Soccer In Australia Research Articles

“That simply cannot be allowed to happen”. The Western Sydney Wanderers and the paradox of Australian soccer

ABSTRACT The game of soccer in Australia is a paradox for many reasons. While soccer enjoys an enormous following as one of Australia’s largest amateur participation sports at the junior levels, the professional version of the game struggles for media attention in an otherwise very sports-oriented nation. In addition, while it could be described as pan-ethnic in that it has a popular participation rate across most communities, and while it has strong links to Australia’s British heritage and the origins of the game itself, soccer today is largely viewed as un-Australian, ‘existing on the margins of the Australian Anglophone sporting mainstream’ because of its ‘post-war history of association with ethnic communities of non-English speaking background’.

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

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.

Repudiate or Replicate: The Delegitimization of Soccer in Australia: 1880–1914

Repudiate or Replicate: The Delegitimization of Soccer in Australia: 1880–1914

Talent identification and recruitment in youth soccer: Recruiter's perceptions of the key attributes for player recruitment.

Using the modified Delphi method, we aimed to understand the attributes youth coaches and recruiters perceive as important when identifying skilled youth performance at the entry level of representative soccer in Australia (i.e., Under 13 years). Furthermore, we also aimed to describe the current methods youth coaches and recruiters use to assess and identify these attributes in youth players. Australian regional youth technical directors and coaches (n = 20) completed a three stage process, including an initial interview and two subsequent questionnaires, whereby attributes and qualities associated with talent identification were rated and justified according to the importance for youth player performance and talent identification. Results indicate a hierarchy of attributes recruiters perceive as important for Under 13 soccer performance, including technical (i.e., first touch, striking the ball, one-versus-one ability, and technical ability under pressure), tactical (i.e., decision-making ability) and psychological attributes (i.e., coachability and positive attitude). In addition, the findings indicated attributes and qualities not emphasised within the talent identification process including, physiological, anthropometrical, sociological and several psychological attributes. It is suggested talent recruiters apply a holistic multidisciplinary approach to talent identification, with the current findings potentially providing initial evidence to suggest recruiters do consider numerous attributes when selecting and identifying youth players.

The codes diverge: the establishment of Victorian football, rugby and soccer in Australia, 1860–1900

In the second half of the nineteenth century, three codes of football emerged in Australia – what started as the rules of the Melbourne club and became Victorian and later Australia football, rugby and Association football (soccer). All initially derived from United Kingdom originals, but they developed different trajectories. For much of this period, there was an often confusing interaction between the games as some devotees sought to distinguish them, while others hankered after a composite code to allow for or encourage internal competition in Australia. Others were keen to stick closely to what was developing elsewhere to permit overseas involvement. Many explanations for this complex pattern have been offered but the issues remain unsettled. This article tries to sort out some of what was happening as the codes gradually evolved distinct identities.

Waiting for Association football: incipient soccer in Australia, 1850–1880

Australian soccer has a history much deeper and broader than is allowed in the conventional received story. Even some soccer historians are tempted to claim that the game was introduced here in the 1880s despite the fact that versions of the non-handling and kicking game (either as embodied practice or press advocacies) have been present since the 1850s. Reading newspaper reports against the mainstream narrative grain allows us to see a bustling community of players and advocates of Association football well before the oft-assumed starting point of 1880.

Technical attributes of Australian youth soccer players: Implications for talent identification

Objectives To determine whether the technical ability of Australian youth soccer players could distinguish between various playing levels. Design A cross-sectional observational design was used with each player required to complete four technical tests. Methods Sixty-two participants were representatives of three cohorts of youth soccer in Australia: national elite ( n = 18), state elite ( n = 22) and sub-elite ( n = 22). The technical tests used were Loughborough Short Passing Test (LSPT), long passing test (LPT), shooting test and speed dribbling, with all players familiarised with the tests prior to data collection. Differences between cohorts were analysed using a multiple analysis of variance test with follow-up analyses of variance and Tukey Honest Significant Difference post-hoc test, which were subsequently used to inform a sensitivity analysis, more specifically a bootstrapped receiver operating curve to determine cut-off scores for each variable. Results The national elite cohort scored better than state- and sub-elite cohorts on the LSPT, however, the state elite produced the fastest time before penalties. The sub-elite cohort scored less points on the LPT compared to both national- and state-elite cohorts, on both feet. In regards to speed dribbling, national-elite players were faster than both the state- and sub-elite cohorts. Shooting accuracy and velocity were able to discriminate the national- and sub-elite cohorts on the dominant foot, with shooting velocity on the nondominant foot being faster for the national elite compared to both the state- and sub-elite cohorts. Conclusions A number of differences in technical ability were identified between varying levels of Australian youth soccer players. Youth soccer coaches and sports scientists should use the cut-off scores for the technical tests in the talent identification and development process, with aspiring players aiming to reach these levels.

Conflicting traditions: the FIFA World Cup, Australia and football identities

Demonstrable sectarianism and severity towards the sport of soccer in Australia has not prevented the country from reaching the FIFA World Cup tournament on several occasions. The national team, the Socceroos, have made qualification something of a normality. Despite reaching a position of some prestige in the social and cultural landscape, the sport finds itself in an unusual situation in Australia: a global enterprise that continues to struggle against rival and entrenched sporting codes despite its universal message; and an assortment of ethnic and cultural associations saddling it. In this, the game faces various challenges, with its supporters attempting to show its global appeal while trying to avoid suggestions of parochialism. Brazil 2014 provided the ideal platform for that demonstration.

Scoring on and off the field?: The impact of Australia's inclusion in the Asian Football Confederation

The case follows Australia's move from the Oceania Football Federation (OFC) to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The case explores the impact of Australia's inclusion on other AFC member nations and highlights that Australia's relative success in the AFC may not be perceived as positive by all stakeholders within the AFC. The case considers the effect of Australia's inclusion in the AFC on the AFC in general, and also on both the sport of soccer in Australia, and the broader Australian economy.

The exogenous cultural incorporation of football into the Australian mainstream: a case of polyglot multiculturalism

AbstractThis paper explains soccer’s entrance into the Australian mainstream in consequence of the Australian Football Federation (FFA) exercising symbolic violence, a modus operandi with the goal of re-writing the game’s cultural history. The claim is that the FFA attempts to hide the game’s historic foundations of ethnic diversity, with a multitude of ethnic-minority clubs (Greek, Italian, Hungarian, Maltese etc.) as well as its own actions which led to their eventual elimination and to create a perception that the game is Anglo-Australian. These attempts, it is claimed here, are similar to the theoretical model of polyglot multiculturalism; the dominant majority group will allow ethnic minorities to practise their own cultures so long as certain cultural boundaries, which may threaten the dominant culture, are not crossed.This paper contributes to the literature of multiculturalism in that it uses the empirical case of soccer in Australia to describe the imaginary boundary which a dominant culture will...

‘A’ is for Australia: New Football’s billionaires, consumers and the ‘Asian Century’. How the A-League defines the new Australia

Recent changes within Australian soccer reflect changes that have taken place in the wider Australian context. Equally, the changes in soccer in Australia and the world reflect significant trends, such as postmodern consumerism and globalization. Whilst soccer in Australia had long been derided as a platform for ethnic nationalism, its current utility is as a vital cultural, geopolitical and economic commodity for Australian ‘engagement’ with Asia. The government-sanctioned Crawford Report (2003) and the New Football Era bookend the evolution of Australian soccer for the ‘Asian Century’ and the transformation to a new, post-multicultural, post-industrial Australia. This paper questions the legitimacy of the New Football Era and whose interests were served in its implementation, and whether what has been lost will have consequences that will outweigh and outlive the promised Asian riches.

The ‘Chimera’ of Origins: Association Football in Australia before 1880

It is generally accepted that organised Association football (soccer) commenced in Australia in Sydney in 1880. This article challenges that starting point by revealing earlier games of codified soccer – not in order to establish an earlier point of origin but to challenge the very idea of origins. Recent work on football in Australia in the 1850s has begun to gather the unearthed traces of rule-bounded small-sided games brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland. Some of these were games with a strong developmental link to present day soccer in Australia. Yet the nearly disabling problem for this kind of research is that as researchers venture archivally backward in time the images become more blurred and the distinctions between codes become harder to make. Even as potential origin points become temporally closer they recede into the shadows of archival absence. The dilemma for football historians lies in the necessity of engagement with the established origins that lie at the heart of the historiography of all major sports, origins that both orient and limit debate. Present-day administrators use anniversaries of origin to generate publicity. They help to get stories rolling: ‘Once upon a time Wills or Webb Ellis or Doubleday did something so special that they got a great game started.’ Aside from often being simply incorrect, origin theses tend to nurture hegemonic narratives that by their very nature rule counter-narratives out of bounds.

‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions, Memories and Communities of Sydney's Italian Migrants

This paper explores the importance soccer can play in the lives, identities and memories of migrants by drawing on 32 oral history interviews conducted with Italians who settled in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. Sport can provide an illuminating lens for analysing the experience of migrants, because not only are sports sites of individual, regional, national and transnational identities, they can also facilitate social inclusion or, conversely, become sites of exclusion. Soccer in Australia is often celebrated as a multicultural game. At the same time, the expressions of the complex histories of migration, colonialism, exploitation and racial and ethnic discrimination that have shaped the game have often been silenced. The interviews show that soccer has been a key site of negotiation, agency and at times resistance for first and second generation migrants. We also argue that, while it is the de-ethnicisation of soccer that has understandably dominated media, political and academic debate, the concern of these migrants in recent years has been mostly with the loss of memory and with the removal of an important history made of shared relationships and bonding experiences.

Against the Run of Play: The Emergence of Australian Soccer Literature

The creative writing thematising soccer in Australia, Australian soccer literature, is a marginal literary genre, though it is not as marginal as many critics and discussions would have it. Drawing on materials spanning from the late nineteenth century until the present, this paper examines the diversity of themes and sources found in Australian soccer literature. It attempts to establish a historical narrative based upon the extant texts, and in this context the paper unearths long-forgotten passages, often hidden within larger texts dealing with other issues. In short, this paper adds to the threadbare coverage of Australian soccer literature in the fields of Australian literature dealing with sport, as well to bibliographical listings found in critical works dealing with Australian soccer. While noting the apparent isolation between the various works of Australian soccer literature, this paper also notes the broader trends that the majority of the works contribute to.

The Janus face of diversity in Australian sport

In this essay, Janus is used as a metaphor for examining the nature of cultural diversity in Australian sport. It does so by firstly presenting a historical context for sport in Australia and the relative lack of cultural diversity found in sport. Within a country dominated by the running codes of football and cricket, the position of soccer in Australia was somewhat unique as it became a bastion for many non-Anglo migrant groups. However, in the 1980s and 1990s soccer's lack of organizational success at the state and national level was negatively ascribed to the tensions between the ethnically affiliated clubs, the same clubs that were ironically the stalwarts driving the growing popularity of the sport. We examine the initiatives used to restructure the game in Australia to make football more appealing to mainstream (i.e. non-ethnically aligned) spectators. The contemporary situation is explored through secondary documentation and the results of a survey of 3,056 spectators undertaken during the first season of the new A-League are presented. The essay concludes with a discussion about the relative success of the restructure in terms of changing the face of Australian soccer.

Starting with a clean slate: An analysis of member identification with a new sports team

Soccer in Australia underwent a series of changes following a Federal Government inquiry into its future. A report into the Structure, Governance and Management of Soccer in Australia (2003) recommended a process of structural change, aimed at repositioning and re-branding soccer as association football. The restructure yielded the replacement of the National Soccer League with the A-League, five new Australian teams and a concerted attempt to separate soccer from its ethnic ties in the antipodes. This paper examines member identification in relation to a specific A-League club’s members. Using the Sports Spectator Identity Scale (Wann & Branscombe, 1993) to measure sport fan identity in a new team context, a survey of club members of Sydney FC (n = 510), was undertaken. Survey findings indicated that members of Sydney FC reported relatively strong team identification in the first year of the new competition, with some nuanced differences based on age and income. The SSIS demonstrated a good level of fit in relation to a new sports team, although it is evident that rivalries and identification with a new team need time to develop fully.

Getting a ticket to the world party: televising soccer in Australia

Australia currently has the world’s most restrictive legislation designed to protect sports content of national and cultural significance from subscription television exclusivity. Despite this powerful ‘anti‐siphoning’ regime, association football (soccer) has been systematically removed from Australian free‐to‐air television screens through a combination of regulatory neglect and influence peddling; a lingering ethnocentric disdain for the sport; an increasingly under‐funded public broadcasting sector, and the encroachment of a global media conglomerate promoting an internationally ascendant model of ‘user‐pays’ audience aggregation. In addressing the position of televised soccer in Australia, this article analyses the country’s peculiar ensemble of social, cultural, political and economic influences that is retarding the long‐term development of the sport within a highly competitive national ‘landscape’. We argue that, for it to become a full player in the ‘world game’ and even in its ‘own backyard’, soccer in Australia requires proper representation within the still powerful sphere of free‐to‐air television.

Coming in from the margins: ethnicity, community support and the rebranding of Australian soccer

Soccer in Australia exists at the margin of the professional sport landscape, although it enjoys popularity at the development levels. This historic position is the result of many social and political forces. With four football codes operating in Australia, amongst other elite and professional sport teams and leagues, soccer occupied a troubled position. The sustenance and growth of the sport emanates from a strong ethnic, immigrant basis of soccer, but this base also resulted in further marginalization of the code. Add to these difficulties organizational and governance issues, soccer was a management ‘basket‐case’ for some time. Marginalization in the Oceania federation and questionable qualifying processes for the World Cup exacerbated the problems in Australian soccer. This essay traces the various changes to soccer in Australia as it seeks to move into the mainstream of national and international sport. A reorganized national sport governing body, the Football Federation of Australia, a new national professional competition in the A‐League, new television revenues, and membership in the Asian Football Confederation point to the changes that will lead Australian soccer into the mainstream of the ‘world game’.