The Games Are Not the Same Stewart book.indd iStewart book.indd i 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Stewart book.indd iiStewart book.indd ii 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM The Games Are Not the Same The Political Economy of Football in Australia Edited by Bob Stewart Stewart book.indd iiiStewart book.indd iii 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 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 ivStewart book.indd iv 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Contents Preface 1. The Political Economy of Football: Framing the Analysis 3 Bob Stewart 2. Australia’s Sporting Culture: Riding on the Back of Its 23 Footballers Matthew Nicholson and Rob Hess 3. Beyond the Barassi Line: The Origins and Diffusion of 43 Football Codes in Australia Rob Hess and Matthew Nicholson 4. Crossing the Barassi Line: The Rise and Rise of Australian 71 Football Bob Stewart and Geoff Dickson 5. Crashing Through the Class Barrier: Rugby League’s 114 Metamorphosis James Skinner and Allan Edwards 6. A Professional Game for Gentlemen: Rugby Union’s 142 Transformation Dwight Zakus and Peter Horton 7. Moving Beyond Ethnicity: Soccer’s Evolutionary Progress 198 Braham Dabscheck 8. Around the Grounds: A Comparative Analysis of Football 236 in Australia Robert D Macdonald and Ross Booth 9. Crystal-ball Gazing: The Future of Football 332 Geoff Dickson and Bob Stewart Index v Stewart book.indd vStewart book.indd v 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM Stewart book.indd viStewart book.indd vi 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM 1 Preface While this book is all about football, it does not pretend to be a chron- icle 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 essen- tially community-based sports underpinned by a local supporter base, into multi-layered enterprises that compete in the mass enter- tainment 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 life- time as codified and organised sport activities. These contextual fac- tors 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 com- mercial 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. Stewart book.indd 1Stewart book.indd 1 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM The Games Are Not the Same 2 In this respect, a major theme running through the analysis is the question of just who owns the games, and whether the cultural sig- nificance 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 oper- ations. 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 foot- ball 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. Stewart book.indd 2Stewart book.indd 2 30/7/07 1:13:57 PM30/7/07 1:13:57 PM 3 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, physi- cality 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 ceremo- nies 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 mem- bers and senior officials, coaches, fitness advisors and medical sup- port staff. The elders and players enact tribal rituals that both reinforce Stewart book.indd 3Stewart book.indd 3 30/7/07 1:13:58 PM30/7/07 1:13:58 PM The Games Are Not the Same 4 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 pur- chasing memorabilia, dressing in club colours and inciting the fol- lowers 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 origi- nated 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 comfort- ably into the sporting lexicon as American football. The third code is Australian football, which has gone through a number of name Stewart book.indd 4Stewart book.indd 4 30/7/07 1:13:58 PM30/7/07 1:13:58 PM [...]... As Matthew Nicholson has noted elsewhere, the battle over its ownership The Political Economy of Football Stewart book.indd 5 5 30/7/07 1:13:58 PM in the Australian sporting landscape has just begun.6 At the moment it is unclear as to who will win the football nomenclature war Understanding the Evolution of Football in Australia As Chapter 2 notes, Australians are intensely proud of their sporting traditions... Chapter 3 examines the development of the football codes in colonial Australia and the ways in which they spread across the nation Rob Hess and Matthew Nicholson explain how some codes came to dominate some parts of Australia, while other codes captured the hearts and minds of people in other areas of the country Rob and Matthew also examine the ways in which soccer spread itself across the nation without... required for the activity In this respect, the football codes, cricket, swimming, tennis and netball benefited substantially from local government support.29 The beginning of World War II was the impetus for a shift in Federal Government thinking about the place of sport and physical activity in Australian life Under Prime Minister Robert Menzies, the 28 Stewart book.indd 28 The Games Are Not the Same 30/7/07... differentiate it from the world of business.21 The main areas of commonality are an emphasis on leadership and strategy, revenue growth and value creation, building and sharing value-chain profits, product quality and innovation, building brand equity, converting fans and customers into core business pillars, and finally, establishing a global market The areas of difference are also important since they reveal... all over the nation Bob and Geoff also examine the transformation of the Victorian Football League into the Australian Football League, and the associated costs and benefits of this transformation In Chapter 5 James Skinner and Allan Edwards examine the growth of rugby league from the 1940s to the present They detail the many ebbs and flows, and provide a critical analysis of the Super League/ Australian... book.indd 22 The Games Are Not the Same 30/7/07 1:14:00 PM 2 Australia s Sporting Culture Riding on the Back of Its Footballers Matthew Nicholson and Rob Hess Introduction In one of the first scholarly analyses of Australian sporting culture, Brian Stoddart acknowledged that the nation had a worldwide reputation for being obsessed with sport.1 Stoddart also provided a caveat when he noted that Australia. .. reputation at all This 23 Stewart book.indd 23 30/7/07 1:14:00 PM chapter provides a snapshot of Australia s sporting history and culture, with the aim of explaining the role of sport in Australian society and contextualising the evolution of the football codes up to the present time Early Sport Culture While 1788 marked the beginning of white settlement in Australia, Australia s sport and recreation culture... important in the lives of colonial Australians as they were in the lives of their originators From 1788 sports linked to gambling and drinking quickly took hold, including disorderly activities such as bare-knuckle boxing, wrestling and cockfighting.8 Horseracing was well patronised, as were other recreational activities that required little or no equipment in the harsh and restrictive environment of a... Sporting Culture The arrival of free settlers during the early part of the nineteenth century consolidated the institutions of sport that had been established by the military class.16 As a prosperous and free urban society began to emerge in Australia during the first half of the nineteenth century, the ideals and culture of organised British sport determined the types of games that were played, the equipment... question of how Australia s four football codes, and in particular their professional leagues, are placed with respect to the sport-as-business model Are they all located in the corporate phase, as Drucker’s thesis would predict, or are some just coming out of their commercial and bureaucratic phases? Moreover, even if they are all corporatised in the way that cricket and the Olympic Games have been, are . Library of Australia Cataloguing -in- Publication entry: The games are not the same : the political economy of football in Australia. Bibliography. Includes index. . 1:13:57 PM The Games Are Not the Same The Political Economy of Football in Australia Edited by Bob Stewart Stewart book.indd iiiStewart book.indd iii 30/7/07