Social agency and football fandom: the cultural pedagogies of the Western Sydney ultras

Abstract

This article addresses key questions of social agency and cultural pedagogy within the neoliberal structures of ‘modern football’ in the Australian context. It reports on a two-year ethnographic study of the Red and Black Bloc, an Australian ultras group in Western Sydney, one of the most culturally diverse areas in Australia. The origins of the Western Sydney ultras are described, along with their struggles to build their own cultural identity and to fight for social agency within a commodified football league. By combining a multifaceted theoretical model with a range of ethnographic data – including document analysis and in-depth interviews – this study reveals the processes by which the Western Sydney ultras enhance members’ social cohesion towards an increased social consciousness. The paper acknowledges the role that ultras, as authentic cultural formations, may have in the propagation of new cultural pedagogies that have the potential to enhance citizenship, communal life and participatory democracy.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge Dr. Constance Ellwood for the English editing of this paper, as well as Mrs. Catherine Myson and Mrs. Nikolina Mabic Oricchio for their outstanding research assistance during the data collection phase of this project. Finally I thank Mr Jawed Gebrael for his assistance with the final formatting of the paper.

Notes

1. The failed attempt by the Football Federation Australia (FFA) and a group of investors to constitute the Western Sydney Rovers did not pass unperceived by local football lovers, as one of my informants recalls:

Well, in 2010 there was a team called Western Sydney Rovers and they played Sydney FC, a competition game in Parramatta stadium. There were 20 or so Rovers’ supporters – because they thought the new Western Sydney team would be born next year – with red and black signs. Basically there was something already building there, without a team: 20 or so, the leaders of the RBB. (RBB/HC)

2. For this research, my informants are identified as follows: Red and Black Hard Core members (RBB/HC), those who are leaders or 100% committed to the group, and who spend days working on displays, creating and rehearsing chants, building websites and social media posts, and so on; RBB/PA, those whose participation, despite being intense, is more likely to occur on match days; and RBB/IF, the informant within the core group with whom I have over time developed a special and deep relationship. This connection started through RBB social media channels (SOM), expanded to a few face to face formal interviews, and has developed as a football friendship, through chats and phone calls about RBB, football fandom, football tactics and politics. I also quote some opinions from fans’ SOM and from fans’ online forums (OF). These quotations use original words as much as possible.

3. Crawford,. Consuming sport.

4. The 2011 Australian census reported that nearly two million people live in Western Sydney in approximately 700,000 dwellings. Within 50% of these residences, people speak a language other than English.

5. ‘We’re from the streets of Western Sydney’ is the first line of one of the most popular RBB chants

6. ‘Ole Ole Ole’ later became one of the fans’ favourite chants across the different sections of the WSW home stadium as well as through the main streets of Western Sydney.

7. ‘We unite as one’, title of another RBB chant.

8. A chant in Derby days: ‘Sha la la la la la la la. Fuck off east Sydney Sha la la la la la la la. We run this city’.

9. Australian idiom for a trashcan with wheels.

10. The grand final referred to here is the one WSW played in its first A-League season (2012–2013) against Central Coast Mariners FC; the Allianz stadium is Sydney FC’s home ground, a major sports facility in the city used for that final event.

11. Centrelink is the Australian government agency that pays social benefits to the unemployed, families and socially vulnerable people.

12. Australian idiom for lower-class people.

13. Australian idiom for someone who receives unemployment benefits (the dole) from the government but are too lazy to look for work.

14. Australian idiom for a person who lives in housing commission/ Government assigned low budget housing.

15. Banner in the RBB section of the stadium. ‘They’ refers to the control apparatus of modern football.

16. ‘No pyro no party’ is the motto that runs around ultras social media forums, displaying a profusion of flares around stadia and ultras groups around the world.