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The Games Are Not the Same Stewart book.indd i 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Stewart book.indd ii 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM The Games Are Not the Same The Political Economy of Football in Australia Edited by Bob Stewart Stewart book.indd iii 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited 187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia mup-info@unimelb.edu.au www.mup.com.au First published 2007 Text © individual contributors 2007 Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2007 This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher. Designed by Phil Campbell Typeset by J&M Typesetting Printed in Australia by Melbourne University Design and Print Centre National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: The games are not the same : the political economy of football in Australia. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 9780522853667 (pbk.) 1. Football - Social aspects - Australia. 2. Australian football - Social aspects. 3. Rugby football - Social aspects - Australia. 4. Soccer - Social aspects Australia. 5. Australia - Social life and customs. I. Stewart, Bob, 1946- . 796.330994 Stewart book.indd iv 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Contents Preface 1. The Political Economy of Football: Framing the Analysis Bob Stewart 3 2. Australia’s Sporting Culture: Riding on the Back of Its Footballers Matthew Nicholson and Rob Hess 23 3. Beyond the Barassi Line: The Origins and Diffusion of Football Codes in Australia Rob Hess and Matthew Nicholson 43 4. Crossing the Barassi Line: The Rise and Rise of Australian Football Bob Stewart and Geoff Dickson 71 5. Crashing Through the Class Barrier: Rugby League’s Metamorphosis James Skinner and Allan Edwards 114 6. A Professional Game for Gentlemen: Rugby Union’s Transformation Dwight Zakus and Peter Horton 142 7. Moving Beyond Ethnicity: Soccer’s Evolutionary Progress Braham Dabscheck 198 8. Around the Grounds: A Comparative Analysis of Football in Australia Robert D Macdonald and Ross Booth 236 9. Crystal-ball Gazing: The Future of Football Geoff Dickson and Bob Stewart 332 Index v Stewart book.indd v 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Stewart book.indd vi 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Preface While this book is all about football, it does not pretend to be a chronicle of every star player, successful coach, or great match. Neither does it list every premiership team, leading goal kicker, or best player award. This is a book about the business and management of football, and the ways in which the various football codes evolved from essentially community-based sports underpinned by a local supporter base, into multi-layered enterprises that compete in the mass entertainment industry. The focus will be on Australian football, rugby league, rugby union and soccer, and the different ways in which they have responded to changing contextual and environmental conditions over their lifetime as codified and organised sport activities. These contextual factors include the growth of consumer capitalism, urbanisation and demographic change, competition from other leisure activities, the cultural dominance of media (and in particular television), the commercial dominance of the corporate sector, and finally, government policy. The book will be also framed by the premise that while each of the codes and their respective leagues has been transformed over the last sixty years, there has been considerable tension both between the codes and within them, as stakeholders who wanted change battled those who resisted it. The book covers both the community and high-performance sides of each code, although the major focus will be on the top end of sports-town, where high performance and commercial connections matter most. In other words, most of the analysis will centre on the premier and national leagues for each code and the ways they shifted, restructured and ultimately reinvented themselves to varying degrees as corporate enterprises. The book seeks to reveal the causes of the changes that took place in each code and league, and to identify crucial incidents and turning points. In doing so, it will discuss the roles of the key actors in the transformation, which include governing bodies, officials, players, sponsors, fans and broadcasters, and what they stood to gain and lose from the changes. Special attention will be given to the fans and how they resisted some of the more corporate intrusions into their games. 1 Stewart book.indd 1 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM In this respect, a major theme running through the analysis is the question of just who owns the games, and whether the cultural significance of each code has been destroyed by its marketisation and corporatisation. The book will also examine the current status of the football codes and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. This examination will be underpinned by the proposition that each code is operating in a competitive marketplace, where effective planning and policy making are crucial ingredients of future successes. The book will end with a wrap-up of football’s evolution in Australia and a discussion of various scenarios for each code. The idea to bring together all the football codes under the same analytical umbrella, and chart their progress, arose out of a number of Melbourne-based conferences organised by Victoria University’s Football Studies Unit. It was apparent that while many writers had a conceptual handle on specific aspects of a code’s development, there was no one doing multi-code work that examined their business operations. Previous books on football in Australia focused on a single code, which immediately eliminated a large part of the context within which to explain its development. As a result, the Football Studies Unit resolved to initiate writing projects that integrated the codes. This book is a first step in making the project happen. It is anticipated that this comparative analysis of the main football codes in Australia will not only show how each game developed in either similar or different ways, but also how the development of one code was influenced by the development of another. Moreover, more sport fans than ever before in Australia follow at least two football codes, and this book will, for the first time, give the reader a broad understanding of the relationships and tensions between the codes, and explain just how each football code changed in the ways it did. 2 Stewart book.indd 2 The Games Are Not the Same 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM 1 The Political Economy of Football Framing the Analysis Bob Stewart Why Football? By any measure football is the most popular sport in the world. It has been estimated that more than 210 million people play the game, including 105 million in Asia and around 50 million in Europe.1 Football also has a massive following and, apart from the Olympic Games, attracts more television viewers than any other sporting event. There are many explanations for the global popularity of football, ranging from its aesthetics and theatrics to its camaraderie, physicality and even discipline.2 One of the more novel explanations comes from Desmond Morris, an English anthropologist and sports fan, who suggested football meets a deep-seated need for tribal identity, and provides an archetypal ritual where fans can relive ancient ceremonies and social practices, and thereby compete for power, status and recognition.3 According to Morris, football tribes are led by tribal elders who comprise the club president or chairperson, board members and senior officials, coaches, fitness advisors and medical support staff. The elders and players enact tribal rituals that both reinforce 3 Stewart book.indd 3 30/7/07 1:13:58 PM the sport’s values and regulate the behaviours of its participants. Rituals include mid-week commentary, pre-game preparation, the display of signs and slogans that emphasise discipline and endeavour, and pre-match addresses that urge players to selflessly contribute to the greater good. The players are the tribal heroes, and are cheered and lauded, and perform on the field of play until their time is up, in which case they are replaced by newly trained warriors. There are also many tribal trappings like player outfits, club photos, club colours, insignia, badges, emblems and trophies that provide colour, noise and public exposure. Central to the tribal practices are the tribal-followers, or fans, who demonstrate their passion and commitment by proudly displaying their loyalty, and accentuate inter-tribal rivalries by purchasing memorabilia, dressing in club colours and inciting the followers of other teams and rival tribes. They also compose tribal chants and team songs, which are used not only to assert their identity, but to also intimidate rival tribes. In short, football has an unrivalled capacity to ‘bring people together’ and help them define their ‘sense of identity and belonging’.4 What Is Football? While football taps into a universal need to establish strong and lasting tribal identities, and occupies vastly more cultural and commercial space that other sports, there is no agreement on what is meant by the term ‘football’ and what comes under the football umbrella. In Australia in particular, football is a contested descriptor of an array of team games that involve the movement of an oval or spherical ball by hand or foot, and where the aim is to gain territory or kick goals. To get the record straight, there are at least six significant games that fit the above description, and which at some time or another use the word football in their name. The first is association football, which originated in England in the 1860s, and gradually diffused to most parts of the world.5 It has been described as soccer, the world game, and even the beautiful game, but more recently its nomenclature has settled down and it is now universally known as football. The second is American football, which was once called gridiron and is frequently abbreviated to just plain football, but which has now slotted comfortably into the sporting lexicon as American football. The third code is Australian football, which has gone through a number of name 4 Stewart book.indd 4 The Games Are Not the Same 30/7/07 1:13:58 PM