captain and coach for the 1959 and 1960 seasons, which suggests at least some early openness to diversity at that club.³⁰ Other Indigenous players in Perkins’s team were Gordon Briscoe and John Moriarty.

SC Croatia of Melbourne merged with the Ukrainian-backed Essendon Lions to form Essendon Croatia in 1974.³¹ SC Croatia paid Essendon Lions $25,000 to take over the club and their facilities at Montgomery Park, Essendon. The takeover was a back-door way to re-enter Victorian Soccer Federation (VSF) competitions. The reason for the ban from all competitions was a pitch invasion at an SC Croatia-versus-Hakoah match on 30 July 1972. Essendon Croatia later became Melbourne Croatia, and then, in the 1990s, Melbourne Knights.

The original NSL clubs, which played in the inaugural 1977 season, were Adelaide City (Italian), Brisbane City (Italian), Brisbane Lions (Dutch), Canberra City (non-ethnic), Eastern Suburbs (Jewish), Fitzroy (Greek Macedonian), Footscray JUST (Yugoslav procommunist), Marconi (Italian), Mooroolbark (English), South Melbourne (Greek), St George (Hungarian), Sydney Olympic (Greek), Western Suburbs (Anglo-Australian), and West Adelaide (Greek).³²

Although the ASF was nervous about admitting Croatian clubs into the NSL (due to the risk of crowd violence in matches against the procommunist Footscray JUST), it chose to admit both Melbourne Croatia and Sydney Croatia for the start of the 1984 season.³³

After the NSL was cancelled, at the end of the 2003/04 season, both Croatian clubs were unceremoniously dumped back into the (tier-two nationally) New South Wales and Victorian Premier Leagues. (Due to factors relating to cost, there is only a national league at the A-League or tier-one level.) The banning of foreign insignia, emblems or names continued up until 2019, in all states and territories, but not in the amateur game.

Daryl Adair and Wray Vamplew remarked presciently in 1997 that, although the mainstreaming/anti-ethnic policy did not conform prima facie to the logic of multiculturalism, that concept implied tolerance too, and not just diversity.³⁴ Twelve years later, Adair made similar points, but, by this time, the destruction of the NSL was a fait accompli.³⁵ Adair pointed to the tremendous sense of loss felt by the “ethnic” clubs and their supporters, but put a positive spin on it by referring to the new cosmopolitan or even postmodern leagues where ethnicity is banished.³⁶ Jessica Carniel also refers to the A-League’s formation as “an act of cosmopolitanism”, while adding in parentheses, which implies a less important point, unfortunately, “albeit a highly fraught and problematic one due to its dependency on the eradication of non-Australian nationalism”.³⁷

Emerging Viewpoints

Roy Hay’s ongoing research, using mostly newspaper sources, showed it would be unfair to conclude that there was severe or recurring violence at clashes between (Melbourne) Croatia and the Yugoslav procommunist club JUST in the 1960s.³⁸ But clashes intensified at the NSL level in the 1980s. Hay provides a detailed breakdown of violent events in his book chapter “Those Bloody Croatians”. In Hay’s view, further research must empirically investigate incidents and the extent of violence before theoretical advances can be made. He also suggests that ethnography, with a limited number of participants, can risk making observations devoid of historical context, and as a traditional historian, he is less interested in those thoughts or emotions that do not ever become actions and thus escape the historical record. He argues that conflict at matches that appear to be pure (Balkan) politics, or Group X versus Group Y, may actually be more complex products of various localised, idiosyncratic and personality-based factors, concluding that the Croatian clubs have put in major efforts to control their more volatile and political supporters. For Hay, Mosely and Hughson’s assessments about these clubs are too harsh. However, I would say that, of Hughson’s articles addressing Sydney United’s Bad Blue Boys (BBB), “The Boys are Back in Town” and “Football, Folk Dancing and Fascism” could be described as stern, while “A Tale of Two Tribes” and “The Bad Blue Boys” are more sympathetic.

In an article published in 2007, when the A-League was just a year old, Christopher Hallinan, John Hughson and Michael Burke discussed two extreme contrasts within Australian soccer.³⁹ Based on ethnographic fieldwork, they compared and contrasted A-League club Melbourne Victory with the Serbian club, Springvale White Eagles, from southeast Melbourne, playing in the lower divisions. By doing so, they captured the “ethnic” atmosphere, but not the feelings of sadness or loss experienced at the ex-NSL clubs.⁴⁰ Springvale has never participated in the NSL, so fans likely contend with no real sense of loss, although they probably recognise a new restriction on opportunities. The majority of Melbourne Victory fans prefer watching Victory matches over Victorian Premier League games. They appreciate the family-oriented presentation, the alleged professionalism, high standard of play, and unity of everyone supporting one team. They stress that the association between immigrant communities and soccer has been a key element of “Australian cultural history”,⁴¹ observing that the restructuring has “diluted the multicultural character” in a manner consistent with the ideological beliefs of John Howard (prime minister) and Peter Costello (federal treasurer) that one should renounce any commitment to “foreign” entities.⁴² (In an interesting slip of the tongue, the authors refer to the “de-ethicised”, rather than “de-ethnicised”, A-League.⁴³) However, no one has ever claimed that history was important to those who set up and championed the A-League back in 2003-2006.

Francesco Ricatti and Matthew Klugman, using a research method of 32 oral history interviews conducted with Italian migrants who arrived in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s, explore the role that soccer played in the lives of the migrants and their relations with clubs such as APIA and Marconi, as they forged new identities while steadfastly sticking with the old.⁴⁴ They claim that soccer researchers have missed the way that soccer shaped (various aspects of) identities and the “relationships and emotions” of the migrants.⁴⁵ In my own research, I provide a space for the emotions felt by senior Melbourne Croatia people to be heard.

These authors note the migrants’ reaction to and involvement in major shifts in Australian soccer and their sense of loss at the demotion of their clubs in the 2003–2005 restructuring. The authors find a near total lack of interest in the A-League among both first- and second-generation immigrants, contrary to the bullish narrative in both popular literature and the academic work of Hay and Hallinan. Some interviewees agreed intellectually with the restructuring, but the main reaction they expressed was sadness and a sense of loss when reflecting on the time in which APIA and Marconi graced the national stage and drew 10,000 or more to big games. Another interesting finding is that first-generation immigrant men seemed to struggle with the “limbo” experience more than those of the second generation, who, I suggest, are trained through the school system and “hard knocks” to negotiate the daily realities of living in and across two cultures. This is a strong piece of work that resists the dominant ideology surrounding the alleged magnificence of the A-League and the “awful horrors” (not their words) of what had gone before. The important descriptions of the relations between APIA and Marconi fans, and their views of each other (Marconi fans presented as peasants/farmers), bring some new insights to the literature. My work builds on this article by homing in on only one ethnic group in one city. In this way, it is also very bounded, which allows for clear focus and maximum depth, but it goes slightly further in this regard by interviewing people at a singular important club, including club leaders and ultras leaders, relying on semi-structured intensive interviews as the main source of primary data.

Research Approach and Methodology

Late in 2009, I decided to research the cancellation of the NSL, the establishment of the A-League, and the marginalisation of the “ethnic” clubs under Frank Lowy’s FFA regime.

I contacted each of the Sydney- and Melbourne-based ex-NSL “ethnic” clubs by email, inviting them to be interviewed as part of the research project. However, only one replied, Melbourne Knights, which prompted me to narrow the project’s remit from ethnic clubs in general to Melbourne Croatia/Knights in particular.

I travelled to Melbourne from country Queensland and interviewed Knights president Andjelko “Ange” Cimera on 16 February 2010. Later, on 11 January 2011, I returned to Knights Stadium and interviewed Melinda Cimera, club secretary and Ange’s daughter, and three MCF leaders: Pave Jusup (then 22), Kova (then 26), and Sime (then 22). The interview with Ange Cimera lasted 100 minutes, the interview with Melinda lasted 90 minutes, and the interview with MCF leaders lasted 120 minutes. All interviews were conducted on quiet weekday mornings or afternoons during the summer off-season, which allowed for long and constructive interview sessions. Because Melinda Cimera was working as a full-time school teacher, she was available only during her summer school holidays when she helps out around the club, generating an 11-month delay between my first and second interviews. The first two interviews were held around the boardroom table at the club’s office at Knights Stadium, Sunshine North, Melbourne. During my interview with Melinda, the MCF’s Pave Jusup sat with us and exuded a strong, silent presence around the boardroom table. Being a guest on the premises, and grateful for Melinda’s time, I did not ask who Pave Jusup was or what he was doing there. Pave left halfway through the interview without saying a word.

I asked Melinda, in an effort to initiate snowball sampling, whether I could interview any MCF ultras. She immediately called Pave back, and he was much friendlier this time. He took me to the empty Batcave Social Club, underneath the Mark Viduka Stand, and he was joined by fellow ultras Kova and Sime. The atmosphere at the empty club, where I was offered a bottle of Croatian beer from the fridge, became relaxed as the interviewees realised I was genuinely sympathetic to the club’s situation and was not going to be offended by direct or even coarse language. On the same day, I was given a tour of the club’s changing rooms, with memorabilia on the walls, and met the club’s now deceased groundskeeper/gear steward Mirko “Rus” Rastocić.⁴⁶ Then Kova drove me the long distance back to my hotel accommodation near to the airport at Broadmeadows, and our conversation continued throughout the car journey.

I offered all interviewees anonymity, but only “Kova” and “Sime” preferred to be referred to by their nicknames. All other interviewees requested that their full names be used or indicated that they did not want or need anonymity. I did not record the interviews, as per the interviewees’ preferences, instead taking detailed shorthand notes during interviews to create transcripts. If I was unsure about what had been said, I would ask the interviewee immediately for clarification, and then would repeat the final sentence back to them. I read through the notes carefully on the evening of each interview and, if I needed assistance or clarification, I would contact the interviewee either by email or on social media. As a result, I was able to produce detailed written transcripts of each interview. I posted a complete transcript of my interview with Ange Cimera to a blog that I set up for the purpose.⁴⁷ The interview was posted on 15 January 2021 and had received 335 page views by 25 November 2022.

Although the research sample size was small, I conducted long and extensive interviews with senior figures at both the club and the MCF, aiming for enough quality and density of the interview data to offset its limitations in terms of mere quantity. The reality of the situation also made other interviewees naturally more difficult to source: a club of this size has no lower- or middle-level managers onsite, and this club in particular is run by the two Cimeras on a full-time basis, as well as a number of part-time directors. From the perspective of the interview subjects themselves, however, they were the ideal candidates to provide a detailed and official club viewpoint, and they did not deem it necessary to actively assist me in finding other interviewees, which was not their responsibility anyway.

In my own analysis of the data, I identified two major themes (“Croatian-Australian identity” and “discrimination”), relating these answers back to the research questions. However, to honour the fact that these people were willing to meet me and candidly share their experiences, I adopted a researcher mindset that whatever was important to them was also important to me. The participants did not want to discuss the mechanics or details of the 2003–2005 events, only the effects on the club in the present day; their priorities guided my analysis.

Croatian-Australian Identity

For Knights president Ange Cimera, the “Croatia” name was needed when no independent Croatia existed in Europe, but at the present time, the name is no longer crucial because people in soccer regard “Knights” as synonymous with “Croatian community”.⁴⁸ The club has always been for those who self-identify as Croatian, rather than Yugoslav, but it welcomes supporters of both Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split, Croatia’s two leading football clubs. Melinda Cimera, club secretary, explained to me how one club committee member had suggested that the club adopt the moniker “Reds”, but younger committee members refused because of the pro-communist associations of the word.⁴⁹ Later on, in the 1990s, the club officially adopted the “Knights” name, which is an acronym for Klub Nogometa i Gdje Hrvati Takmice Srcem (meaning “football club and where Croatians battle with their heart”).⁵⁰ This acronym demonstrates the skill and ingenuity of the Croatians in bringing ethnicity into the league on the sly.

Melbourne Knights still sits at the apex of Croatian sporting clubs in Melbourne, mainly due to the fact that it was a successful performer in the NSL for a number of years and was the first club of Mark Viduka. However, other Croatian clubs, such as St Albans Saints SC and Dandenong City SC, are beginning to throw their weight around and question whether Melbourne Knights still deserves to remain unchallenged at the top of the pyramid.⁵¹ The younger generation has no, or very few, personal memories of the Knights’ NSL triumphs, and the club has not been a brilliant performer in either the knockout FFA Cup or the National Premier League Victoria (NPLV) (formerly VPL). The traditional hierarchy of the Croatian-backed clubs has become confused now that Dandenong City also competes in the NPLV. At the time of our 2011 interviews, and again in the 2022 season, St Albans Saints was also in the NPLV.

The more politically attuned members of the MCF get around the uncertainty created by a changed political environment in Europe by claiming that the Melbourne club, which was aligned to Tito's Communist Party, Footscray JUST, was a Serbian club in disguise. This was the same conclusion they reached about the actual regime in Yugoslavia. So, the “enemy” then was the same as the “enemy” now, but they existed in different stripes or manifestations. For them, “Yugoslav” was never a “real” identity because it was not based on a nationality or common culture: the pro-communist people, back then, were simply Serbs in disguise who used the language of communism and its ideals to camouflage their will to power. It is not part of the MCF’s world view that anyone could have been a sincere communist and/or believed in the merits of the concept of Yugoslavia. However, the problem is that the MCF’s perspective reads the events of the late 1940s to 1970s through the lens of later events (when large numbers had turned against the communist regime). Because there were no opinion polls in the former Yugoslavia, however, it is impossible to know what percentage of people supported the communist regime at any one time.⁵² The MCF leaders claim that Croatians were always a small minority at JUST: 5 per cent of JUST supporters were Croatian, 10 per cent were Macedonian, and 85 per cent were Serbian. As MCF leader Kova told me, “I think that there were more Masseys [Macedonians] than Croatians at JUST.”⁵³ Therefore, for the MCF, JUST was a Serbian club, in all but name, even if it viewed itself as a pure Yugoslav club.

Ricatti and Klugman quote one of their interviewees, Marcello Baroni, who suggested that “while soccer made him feel more Italian, it also helped with the liminal, in-between position that often characterises the second generation and that he defines as a ‘limbo’”.⁵⁴ The MCF also occupy an in-between position, which leans heavily, outwardly at least, towards defiant Croatian nationalism while, at an everyday and largely subconscious level, they deal with and negotiate aspects of life in Australia that are common to every resident. They are like the second-generation Pakistanis, on Glasgow’s Southside, who act out and proclaim their cultural and religious heritage while understanding, at a practical level, the meaning and consequences of the Old Firm (Celtic-versus-Rangers) rivalry. Taimur Nazir et al., by surveying 51 Pakistani-Scots in Greater Glasgow, show that, on average, they prefer Celtic (n = 20) over Rangers (n = 4) due to the perceived friendliness of Celtic fans and Celtic fans’ support for Palestinian causes.⁵⁵ They would favour an Asian/Muslim club in the Scottish leagues (44 out of 50), but cannot imagine how it could come about. According to these authors, Pakistanis negotiate daily life in terms of a series of moral, cultural, religious and practical hurdles, but, beyond that, life’s mores and nuances in the host society are deeply embedded in the subconscious.

Discrimination and Marginalisation

When I asked Ange Cimera for his comments on the cancellation of the NSL and the establishment of the A-League, he responded:

Look, as far as the end of the NSL is concerned, it was disappointing in the way they did it. With the Crawford Report, we knew what was coming, we suffered, we didn’t play in any competition for over a year; we were out of soccer for 14 months. I have no problems with what they were trying to do, but the way they did it was not fair to clubs that have been there 50 years or so. [Frank] Lowy gets a lot of credit for destroying the clubs. He should get a lot of credit for destroying the clubs … He’s the man of the time; everyone kisses his ass, but he destroyed every club that meant something to our soccer community, not only here but in Sydney as well.

The depth of negative feeling that exclusion from the A-League generated at Melbourne Knights can be seen clearly in Cimera’s further comments, which I report below, that “they need to stop ethnic cleansing”.⁵⁶ “They” here refers to the FFA, but “mainstream” fans who supported the FFA’s actions would also have been seen as guilty by association. When I asked, “What are your goals for the Knights?”, Cimera responded:

We just want to stabilise the club; we have a young team now. We will survive; we have our core of supporters. We own our own ground and facilities; no-one can force us to do anything. Thirty or forty years later we will still be the Knights backed by the Croatian community, but second, third or fourth generation. Do we want to join the A-League? No, not the way it is set up now. If Marconi, Sydney United, us and South [Melbourne] could get promoted and relegated, then yes. We would need three or four leagues with promotion and relegation. A small club needs to have a goal—to be able to get promoted to the A-League. At the moment we just want to survive until they stop ethnic cleansing.

Noticeably, Cimera uses the term “ethnic cleansing” twice. Although some people might regard the term as inappropriate here, it is accurate to say that the ethnic clubs have been cleansed from Australia’s top league and, furthermore, that the reason relates to ethnicity. Labor MP for Hurstville, and later state premier, Morris Iemma even called the early days of the mainstreaming under David Hill “ethnic purging”.⁵⁷ The MCF leaders, quite reasonably, express their interpretation of the 2003–2005 events as “the Poms taking over the game”. They simply chose to see the issue as the Anglos gaining ground, in an intergroup tussle of political wills, reversing the coups achieved by the rebel “ethnic” clubs in the late 1950s. The MCF leaders see no normative or ethical basis behind the formation of the A-League, and regard all of the arguments backing its formation as pure ideology designed to further vested interests. Kova says: “We are just like Liverpool—they are living on their former glories just like us.”⁵⁸ This comment was clearly made years prior to Liverpool’s 2019/20 EPL title. Pave added: “Why should we not be in the top division? We are the club of Mark Viduka.”⁵⁹ Ange Cimera compared his club to Leeds United and Luton Town, arguing that, despite falling down the divisions, they still keep their identity: “Leeds United may have dropped down two divisions, but they are still Leeds United—they have still got the name, Luton Town also.”⁶⁰ But Mr Cimera also points out that, when clubs fall down the divisions in England, they are not treated as insignificant pariahs, nor are they disrespected: “In England, you don’t get wiped clean, [with people] saying, ‘You don’t exist anymore, we only want the A-League’.”

The strength of dislike and distaste towards the Croatian clubs coming from Soccer Australia’s chairman, David Hill, was as alarming as it was reprehensible, as can be seen in his following 1997 statement: “I have a problem with the ethnic clubs in Melbourne and Sydney and in particular with the two Croatian clubs and the league would be better off without them.”⁶¹

As Melinda Cimera told me, it was the “ground zero” or “scorched earth” ideology, which dominated discourses within the sport in the 2003–2005 period, that was the most hurtful and distasteful—the notion that the game had to be saved by gallant “white knights” (“white” in a literal sense): Prime Minister John Howard and FFA (formerly the Australian Soccer Association) chairman and property magnate Frank Lowy.⁶² Mr Howard had made government funding conditional on Mr Lowy’s being appointed as chairman of the interim board of Soccer Australia and then the newly formed ASA, following Soccer Australia’s liquidation, with Lowy being able to veto board appointments. This latter aspect ensured that the “old guard”, such as Tony Labbozzetta of Marconi-Fairfield, would be removed from soccer management completely. The “ground zero” ideology presented the NSL as corrupted by European feudal-style leaders, such as Mr Labbozzetta, and it utilised racialised stereotypes of secretive Southern European mafia types, at odds with Anglo-Australian values, destroying the sport. The A-League was marketed as “Modern Football”, with the implication being that “Old Soccer” was ethnic, violent and corrupt.⁶³ In this brave new world of Modern Football, tradition and prior achievements counted for nothing. These discourses and images were accepted by the majority of people within soccer, and even those who found them distasteful kept quiet as they believed that the short-term pain and hurt feelings would, in utilitarian terms, be for the greater good of all. The Australian government gave approximately $15 million to the ASA.

We may compare the concept of cultural citizenship with that of legal citizenship. Regarding Hispanic Americans in the USA, Rosaldo writes that “cultural citizenship refers to the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes”.⁶⁴ Given Howard’s strong support for Lowy, and government funding tied to soccer’s restructuring, I suggest that the leaders and fans of Melbourne Croatia had legal, but not cultural, citizenship in that era.

The following exchange between Pave and Kova took place during our interview at the Batcave Social Club:

Kova: For a multicultural country, it [Australia] is still very racist.

Pave: It is an undercurrent; you have to understand what the double-speak is to understand what they are really doing. When the Socceroos play there are [Anglo-Australian] people behind it but there is tension. There is still an “us-and-them” mentality but it’s not out in the open. We never said [at Knights] that “everyone’s welcome”, but we also never check at the gate if you are Croatian or not. We are not holding meetings here in Croatian, are we?

Kova: It comes back to the White Australia policy; they are white, we are olive.

Pave: But we came in under the White Australia policy.

Kova: They wanted people with the big tits, really [laughs]. It’s like David and Goliath, but we don’t have a Jewish name [all laugh].⁶⁵

The last three comments are especially illuminating here, with serious commentary wrapped up in banter, consistent with the way that these ultras talked throughout the interview. We may need to infer the meaning of some comments, and interpretations might differ. Pave says that the Knights never officially declared that “everyone is welcome”, meaning that the ethnic base of the club always remained important and unchallengeable. But he then defended the club by saying that nobody checks ethnicity at the gate, and meetings are held in English rather than Croatian. Kova refers back to the White Australia policy about tension among the crowd at Australian national-team games. A clear contradiction is expressed, and their annoyance is obvious, that Croatians were first admitted to the country under the White Australia policy, which implies some degree of welcome, at least at governmental levels, back then. However, Kova turns his own remark on its head, by adding “they are white, we are olive”—seemingly not only a reference to actual skin colour, but also a recognition of the ideological significance of whiteness in Australia, the United Kingdom and other white settler-colonial countries. Croatians do not pass the ideological test of whiteness, and hence suffer continued marginalisation and discrimination.

On the other hand, they are proud of their heritage—and unapologetic. They understand the “game”, but they do not like it, viewing it with irony and scorn. The younger Pave added: “But we came in under the White Australia policy.” In this way, he highlights the aforementioned contradiction about being white, but not white enough—accepted into the country, but not always accepted in everyday life. Kova’s joke at the end about “big tits” suggests that humour can cover up strong emotions, but beyond this, he casts doubt on the integrity of Australian politicians of the past and their reasons for admitting the Croatians. I sensed that the out-of-place Jewish joke added to their raw masculine humour: designed to retain collective face and dispel unease and frustration at the long-term Australian racial situation, both in politics and day-to-day dealings. That they were willing to talk in this manner to an Irish-Australian suggests that trust had grown during my visits and that my Melbourne Croatia fandom worked had in my favour.

Some critical race theory may also be applicable here. Debbie Weekes, for example, studied a sample of young Black British women and found that many adopt essentialist definitions of Blackness, despite academic writers moving in the direction of seeing Blackness as diverse and fragmentary.⁶⁶ She suggests that this can be a strategy or device of empowerment in an overall context where the ideology of whiteness (where white is seen as preferable) prevails. Being staunchly Croatian nationalist in Australia too can be a way of asserting a bold identity when confronting regular marginalisation and indifference. Anglo classification systems are pervasive, and Anglos demand to be in charge of every endeavour and activity.⁶⁷

Black feminist authors such as bell hooks have maintained that the experiences of Black women with white feminism show that race and gender cannot be regarded as separate categories; instead, they mutually constitute each other.⁶⁸ Croatian-Australians, such as the MCF leaders, perceive their relation to whiteness as ambiguous, contradictory and confronting. They attack the categories ironically; they take pride in their heritage and use the rhetorical device of calling Anglo-Australians “white” and “the Poms”, thus reserving the right to call themselves “Australians” whenever they should want to do so. They experience treatment in the host society as a loss while pride in their cultural heritage is perceived as a gain.

Has the Dominant Discourse Moved On since 2005?

There are two separate issues here. On the one hand, as I covered in the previous section, the two Croatian clubs have suffered long-term and inexcusable discrimination by being effectively barred from the A-League. The NSL memories are disappearing further into the past. On the other hand, the two clubs continue to operate as the sporting arms of their respective Croatian social clubs. They are key immigrant social organisations, vital for building social capital. However, these two points are linked in practice. If they are no longer national-league clubs, other Croatian clubs wonder why the Melbourne Knights and Sydney United should remain hegemonic and sit at the top of the hierarchies in their respective cities.

We also see Croatian identity changing to reflect the new political order in Europe. However, the MCF minimises the drastic nature of this change by arguing that Yugoslav pro-communist were really Serbians in disguise. This is a very convenient position, which allows the MCF to develop an effective and coherent narrative of continual struggle against the odds. There is also a struggle on two fronts. The current MCF likewise protests against Modern Football and Anglo-Australian hegemony located both within and outside soccer. The MCF maintains a world view similar to those British-Arab activists who see themselves as an equal but separate community to the white-British, who just happen to share the same geographic space.

While I accept that water has passed under the bridge, so to speak, I will continue, among many others, to push for a national second division, with promotion and relegation to and from the A-League, so as to provide tier-two clubs with a pathway to the top tier. I congratulate Sydney Croatia for making the FFA Cup (now Australia Cup) final in 2022. It is very interesting that these clubs, which were once seen as politically incorrect, should now find a vastly different set of circumstances. In the present environment, the culture of “diversity and inclusion” may be something they can use to advance their interests. To quote Hughson, is the time finally right to “seize the multicultural moment”?

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.

2 Gerry P. T. Finn, “Racism, Religion and Social Prejudice: Irish Catholic Clubs, Soccer and Scottish Society - II Social Identities and Conspiracy Theories,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 8, no. 3 (1991a): 370–97.

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”.

9 John Hughson, “The Boys Are Back in Town: Soccer Support and the Social Reproduction of Masculinity,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24, no. 1 (2000): 8–23.

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.

14 Roy Hay, “Croatia: Community, Conflict and Culture: The Role of Soccer Clubs in Migrant Identity,” Immigrants & Minorities 17, no. 1 (1998): 56.

15 John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley, The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2016), 136.

16 Blaxland and Crawley, The Secret Cold War, 139.

17 Caroline R. Nagel and Lynn A. Staeheli, “Integration and the Negotiation of ‘Here’ and ‘There’: The Case of British Arab Activists,” Social and Cultural Geography 9, no. 4 (2008): 415–30.

18 Jusup, interview.

19 John Hughson, “A Tale of Two Tribes: Expressive Fandom in Australian Soccer’s A-League,” Culture, Sport, Society 2, no. 3 (1999): 10–30.

20 Lily Kong, “Cultural Geography: By Whom, For Whom?,” Journal of Cultural Geography 22, no. 1 (2004): 147–50.

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.

25 Robin Peake, “The World Game Downunder,” Sport in History 31, no. 4 (2011): 516–18.

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/.

47 See https://melbourneknightsfc.blogspot.com.

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.