Understanding Australian soccer: from origins, to ethnic tensions to globalization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Academic scholarship on Australian soccer is now approaching its fifth decade. Whilst Australian soccer has moved and evolved, the scholarship on it has, largely, still focused on the themes of ethnicity. Undeniably, ethnicity still plays its part in the sport. Also, clearly, it was the dominant feature of soccer in Australia in the second half of the 20th century. However, the Australian soccer landscape changed considerably in the first decades of the 21st century following the intervention of the Federal Government in 2003. This paper, therefore, provides a thorough analysis and overview of the literature pertaining to the sport. In so doing it both highlights the depth of the ethnicity theme - something which originally gave soccer studies legitimacy in academia – whilst also encouraging the scholarship to open its lens to greater sophistication and diversity, including topic areas, methodology and theory. This will enable the story and state of Australian soccer to be presented in a more wholistic and comprehensive light.