‘No Pangs of Conscience’: Nostalgia, Race, Masculinity, and the Emergence of Australian Rules Football in Rural South West Victoria

Abstract

For over 140 years, Australian Rules football has been one of the most popular sporting pastimes in the rural south west of the Australian state of Victoria. Yet, the meaning and impact of this football code in regional Australia remains relatively uncharted. This paper begins the process of redressing the gap by examining recollections of the emergence of the sport in south west Victoria produced in the late 1930s by a writer with the pen-name ‘Old Eaglehawk’. These nostalgic reminiscences touched on broader issues including masculinity, race, rural pioneers, and colonial violence, which shaped both the game locally and the region more broadly. Central to Old Eaglehawk’s articles was the sentiment that pioneers of the region were exemplars of white Australian masculinity whose influence benefitted not only football, but the south west region more generally. As a result of such influence, local football was perceived as a space that cultivated traits that white rural pioneers were celebrated for, such as discipline, toughness, and resilience. But a deeper examination of Old Eaglehawk’s articles suggests that the largely elided frontier violence perpetrated by Australia’s pioneers also permeated the game at a local level.