Ethnicity, structure and globalization: an argument about Association football in Australia, 1958–2010

Abstract

The overwhelming weight of academic historical writing on Association football in Australia since the 1970s has focused on the game through the prism of ethnicity. The ills of the game and its failure to become the dominant code of football, as it is in many countries, are regularly attributed to the many ways in which the game was or could be portrayed as a foreign import that brought non-Australian concerns onto the sporting field where they had no place. Here it is argued that structural issues have a much greater role to play in understanding the evolution of the game since the 1950s. Global changes in sport and Association football in particular have also impinged significantly on the game in Australia. Now football is a major part of the Australian sporting landscape, though its position vis-à-vis rival codes remains contested.

Notes

¹ Proudman, ‘Words for Scholars’, 395–433. Proudman is alleged to have been misquoting the Australian historian Keith Hancock. Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt wrote a 430-page book about the semantics of the term, Imperialism.

² Danforth, ‘Is the World Game an Ethnic Game?’, 363–87; Mosely, Ethnic Involvement.

³ For a study at grassroots level see Pocklington, ‘Ethnicity of Football in Australia’.

⁴ Crawford, Report of the Independent Soccer Review Committee.

⁵ Dabscheck, ‘Moving Beyond Ethnicity’.

⁶ Goldblatt, The Ball is Round, 3–18.

⁷ Hay, ‘The Real Costs of Sport’, 58–60.

⁸ Glover, ‘Soccer is Invaded by Migrants’, 58.

⁹ Richard Holt makes the point that football was of British origin but not really ‘English’ in the sense of being a game embraced by the social and political leadership of the imperial power. Holt, Sport and the British, 203–79.

¹⁰ Hay, ‘British Football’, 55–61.

¹¹ Speers, ‘Soccer Poverty Poses Problem’, 30.

¹² Hay, ‘A New Look at Soccer Violence’, 49–58.

¹³ Several of Australia's best players were ineligible to represent the country as they were professionals, including Joe Marston, who played in the FA Cup final for Preston in 1954, and many of the new European migrants. In 1956, the Olympic tournament was open only to amateurs and the ‘shamateurs’ of Eastern Europe.

¹⁴ Murray and Hay, The World Game Downunder, 101–7; Mosley, ‘Social History of Soccer’, 345–7; Hay, ‘Marmaras's Oyster’.

¹⁵ Hay, ‘Marmaras's Oyster’, 18.

¹⁶ Three Sydney clubs, Hakoah, Hellenic and Prague, had home attendance records exceeding 10,000 by 1963 and most clubs had between 3000 and 8000 (Australian Soccer Yearbook, 1963, Soccer World, Sydney, 1963, 8–14). In Victoria the average crowd for State League matches at Olympic Park in 1962 was 5723, with at least two matches attracting over 20,000 (VSF Olympic Park statistics, Soccer Weekly, 5 July 1962; Age, 6 August 1962).

¹⁷ Kallinikios, ‘Sporting Realities and Social Meanings’, Soccer Boom, 1–11, 143–7.

¹⁸ Victorian Soccer Federation Yearbook 1962, 86–9; Australian Soccer Federation Handbook 1982, 10–11.

¹⁹ Booth, ‘The A-League’, 221–38; Dabscheck, ‘Moving Beyond Ethnicity’.

²⁰ As Moore has argued in the context of Association football in the west, ‘Organisational theory is little help in understanding the historical development of the game in Western Australia precisely because the game was organised and controlled more from the bottom than the top’. Moore, ‘Soccer in the West’, 92. It is a comment on the game that applies across the board in Australia, but also a nice reflection on the limits of organizational theory.

²¹ Kallinikios, Soccer Boom, 1–11.

²² Niall, ‘Brave New World’, 6–7.

²³ This paragraph and the following two are based on Hay et al., ‘Waverley Park’, and Hay, Haig-Muir, and Mewett, ‘A Stadium as Fine’.

²⁴ Hinds, ‘AFL Commission a Model for Success’, 7.

²⁵ Dabscheck, ‘Moving Beyond Ethnicity’.

²⁶ NSL Task Force, Report.

²⁷ Wagg, The Football World, 141, cited in Stewart, The Games Are Not the Same, 8.

²⁸ The next sections draw heavily on a short history of football in Australia prepared for the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of photographs at the National Sports Museum, MCG, Melbourne, in May–July 2010.

²⁹ A similar structure exists in cricket and may account for some of the problems encountered by that sport. Haigh, The Green and Golden Age, 199–213, an article originally published in Wisden Australia, 2004–5.

³⁰ Soccer World, 22 February 1963, 1; Hay, ‘Marmaras's Oyster’.

³¹ Hay, ‘Sir William Walkley, Ampol and Football’, 7; Dyster, ‘Sir William Gaston Walkley (1896–1976)’.

³² Murray and Hay, The World Game Downunder, 113–31.

³³ Thompson, One Fantastic Goal, 106–21; Murray and Hay, The World Game Downunder, 113–31.

³⁴ Hall, The Away Game. Both versions of this book are based on extensive interviews with Australian players who had played or were playing overseas at various levels when the author spoke to them.

³⁵ Nadel, ‘The League Goes National’.

³⁶ Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’, 170, 181; the line between legitimate business practice in defence of a multi-million dollar industry and malicious behaviour is a fine one and the AFL always denies ulterior motives and points to examples, of which there are several, where it has cooperated with the other football codes.

³⁷ Goldblatt, The Ball is Round, 543–70, 598–601, 729–39.

³⁸ Conn, The Football Business; Horton, Moving the Goalposts.

³⁹ Kevin Christopher, editor of the fanzine, Studs Up, was the voice of the fans on this occasion.

⁴⁰ Solly, Shoot Out, 112.

⁴¹ Peter Hore had gatecrashed a number of sporting and other events, and on this occasion he had a serious effect on the outcome of the match.

⁴² Hay, “‘Our Wicked Foreign Game’”, 172.

⁴³ The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) had used football as a key part of its appeal to its multi-ethnic audience, to the point where the acronym was often translated as ‘Soccer Bloody Soccer’.

⁴⁴ Brabazon, ‘What's the Story Morning Glory?’, 53–66.

⁴⁵ Solly, Shoot Out, 217–31.

⁴⁶ Margo, Frank Lowy, 246–52.

⁴⁷ Crawford, Report of the Independent Soccer Review Committee.

⁴⁸ To Mahathir Australians were essentially non-Asian and, from his perspective, often anti-Asian.

⁴⁹ NSL Task Force, Report, 22–3.

⁵⁰ NSL Task Force, Report, 24.

⁵¹ Dabscheck, ‘Moving Beyond Ethnicity’.

⁵² Lock, ‘Fan Perspectives’; Hay and Warren ‘Who Supports Melbourne Victory?’, 239–56.

⁵³ Average attendance per game was 1890.

⁵⁴ Westerbeek and Smith, ‘Australian Amateur Soccer and Ethnicity’.

⁵⁵ Supporters of some of the ethnically based clubs have been observed at Melbourne Victory matches and a minority among them may have been responsible for the discharge of flares at games or on the marches to and from games. This statement is based on personal observation and reports by other observers. The Blue and White Brigade, Victory's core fan group, is opposed to the discharge of flares.

⁵⁶ Baum, ‘Football's Changing Landscape’, 6–7.

⁵⁷ Heath McDonald, Melbourne Victory Football Club, 2005–06 Club Member Satisfaction, Melbourne Victory, Melbourne, 2006.

⁵⁸ Hay, ‘Fan Culture in Australian Football’, 101.

⁵⁹ In India, the Indian Premier League and its impresario Lalit Modi are under investigation for match fixing and rigging the bidding process for the stars recruited to play the game. In Australia, Melbourne Storm, the Australian Rugby League champions in 2009, have been stripped of two premierships, fined and had competition points deducted for systematically exceeding the league's salary cap over five years.

⁶⁰ Hinds, ‘Heavy Lifting Starts as A-League Enters a Crucial Stage’.

⁶¹ Hay and Warren, ‘Who Supports Melbourne Victory?’, 239–56.