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Abstract
The revelation that women first played Australian Rules football during the period of the Great War is an important element in overall understandings of how both masculine and feminine ideals were challenged and redefined by sporting practices in a time of general social flux. This paper reveals that the genesis of the women's code was in Western Australia, where contests occurred as early as 1915. Three years later, with the war nearing its conclusion, the template of women's involvement in charity matches with strong military and patriotic overtones was adopted in the state of Victoria, the code's heartland. Investigations such as this one, indicative of the complex relationships between sport and gender during the First World War, offer scope for deeper comprehension of a much-studied military conflict, and point the way forward for those that bemoan the static agenda of research into women's football.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to colleague Dr Nikki Wedgwood from the University of Sydney for comments and valuable collaboration on preliminary versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18.
2. Dennis et al., The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 62–3.
3. Ibid., 63. The acronym ‘ANZAC’ is occasionally used in lower case format.
4. Carlyon, The Great War, 752, 755.
5. Robson, Australia and the Great War.
6. Gammage, The Broken Years.
7. McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War.
8. Carlyon, Gallipoli; Carlyon, The Great War.
9. Andrews, The Anzac Illusion.
10. Williams, Anzacs, the Media and the Great War.
11. Seal, Inventing ANZAC.
12. Luckins, The Gates of Memory.
13. Beamont, Australia's War.
14. Damousi and Lake, Gender and War.
15. Lake and Reynolds, What's Wrong With Anzac?
16. Adair, ‘Australian Sports History’, 410.
17. Booth and Tatz, One-Eyed, 89–107.
18. McKernan, ‘Sport, War and Society', 1. Beaumont points out that ‘In histories of the First World War Australia is commonly described as a “divided society”. This reflects the fact that in October 1916 and December 1917 the fabric of Australian politics and society was torn apart by the two referenda that the Federal government held in an effort to gain a mandate to introduce conscription for overseas military service.’ However, her argument is that ‘the tensions which the conscription referenda revealed were already deep within Australian society’: Beaumont, ‘The Politics of a Divided Society’, 35.
19. McKernan, ‘Sport, War and Society’, 2.
20. Blair, ‘Will They Never Come?’ See also Blair, ‘Football Goes to War’; Blair, “‘The Greater Game”’; and Blair, ‘War and Peace’.
21. Phillips, ‘Football, Class and War’. For a worthwhile related study of one particular rugby league club, see the section ‘North Sydney Rugby League and the First World War’, in Moore, The Mighty Bears!, 76–82.
22. Rodwell and Ramsland, ‘Cecil Healy’.
23. Main and Allen, Fallen: The Ultimate Heroes. In a similar vein, see also Pratt, Hell for Leather, and for a more substantive work, Batchelder, Playing the Greater Game.
24. For an overview of this volume and Mangan's work, see Rothblatt, ‘James Anthony Mangan: An Appreciation’, 1–8, and Mangan, ‘Preface: “Swansong”’, 9–20. Aside from individual items discussed elsewhere in this paper, see also especially Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School, and Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism.
25. Crotty, Making the Australian Male.
26. Ibid., 74.
27. Ibid., 89.
28. Ibid., 90–91.
29. Ibid., 92.
30. Ibid., 93–4.
31. Phillips, ‘Sport, War and Gender Images’, 78.
32. Ibid., 79.
33. Ibid., 79.
34. Ibid., 81.
35. Ibid., 81.
36. Ibid., 84.
37. Ibid., 84.
38. Ibid., 84.
39. Ibid., 84.
40. Ibid., 86–7.
41. Ibid., 89.
42. Ibid., 89–90.
43. Ibid., 91. In this context it is worth noting that while women ‘shared the assumption that women's position in society was determined by their biology … this assumption manifested itself in different ways’. Some women believed their ancillary role was ‘a natural extension of their role as wives and mothers’, while other, more radical, women ‘urged women to oppose the war because its slaughter ran contrary to women's allegedly uniquely life-giving mission’: Maclean, ‘War and Australian Society’, 69.
44. Osborne and Skillen, ‘The State of Play’, 191.
45. Williams, A Game for Rough Girls?
46. Melling, ‘Wartime Opportunities’.
47. See, for example, Hay, ‘The Origins of Football in the United Kingdom and Australia Revisited’.
48. Hess, ‘Chinese Footballers and Female Players’, 46. See Hess, ‘“For the Love of Sensation”’; Hogan et al., ‘Women and Australian Rules Football’; and Wedgwood, ‘Doin' it for Themselves!’, for useful discussions of the relevant literature.
49. Williams, A Game for Rough Girls?, 9.
50. Ibid., 6.
51. Lawrence, ‘Making Our Mark’.
52. It is worth noting that ‘An attempt to organise a women's [rugby league] competition had been proposed in 1913, but was unsuccessful and virtually no details of the proposal remain’. See Little, “‘What a Freak-Show They Made!”’, 26.
53. Burke, ‘A Social History of Workplace Australian Football’, 119.
54. West Australian, 7 August 1915, cited in Barker, Behind the Play, 50.
55. Barker, Behind the Play, 50.
56. Burke, ‘A Social History of Workplace Australian Football’, 127.
57. Ibid., 128.
58. Ibid., 129.
59. Ibid., 130, 133.
60. Ibid., 133.
61. Ibid., 141.
62. Ibid., 142, 147.
63. Ibid., 142.
64. Hough, Boans for Service, v.
65. Ibid., 4.
66. Ibid., 23.
67. Ibid., 25.
68. Ibid., 26–8.
69. Ibid., 35–6; Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, 77–8. A total of 97 employees of Boans enlisted, and a ‘roll of honour’ board was erected in a prominent position within the store. Hough, Boans for Service, 36–7.
70. Hough, Boans for Service, 39.
71. See Burke, ‘Patriot Games’, 6–7, for discussion of the Foy and Gibson records.
72. Western Mail, 5 October 1917.
73. Queenslander, 25 May 1895.
74. Herald, 4 July 1896.
75. McCrone, Playing the Game, 53.
76. Birley, Land of Sport and Glory, 98. See Lee, The Lady Footballers, for a comprehensive study of opposition to the British Ladies' Football Club.
77. See Williams, A Game for Rough Girls?, 25–44, Williamson, Belles of the Ball, 2–5, Lopez, Women on the Ball, 1–10, and Macbeth, ‘The Development of Women's Football in Scotland’, 152–3, for further discussion relating to discrimination against women playing soccer in Britain at the turn of the century.
78. Melling, ‘Wartime Opportunities’, 120.
79. Ibid.
80. Macbeth, ‘The Development of Women's Football in Scotland’, 153.
81. Crawford, ‘Moral and Manly’, 190.
82. For example, a football match involving men and women on roller skates was played on the Richmond Skating Rink. See the Richmond Australian, 8 May 1889. The Illustrated Australian News, 1 August 1894, featured an image of men and women from a theatrical troupe playing football on the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
83. Australian Cyclist, 15 September 1898.
84. ‘The Ballarat Arch of Victory and Avenue of Honour’, Heritage Information Guide, n.d. See also www.ballarat.com/avenue.htm, accessed 25 February 2011
85. ‘The Ballarat Arch of Victory and Avenue of Honour’.
86. Ibid.
87. White, The Golden Thread, 15, 22.
88. Ibid., 17.
89. Frances, The Politics of Work, 97, 194.
90. Burke, ‘A Social History of Workplace Australian Football’, 158–9.
91. ‘Souvenir of the Avenue of Honour’.
92. Scates and Frances, Women and the Great War, 56.
93. Ibid., 56.
94. Bassett, ‘Lyla Barnard’, 271–4.
95. Mangan, “‘Golden Boys” of Playing Field and Battlefield’, 134.
96. Ibid., 134–5.
97. Mangan, ‘Games Field and Battlefield’, 191.
98. In Australia, according to Crotty, ‘Linkages between sport and war litter the poetry and songs of the public schools in the years up to and beyond 1914’. The need to ‘never surrender and to fight to the end’ were often emphasised in ‘frighteningly militaristic’ songs: Crotty, ‘Waxing Lyrical’, 121.
99. Ballarat Courier, 25 September 1918.
100. Ballarat Courier, 27 September 1918.
101. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
102. Ballarat Courier, 27 September 1918.
103. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
104. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
105. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
106. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
107. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918. An estimated 10,000 ‘patriotic’ clubs and societies were formed to provide ‘comforts’ for soldiers. The Australian Red Cross, established a week after the outbreak of the war, quickly became the lead agency with more than 249 branches and 100,000 members. Scates and Frances, Women and the Great War, 45–6; Dennis et al., The Oxford Companion, 67.
108. An Appreciation: The Arch of Victory and Avenue of Honour, 15. A somewhat enigmatic figure, Clymo went on to coach at the highest level of the game, guiding Geelong to a premiership with the Victorian Football League in 1931.
109. Frances, The Politics of Work, 98.
110. Ballarat Courier, 30 September 1918.
111. Table Talk, 21 July 1921. For discussion of the rise and fall of women's soccer during the inter-war period in an international context, and its links with the feminist movement of the time, see Michallat, ‘Terrain de Lutte’.
112. Thomson, ‘A Crisis of Masculinity?’, 133.
113. Ibid., 133.
114. For one comparative prototype, see Pfister et al., ‘Women and Football’, 66–77. See also the commentary in Caudwell et al., ‘Introduction’, xiii–xxiii.
115. Williams, A Game for Rough Girls?, 13.