The Australian football wars: fan narratives of inter‐code and intra‐code conflict

Abstract

The launch of a new national soccer competition in 2005 has re‐ignited another round of football wars in Australia. This essay examines two types of football wars in Australia, focusing primarily upon conflict among fans in the city of Melbourne. The first contestation is between AFL (Australian rules) and soccer, which has been triggered by the re‐branding of soccer as ‘football’, a new soccer league, and Australia reaching the 2006 World Cup. This is fundamentally a conflict over which code has the right to speak for the Australian nation, between a code seen as indigenous and one considered the ‘world game’. The second football war is between Melbourne soccer fans of an old and new club, who are in conflict over who should be considered more ‘real’ and more supportive of soccer in Melbourne. The methodology is a mixture of media discourse analysis and an ethnography of online supporters’ forums.

Notes

1. Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’.

2. Hay, ‘British Football’.

3. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), ‘Culture and Leisure’; ABS, ‘Participation in Sports’. Clarke, ‘The Threat of Soccer’.

4. Hallinan. Hughson and Burke, ‘Supporting the “World Game”’.

5. Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’.

6. Hay, ‘British Football’, 45.

7. Hughson, ‘“The Wogs are at it Again”’, 42–7.

8. Hughson, ‘“The Wogs are at it Again”’.

9. Castles et al., Mistaken Identity, 5.

10. Hughson, ‘“The Wogs are at it Again”’, 40.

11. Football Australia, ‘Australian Soccer Association’.

12. Ibid.

13. David Lewis, ‘Ready for Take‐off: League’s Moment of Truth – Soccer’s D‐Day’. The Daily Telegraph, August 26, 2005, Sport, 110.

14. O’Neill, quoted in Lewis, ‘Ready for Take‐off’.

15. Sharp, ‘Introduction’, 3.

16. Fleming, Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash; Gibson, Culture and Power, 5.

17. Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’.

18. Birrell, Federation, cited in Cashman, ‘Introduction’, 5.

19. Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’.

20. ‘Melbourne Readers Tip Soccer’. Available at www.Bigfooty.com (hereafter Bigfooty.com).

21. Robertson, Globalization; Featherstone, Consumer Culture; Featherstone, Undoing Culture; Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture; Bauman, Globalization; Appadurai, Modernity at Large; Maguire, Global Sport; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Sport.

22. Hughson and Inglis, ‘Inside the Beautiful Game’.

23. Rowe, ‘Sport and the Repudiation of the Global’, 285.

24. Robertson, ‘Glocalization’.

25. Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism.

26. ‘F*ck 3AW’, available at www.Melbournevictory.net (hereafter Melbournevictory.net).

27. Warren with Harper and Wittington, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, xiii.

28. ‘Melbourne Readers’. Bigfooty.com.

29. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism; Tomlinson, Globalization; Maguire, Global Sport; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Sport.

30. Murray, The World’s Game.

31. Warren with Harper and Wittington, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, x.

32. Harper, ‘Tribute’, xii.

33. Warren with Harper and Wittington, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, xiii.

34. Ibid.

35. Harper, ‘Tribute’, xii.

36. Maguire, Global Sport, 176.

37. Hay, ‘“Our Wicked Foreign Game”’.

38. Fleming, Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash.

39. Martin Flanagan, ‘Footy Should Stand by its History’. The Age, December 10, 2005, Sport, 10.

40. Ibid.

41. Graham Cornes, ‘Football or Soccer? Speaking in Code’. The Advertiser, October 22, 2005, Sport, 126.

42. ‘Melbourne Readers’, Bigfooty.com.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid. The NSL had for over a decade been a summer competition to avoid clashes with the other codes but with minimal success. The A‐league is also a summer competition, which is having far greater success.

50. ‘F*ck 3AW’. Melbournevictory.net.

51. Hay and McDonald, ‘A Victory for the Fans?’

52. ‘AFL has Opposition Finally’. Melbournevictory.net.

53. Kevin Sheedy, coach of the Essendon AFL Club on Sports Tonight. ‘Kevin Sheedy Comment’, Broadcast on Channel Ten, October 27, 2005, 11–11.30 p.m.

54. ‘F*ck 3AW’. Melbournevictory.net.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Average crowds for the NSL were in the low thousands. By the end of the A‐League’s third season (2007/08) they sit at over 14,500. See David Sygall, ‘Big Crowds Push A‐League into World Elite’. Sydney Morning Herald [online], January 20, 2008. http://www.smh.com.au/news/a-league/big-crowds-push-aleague-into-world-elite/2008/01/19/1200620273137.html. They are also close to the National Rugby League’s 2007 average of 16,500; see www.Austadiums.com, NRL.

58. ‘Do You Want South Melbourne Hellas in the A‐League?’. Melbournevictory.net.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society.

68. Bryman, The Disneyization of Society.

69. Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society.

70. Bryman, The Disneyization of Society.

71. Duke, ‘Local Tradition Versus Globalisation’.

72. See ‘Back to School for Victory Supporters’, Melbournevictory.net; Ron Reed, ‘Get Over It, Ugly Support Lets Team Down’. Herald Sun [online], December 10, 2007. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22896622-2883,00.html.

73. This war continues to roll on with the AFL’s announcement of a desire to expand its competition to the Gold Coast and Western Sydney, two areas seen as Rugby League heartlands, but also sites of future A‐league expansion. See Swanton, Proszenko and Sygall, ‘The Battle for Western Sydney’.