From bastard child to a place in Australia’s family; the Federal Government’s role in repositioning Australian soccer as a legitimate, mainstream sport: a qualitative study

Abstract

Following over a century on the margins, soccer moved into the mainstream of Australian sports culture in 2003. This resulted from the intervention of the Federal Government via a review into the sport’s governance and structure, the reform led by high-profile recruit Frank Lowy. By 2015, the men’s national team had won the Asian Cup, qualified for three consecutive FIFA World Cup Finals’ appearances and the men’s professional A-League had successfully completed its tenth season. Australian Soccer was now perceived to be part of the sporting mainstream. This qualitative study utilized semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample from politics, sport and business (N = 22), and identified four key transformative mechanisms: Federal Government intervention, the recruitment of Frank Lowy, implementing credible governance and structure, and leveraging the game’s traditional popularity. Soccer’s reformation was aimed, in part, to provide Australia greater leverage in Asia, the region where Australia’s interests are significantly influenced by the geo-political axis between the USA and China.

Keywords:

• Australian soccer
• legitimacy
• Federal Government
• China
• USA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this paper, ‘soccer’ will be used to refer specifically to the Association Football game, as it is administered domestically by Football Federation Australia and internationally by FIFA. ‘Football’ will be used as a generic reference to the various football-type games that are played in Australia. Otherwise, the official names of the other football games – Australian Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union – are used in specific reference to each. Where ‘football’ appears in an organization’s name, such as Football Federation Australia, the football game referred to is soccer, unless otherwise stipulated.

2. In this paper, and given that Australia’s predominant culture is Anglo/Saxon/Celtic, references to ‘ethnics’ or ‘ethnicity’ reflect non-anglo peoples and cultures.