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Abstract
The physical setting of a sporting venue with its temporal and spatial boundaries, its segregation of spectators and players, combined with the game which is regarded as an activity that is free flowing and ritualized, has created something which can be likened to a theatre. In some senses, sporting events contain a number of identifiable performances, from those on the field by the players to those by the spectators. The 2004 Gaelic Football finals in Perth, Western Australia provided a venue where aspects of ‘sport as performance’ were clearly evident. In this case it was notions of Irishness that were created, discarded and recreated by players and spectators alike. At St Finbarr's Gaelic football club in Western Australia, the performances, from the coach's highly inflamed pre-game speech to the singing of the song adopted by the club at full-time, reinforce a particular sense of Irishness. The final performances were for the players only and were used in part as a way of reliving their win and as a means of knitting themselves back into the fabric of ordinary life.
Notes
[1] The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the contribution from the Australian-Irish Heritage Foundation which made this research possible.
[2] CitationBrady, ‘That Auld Feeling: Performances of Irishness at New York's Gaelic Park’, 3.
[3] CitationHorton, ‘The “Green and the Gold” Irish – Australians and their Role in the Emergence of the Australian Sports Culture’.
[4] CitationGrimes, ‘Postwar Irish Immigrants in Australia: The Sydney Experience’.
[5] CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to the Present, 68.
[6] CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to the Present, 68, 262.
[7] CitationHughes, ‘The Irish Community’.
[8] CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 186.
[9] CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 186
[10] CitationMcCarthy, ‘Irish Rules’, 37
[11] Alomes, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Class in Australia's Dominion Period, 1900–39’, 191.
[12] CitationHorton, ‘The “Green and the Gold”’, 88.
[13] CitationHorton, ‘The “Green and the Gold”’, 88, 305.
[14] CitationRoe, ‘The G.A.A. in Australasia’.
[15] See de Burca, The GAA a History (1980, 1999), Mandle, The Gaelic Atheletic Association & Irish Nationalistic Politics 1884–1924 and McDavitt, Muscular Catholicism: Nationalism, Masculinity and Gaelic Team Sports, 1884–1916 for perspectives on the involvement of the Irish Catholic Church and the GAA.
[16] Interview with Father Padraig Kelly, 10 August 2001.
[17] Interview with John D'Orazio, 27 September 2005.
[18] Interview with John D'Orazio, 27 September 2005
[19] Interview with John Lehane, August 2005.
[20] Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James gives a good insight on the Irish influence in Sydney.
[21] CitationGovernment of Australia, ‘Australian Social Trends: Population – Population Characteristics: Ancestry of Australia's Population’.
[22] Partlon, ‘Singers Standing on the Outer Rim: Writing about the Irish in W.A.’.
[23] Interview with Davy Ross, March 2000.
[24] CitationMcCarthy, ‘Irish Rules’, 41.
[25] CitationRaitz, The Theatre of Sport, vii.
[26] CitationPalmer and Jankowiak, ‘Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane’, 225.
[27] CitationBale, Landscapes of Modern Sport, 86.
[28] CitationSchechner and Appel, By Means of Performances, 4.
[29] CitationKennedy, ‘Sports and Shows: Spectators in Contemporary Culture’.
[30] Elias and Dunning quoted in CitationSnyder and Spreitzer, Social Aspects of Sport: Second Edition, 21.
[31] CitationCurry, ‘Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk about Competition and Women’.
[32] CitationSchechner and Appel, By Means of Performances, 5.
[33] The guest of honour is always a prominent Irishman such as the Irish Ambassador or the Irish Council General.
[34] CitationGmelch, ‘Baseball Magic’.
[35] Cited in CitationFullam, The Throw-In: The G.A.A. And the Men Who Made It, 62.
[36] CitationTurner, The Anthropology of Performance, 74.
[37] CitationMezoMezo, ‘An Adaptation of Aristotle: A Note on the Types of Oratory’.
[38] CitationMiecznikowski Sheard, ‘The Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric’.
[39] CitationKennedy, ‘Sports and Shows: Spectators in Contemporary Culture’.
[40] CitationLalioti, ‘Social Memory and Ethnic Identity: Ancient Greek Drama Performances as Commemorative Ceremonies’.
[41] CitationAdair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History, Australian Retrospectives, 127–31.
[42] CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 187.
[43] CitationBrady, ‘That Auld Feeling: Performances of Irishness at New York's Gaelic Park’, 10.
[44] CitationMcCarthy, ‘Irish Rules’, 41.
[45] CitationMcCann, ‘Music and Politics in Ireland: The Specificity of the Folk Revival in Belfast’.
[46] Interview with Bernard McKenna, December 2006.
[47] CitationMcCarthy, Passing It On: The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture, 211.
[48] CitationMcCarthy, Passing It On: The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture, 211, 224.
[49] CitationColeman, ‘Music as Dialogue’, 3.
[50] CitationMidgett, ‘Cricket and Calypso: Cultural Representation and Social History in the West Indies’.
[51] CitationMartin, ‘The Practice of Identity and an Irish Sense of Place’, 87.
[52] CitationMcCann, ‘Music and Politics in Ireland’.
[53] CitationHobsbawn and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 5.
[54] CitationKennedy, ‘Sports and Shows: Spectators in Contemporary Culture’, 163.
[55] CitationÓ Laoire, ‘Big Days, Big Nights: Entertainment and Representation in a Donegal Community’.
[56] CitationBauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 11.
[57] CitationIrwin, In Search of the Cráic: One Man's Pub Crawl through Irish Music, 117.
[58] CitationPalmer and Jankowiak, ‘Performance and Imagination’.
[59] CitationBauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 10.
[60] CitationSchechner and Appel, By Means of Performances, 6.
[61] CitationMac Lua, The Steadfast Rule: A History of the G.A.A. Ban, 109.