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Abstract
The place of rugby union football in Australian society presents a rich context to play and display critical social issues, particularly, identity formations and contestations. This essay examines the development of elite rugby union in Australia from its inception to professionalization. In its amateur development, the processes of colonization and cultural impositions created its culture and legacy. With the overlapping of sporting and economic networks, rugby union entered the professional era. This essay argues that the development from amateurism to ‘shamateurism’ to professionalism was uneven and contested on various levels. Whilst the development of rugby union in Australia was both a reflection and manifestation of globalization it did not totally parallel the globalization of sport in general, indeed rugby union football remains a particularly ‘glocal’ game. The points of resistance and departure, this essay concludes, distinguish the identity of rugby union from other sporting institutions and their wider social contexts.
Notes
1 CitationMaguire, Global Sport, 215.
2 CitationDunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players.
3 CitationARU, Annual Report (Financial Statement), 2006, 6.
4 Maguire, Global Sport, 54–94.
5 CitationRobertson, Globalization, 58.
6 CitationRobertson, Globalization, 133–5.
7 CitationGiulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 168.
8 CitationApparadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference’, 295–311.
9 Throughout the rest of the paper ‘football’ will be used in reference to Association football (soccer).
10 CitationCashman, Paradise of Sport.
11 CitationHickie, They Ran with Ball, 38–119.
12 CitationHorton, ‘Football Identity, Place’.
13 CitationHorton, ‘Dominant Ideologies’.
14 CitationHorton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football’; Hickie, They Ran with the Ball; CitationMoran, Viewless Winds; Howell, Wilkes and Xie, Wallabies; CitationMulford, Guardians of the Game; CitationMarples, History of Football; Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players; CitationStarmer-Smith, The Barbarians; CitationWyatt and Herridge, Rugby Revolution.
15 The ARU express these sentiments in its mission statement thus:Rugby Union is a game that develops leadership, team spirit, courage, sportsmanship, and friendship. These values and traditions develop from the first time a young player shakes hands with their opposite number, leading to a life long passion for and involvement with the game at all levels. Foremost, the game of Rugby embodies the best Australian values and the nation's indomitable spirit. The key values of the game of rugby consist of Australian pride, team work and camaraderie, love of the game, and tradition and heritage.Australian Pride – Rugby embodies the best Australian values and the nation's unyielding spirit. Through it's success on the International stage, rugby provides all Australians with a sense of pride, affiliation and belonging.Teamwork and Camaraderie – Rugby is unselfish and focused on team play achievement. Its rugged nature is balanced by the concepts of fair play, sportsmanship, fun and ultimately mateship. This can be experienced at any age, any level and anywhere – on the field, in the stands or in the pub.Love of the Game – Rugby engenders an abiding passion – an intensely personal pleasure in playing or watching. It creates an unaffected joy.Tradition and Heritage – The ethos of rugby has shaped a code of behaviour that has transcended generations since 1823. It's time-honoured legacy creates a broader social environment.
16 Mulford, Guardians of the Game.
17 CitationFagan, Rugby Rebellion; CitationHowell and Howell, Greatest Game, 2–25; CitationLester, Story of Australian Rugby League.
18 Wyatt and Herridge, Rugby Revolution, 84.
19 Fagan, Rugby Rebellion, 21–37.
20 Fagan, Rugby Rebellion; Howell and Howell, Greatest Game, 2–25; Lester, Story of Australian Rugby League.
21 CitationHorton, ‘The “Green” and the “Gold”’, 77–8.
22 CitationPhillips, ‘Football, Class and War’.
23 CitationO'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 253.
24 Howell and Howell, Greatest Game, 35–42.
25 Phillips, ‘Football, Class, War’.
26 Parsons, ‘Capitalism, Class and Community’.
27 This epithet, used somewhat disparagingly by working-class footballers in Britain and later in Australia, stems from the cheers of encouragement, ‘hoorah’, used at sporting events of the upper and middle classes, such as, rugby union games, cricket matches and particularly rowing regattas.
28 Until the game became commercialized the title ‘Wallabies’ was generally only used with reference to the Australian teams that made the full British Isles tour involving tests against all four home countries and a complete itinerary of other matches against regional, county, club and university sides, following in the footsteps of the First Wallabies captained by Herbert Moran in 1908–09, who Pollard suggested favoured this exclusivity (Pollard, Australian Rugby Union, 860). The marketing potential of the tag ‘Wallabies’ or ‘Wallaby’ is immense and its adoption for all products and matches involving the Australian rugby union team is indicative of the extent of the game's penetration by corporate cultural capitalism and its emergence as a feature of mediasport. The last full Wallaby tour took place in 1984 when the Eighth Wallabies completed the ‘grand slam’ against all four Home countries. The term ‘grand slam’ refers to beating all the four home countries on a Wallaby tour to the UK.
29 Mulford, Guardians of the Game; Diehm, Red, Red, Red.
30 In 1946 all interstate and international football was reinstated with NSW winning the traditional interstate series against Queensland three matches to nil. The entrenched (sibling) rivalry between New Zealand and Australia continued in 1946 when Australia toured New Zealand and the challenge for the Bledisloe Cup resumed. New Zealand toured Australia the following year and played two tests; over 53,000 spectators attended the matches in Brisbane and Sydney.
31 Maguire, Global Sport, 84–6.
32 CitationZakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game for Gentlemen’, 163–73.
33 Queensland, traditionally seen as the Premier state's most serious rival had lost so much ground, in player strength and, naturally financially since its post-First World War ‘hibernation’, that it could only muster enough credibility or power to gain more than three votes of the ten on offer.
34 CitationPollard, Australian Rugby Union, 48–9.
35 It was in 1997, when the game had become fully professional and the international governing body made a political economic decision to move it headquarters to Dublin, that it became the IRB.
36 Australia as a full member of the IRFB was able to play with special dispensation for several years with regards to the laws governing kicking into touch on full and the use of time-keepers; both have since been universally accepted. Australia also promoted the change to the point-value of a try, up from 3 to 4pts and the introduction, internationally, of replacements.
37 Maguire, Global Sports, 21.
38 The impact now extends to both rugby codes with players with a Pacific Island heritage being prominent at the elite level of both league and union. The New Zealand All Blacks, the Wallabies and all the Super 14 teams from both nations have many players with a Pacific Island background whilst in the National Rugby League (NRL) it is estimated ‘that 33% of the 375 players in the top 25-man squads at the 15 clubs are Pacific Islanders and the number is closer to half at the junior representative level’ (B. Walter, ‘Islanders in the Sun’. Sydney Morning Herald, March 25, 2006).
39 The Wallaby squad for the home international series in 2007 has five players with a Pacific Islander heritage and the Australia ‘A’ squad has a similar number. 29.5% of the current squads from the three Australian Super 14 teams and the Victorian State squad are of Pacific Island descent. 55% of the Victorian squad, which does not play in the ‘Super 14’ competition, is Pacific Islanders. The Wallaroos (women's national team) have seven Pacific Islanders in their squad of 26 players. The growing trend nationally is indicated by the fact that the latest figures, provided by the Geoff Shaw, General Manager of Community Rugby at the ARU, indicate that players with a Pacific Island heritage make up over 40% of the Australian U/16 representative squads.
40 CitationDiehm, Red, Red, Red, 169.
41 CitationBickley, Maroon, 96–8.
42 Diehm, Red, Red, Red; Mulford, Guardians of the Game; Pollard, Australian Rugby Union.
43 Wyatt and Herridge, Rugby Revolution, 53.
44 CitationGruneau, ‘Amateurism as a Sociological Problem’, 575.
45 CitationGruneau, ‘Amateurism as a Sociological Problem’, 575
46 Wyatt and Herridge, The Rugby Revolution, 239–50.
47 Potential global television audiences for the next RWC are assessed to be over 3 billion people. See http://www.imgworld.com/sports/team_sports/default.sps.
48 This expression is used in a strict sense regarding violence, its restraint and the acceptance of violent behaviour in general, as well as in the sporting context.
49 CitationBrohm, Sport, a Prison of Measured Time, 17.
50 CitationHorton, ‘A History of Rugby Union Football’, 9–51.
51 Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players.
52 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game’.
53 Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, Economic Impact of RWC 2003, 9.
54 In Australian rugby union, ‘Grand Slam’ refers to defeating all the four home unions, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland on a single British Islands tour.
55 CitationWenner, ‘Playing the Mediasport Game’.
56 CitationHickie, ‘The Amateur Ideal’.
57 CitationSkinner, Stewart and Edwards, ‘The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union’, 51.
58 CitationSkinner, Stewart and Edwards, ‘The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union’, 60.
59 Maguire, Global Sport
60 Maguire, Global Sport
61 Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players, 226.
62 CitationHowell, Wilkes and Xie, The Wallabies and CitationHowell and Xie, Wallaby Greats.
63 CitationRojek, ‘Sports Celebrity’, 683.
64 CitationO'Regan, ‘Another Side of the Rugby World Cup’.
65 CitationURS, ‘Economic Impact of the RWC, 2003’.
66 CitationURS, ‘Economic Impact of the RWC, 2003’
67 CitationURS, ‘Economic Impact of the RWC, 2003’
68 P. Switzer, ‘Scoring Big Time’. http://www.charteredaccountants.com.au/index.cfm?su = /charter/charter_archive/2003/june_2003.
69 Wenner, ‘Playing the Mediasport Game’.
70 AAP, ‘Ten secures Rugby World Cup rights’. http://www.rugbyheaven.smh.com.au/articles/2006/11/15/1163266614941.html.
71 AAP, ‘Ten secures Rugby World Cup rights’. http://www.rugbyheaven.smh.com.au/articles/2006/11/15/1163266614941.html
72 Mulford, Guardians of the Game, 217–20; Diehm, Red, Red, Red, 259–62.
73 Diehm, Red, Red, Red, 264.
74 Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 167–70.
75 Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 169.
76 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional game’, 172–3.
77 Diehm, Red, Red, Red, 264–5.
78 Diehm, Red, Red, Red, 264–5
79 CitationFitzsimons, Rugby War for a complete outline of the whole process of battle for Rugby Union football in the southern hemisphere.
80 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game’, 166–7.
81 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game’, 166–7
82 CitationDabscheck, ‘Paying for Professionalism’, 1–9.
83 CitationAllison, Amateurism in Sport, 49.
84 CitationElias, Civilizing Process.
85 In their sociological study of the development of Rugby union football Dunning and Sheard discussed, historically, this notion of the growing intolerance of gratuitous violence in Rugby union football featured in their study entitled Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players which utilized Elias’ theory of the civilizing processes to analyse the development of the game from its earliest folk origins (the barbarian phase) to the game that evolved at Rugby School and promoted to other English Public Schools and the universities, thus played and controlled by ‘gentlemen’, and to the bifurcation of the rugby code and the emergence of rugby league football in 1895 which along with the development of amateur rugby union as a ‘modern’ sport marked their ‘players’ phase. The current phase, which, since 1995 has seen the formal sanctioning of professional rugby union, should possibly be tagged the ‘superstar’ phase?
86 G. Shaw, Personal Communication – conversation with author, October 23, 2003, Townsville.
87 Dunning and Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players.
88 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game’.
89 Zakus and Horton, ‘A Professional Game’, 184.
90 URS, ‘Economic Impact of the RWC, 2003’.
91 CitationARU, Annual Report, 2004.
92 CitationHarcourt, ‘The Game they Play in Heaven’.
93 Apparadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference’.
94 CitationGaltung, ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’, 81-94.
95 Horton, ‘Football, Identity, Place’, 1362.
96 CitationTennyson, ‘They Taught the World’.
97 CitationMangan, Cultural Bond, and CitationMangan, Games Ethic.
98 Robertson, Globalization.
99 Apparadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference’.
100 CitationJarvie and Maguire, Sport and Leisure, 234.
101 A. McBride, ‘Wallabies Snatch Unlikely Victory Off Wales’. SportsAustralia.com. http://sportsaustralia.com/articles/news.php?id = 1389.
102 The Australian, June 7, 2007, 16.
103 CitationARU, Annual Report, ‘Community Rugby’, 2006. However, a circumspect analysis of these figures does reveal that the largest sectional rise is in the schools that played only irregularly in one off gala days or in ‘knock-out’ competitions. The current, apparently strong, figures demonstrated in comparison with other sports at junior levels of 8% are flattering as these include a massive new population of junior rugby union players (22%) in Western Australia, courtesy of the new Super 14 franchise, the Western Force. A dimension of these statistics which is very significant, culturally, is the continued increase in the number of registered senior players in women's rugby, to 1,915 in 2006. The Australian women's national team, the Wallaroos, placed 5th in the finals in 2002 and 7th in 2006.
104 Sweeney Sports Report, Citation2006.
105 CitationBeck, ‘Rooted Cosmopolitanism’.
106 R. Guinness, ‘ARU Ready to Offer Deans Triple the Going Rate to Tackle Wallabies Job’. http://www.rugbyheaven.com.au/news/news/deans-could-get-triple/2007/11/28/1196036984356.html#.
107 John CitationEales, ‘Interview’.
108 M. Hinton, ‘Deans is the New Wallabies Coach’. http://www.rugbyheaven.com.au/news/news/deans-gets-wallabies-job/2007/12/14/1197568227944.html.
109 Frank Lowy, a post-Second World War migrant, Australia's second richest man, is founder and major share holder of the Westfield Group. He was instrumental in the complete restructuring of Australian football (soccer) in 2003, when he assumed control. He is Chairman of the Football Federation of Australia and has personally financially backed football's redevelopment. Securing John O'Neill's services in 2004 has been attributed solely to Lowy.
110 CitationO'Neill, It's Only a Game.
111 Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘Recovering the Social’, 168.
112 CitationRobertson, ‘Glocalization’, 27.