Multiple football codes and their spectators, fans and supporters in Australia

ABSTRACT

This is the first attempt to describe and explain the varying patterns of support for football in Australia from the very early games played by First Nations people and the arrivals from overseas down to the present day. It discusses the Indigenous forms of football and the subsequent involvement of Indigenous people in the codified games of the nineteenth century. The majority of the article covers the development of spectatorship since codification and tries to bring out the distinctive features of changing Australian spectatorship where this is appropriate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ward, “Ocker sports fans and culture vultures.”

2. Ruddell, “Aboriginal ballgames in South-Eastern Australia.”

3. Dredge and McDougall, Diary of the Late James Dredge from September 1, 1839 to October 9, 1843.

4. Dawson, Australian Aborigines.

5. Hay, Aboriginal People, 63–77, 188–94.

6. Hay, Aboriginal People, 50–3; Hay, Albert Pompey Austin, 22–6.

7. Hay, Aboriginal People, 56.

8. “Blacks v Whites. An exciting contest,” Herald, Melbourne, September 15, 1911,2.

9. Hay, ‘When Coranderrk won the premiership’, Footy Almanac, March 17, 2020, https://www.footyalmanac.com.au/when-coranderrk-won-the-premiership-a-story-by-roy-hay/.

10. Attwood, Burrage, BurrageandStokie, “We were always barracking for Cummera.“

11. Zafiris, Shootfarken.com.au; Hay, Aboriginal People;Attwood, Burrage, Burrage and Stokie, “We were always barracking for Cummera.”

12. Nicholls actually played most of his football after leaving Cummeragunja, first for Tongala in Northern Victoria and then in Melbourne with Northcote and Fitzroy. Alf Egan from Myamyn in the Western District of Victoria preceded Nicholls by a few months and played with Carlton and North Melbourne in the Victorian Football League. Egan did not present as Indigenous, whereas Doug Nicholls was clear about and proud of his ancestry and worked tirelessly to advance Indigenous concerns in the latter part of his life (Ristevski and Hess, ‘Uncovering intersections of race, gender and sport’; Clark, Pastor Doug, 58–83).

13. Hay, “Indigenous football in country Victoria between the wars and since the Second World War.”

14. Coyle, “Where are all the Koorie football players?.”

15. “Nicky Winmar stands up to racism in the AFL,” https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Nicky_Winmar_stands_up_to_racism_in_the_AFLDeadly Story, National Museum of Australia, accessed 31 March 2023; Rigney, ‘Sport, Indigenous Australians and invader dreaming’,45–56. The iconic picture by Wayne Lubley or John Feder forms the cover of the book.

16. For a brilliant visual account see The Final Quarter, https://thefinalquarterfilm.com.au.

17. Hay, “Football in Australia before codification.”

18. Tom Wills is the subject of a brilliant biography, now in its third edition (De Moore, Tom Wills: The Insubordinate life of an Australian Sporting Legend).

19. De Moore, Tom Wills: The First Wild Man of Australian Sport.

20. Hibbins and Mancini, Running with the Ball.

21. Hibbins, Sport and Racing in Colonial Melbourne.

22. Ian Syson’s Neos Osmos website, http://neososmos.blogspot.com,and the OZfootball website, http://www.ozfootball.net,have some data and the table in Appendix 2 has more.

23. Ward, “The start of Australian Rules.”

24. Hay, “Football’s first free kick.”

25. Kitching, “The origins of football.”

26. Syson, The Game That Never Happened.

27. Hay, “Our wicked foreign game.”

28. Hay and Guoth, “No single pattern.”

29. Colic-Peisker, ‘Two waves of Croatians in Western Australia’; Colic-Peisker, ‘Croatian and Bosnian migration to Australia in the 1990s’.Natalia Vedric is currently engaged in research on second- and third-generation Croatian migrants for her doctoral thesis at Deakin University. Vesna Drapac and Ivan Hrstic are also analysing the Croatian diaspora in Australia, stressing the changes in social composition and experience over time.

30. Turner and Sandercock, Up Where Cazaly?

31. Nicholson, Stewart, De Moore, and Hess, Australia’s Game.

32. Australian, October 16, 1869, quoted in Pennings, Origins of Australian Football,293.

33. Lenkic and Hess, Play On!,8.

34. For examples, see Appendix 2.

35. Women’s world cup attendance tracker 2023 with full breakdown of fans at matches in Australia and New Zealand. Accessed August 13, 2023. https://www.sportingnews.com/au/football/news/womens-world-cup-attendance-tracker-2023-australia-new-zealand/cc1xymad2ikza8oepo7cnpv2.

36. The official attendance was given as 27 703, Football Australia Media Release, Monday, July 31, 2023.

37. “Football Australia celebrates record-breaking ticket sales for FIFAWomen’s World Cup,” Football Australia media release, July 20, 2023.

38. Crawford, The Matilda Effect.

39. See also, Caitlin Foord, the Matildas’ striker, quoted in The Australian, August 21, 2023:‘But what we have done is much bigger … We’ve united the whole country, inspired the next generation, made history’, she wrote. ‘We have changed how football is viewed here in (Australia), but most importantly we made a lot of Australians proud. I couldn’t be prouder to be an Aussie & Matilda – thank you Australia’.

40. Vamplew, “Violence in Australian soccer.”

41. Hay and Murray, A History of Football in Australia, 115–118.

42. Some of the working material for this exercise found its way into subsequent publications but much of it remains unpublished. Those directly involved included Roy Hay, Michael Pocklington, Ramon Spaaij and Ian Warren.

43. Tatz, “Aborigines, sport and suicide”; Knijnik & Hunter, “The Pedagogy of courage.”

44. Hay and Joel, “Football’s World Cup and its fans.”

45. Emma Kemp, “Football Australia starts disciplinary action against Sydney United over fascist songs and salutes from fans,” Guardian Australia, October 3, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/03/football-australia-starts-disciplinary-action-against-sydney-united-58-over-fascist-songs-and-salutes-from-fans.

46. Schneiders, Jaeger and Abbott, “A cultural mess: Behind the A-League pitch invasion,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 23, 2022. https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/a-cultural-mess-behind-the-a-league-pitch-invasion-20221219-p5c7ea.html.

47. Hay, “Oral history, migration and soccer in Australia.”

48. Gantzand Lewis, “Sports fanshipchanges across the lifespan.”