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Abstract
Despite the relocation, pressures that usually restrict time available for leisure activities, football fandom is one distraction new immigrants continue to enjoy after moving to a new country. In this paper, I explore my own connection to the Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club (WSWFC), a relationship that helped me integrate into a new society after what had been a challenging migration experience. I use an autoethnographic approach and a theoretical background that characterises football fandom as a metaphysical experience of the ordinary people. The story of my involvement with the WSWFC and its fans shows how football fandom can be an effective tool for new immigrants, assisting with socialisation and integration into the new society.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the 2013 School of Education (UWS) small research grants scheme. I would like to acknowledge Professors Wayne Sawyer and Margaret Vickers for their support to my research; Dr Constance Ellwood for her thorough language editing; and Ms Catherine Myson-Föhner for her careful proofreading of this article.
Notes
1. A Call to Arms is one of the Wanderers fans’ chants. The words include ‘When you were born you made my life so wonderful, I can’t say no, the feeling was magical’; they sing over Supertramp’s ‘The Logical Song’ melody.
2. In the second part of this chant, the fans sing: ‘you inked your name on to my heart right from the start (…).
3. And it finishes by chanting: ‘A Call to Arms, stand together and fight as one’.
4. ‘We unite as one’ is the title of one of the most performed Wanderers’ fans’ chant. It claims that ‘we’ (the supporters) came so far because ‘we are united as one’.