Tuesday 5 February 2013
Das Libero: Soccer not Violent Enough?
Das Libero: Soccer not Violent Enough?: It's counter-intuitive I know but the deep resentment displayed by some commentators towards soccer might well be because its violence is no...
Sunday 3 February 2013
Football Violence in Melbourne
The first soccer match I went to at Docklands stadium was about 10 years ago, between South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights. A decent (12K or so) crowd turned up but the vast stadium looked empty. I had gone with a Southend-supporting pom whose thoughts on the game were predictable and dreary. Anyway, we went and stood with the noisy band of South Melbourne supporters who were making the best out of a bad lot at the northern end of the ground. Chants included "Ooh Aah Serbia!" to taunt the Croatian opposition supporters and their regular run of positive chants directed at their team.
At one point a supporter fell and broke a chair, at which point the song became "broken chair, broken chair, broken chair!" It was an accident; no-one was punished and no-one was blamed. We moved on.
On the weekend just gone a few more chairs were smashed at a soccer match at Docklands, around 170 and most of them were deliberately broken. Perhaps that's a measure of just how far soccer has come in Melbourne. I hope that flippant comment is taken as weary sarcasm because I am not condoning the stupidity of chair smashing. I wish people who do that deliberately would just leave the game, forever.
But, the double-standard and the hypocrisy of the Melbourne media never fails to astound me. The scales are not balanced. We know the pattern: 100s of cricket arrests and ejections: boys being boys; supporters bashed and hospitalised at the footy: one-on-one Aussie blokes being Aussie blokes; 1 soccer arrest + 170 broken seats; apocalyptic violence and threat to social fabric.
Then again, why should I be astounded? Channel 7 has a stereotype of the dickheaded soccer supporter that it likes to portray and when the dickheaded supporter acts according to type . . . voila! Nor should it be forgotten that 7 is in the pocket of the AFL and is quite happy and quick to give negative headlines to a soccer fixture that is starting to become of of Melbourne's big-ticket sporting events. It's telling that Channel 9 mentioned nothing of the damaged seats and preferred to go the wholly positive route.
In Melbourne Channel 7 stereotype runs: Footy is a violent game, but one where all the violence happens on the field; spectators co-mingle in sweetness and light sharing sandwiches and thermoses of tea. Soccer is a game where so little happens on the field that the passions erupt off it. Given that the game is largely supported by wogs then it's no surprise that violence occurs. The only surprise is that there aren't more knives being used.
It's a nonsense; but it is a nonsense that has nonetheless taken root in the belief system of a city. It's hard not to see it as a product of the xenophobic resentment of foreigners following the arrival of European migrants in the post-war period. Prior to that soccer received plenty of negative press but little of it pertained to perceived spectator violence.
Looking at the history of spectator sporting violence in this city, far more brutal and terrifying events have occurred at cricket and Australian rules football. Even in recent years footy has kept up with many ugly incidents. Soccer has had its moments as well, to be sure, but they pale into insignificance.
It is of some interest to ponder two things: 1) how soccer rose to be seen as the code of spectator violence, even as more severe violence was occurring elsewhere and 2) how the real history of footy spectator violence faded into the mists of time as if it never, ever happened, thereby allowing present day footy spectator bashings to take on the character of isolated events without a pattern, a context or a history .
This is from 1948, reported in, of all places, the Charters Towers paper, The Northern Miner:
At one point a supporter fell and broke a chair, at which point the song became "broken chair, broken chair, broken chair!" It was an accident; no-one was punished and no-one was blamed. We moved on.
On the weekend just gone a few more chairs were smashed at a soccer match at Docklands, around 170 and most of them were deliberately broken. Perhaps that's a measure of just how far soccer has come in Melbourne. I hope that flippant comment is taken as weary sarcasm because I am not condoning the stupidity of chair smashing. I wish people who do that deliberately would just leave the game, forever.
But, the double-standard and the hypocrisy of the Melbourne media never fails to astound me. The scales are not balanced. We know the pattern: 100s of cricket arrests and ejections: boys being boys; supporters bashed and hospitalised at the footy: one-on-one Aussie blokes being Aussie blokes; 1 soccer arrest + 170 broken seats; apocalyptic violence and threat to social fabric.
Then again, why should I be astounded? Channel 7 has a stereotype of the dickheaded soccer supporter that it likes to portray and when the dickheaded supporter acts according to type . . . voila! Nor should it be forgotten that 7 is in the pocket of the AFL and is quite happy and quick to give negative headlines to a soccer fixture that is starting to become of of Melbourne's big-ticket sporting events. It's telling that Channel 9 mentioned nothing of the damaged seats and preferred to go the wholly positive route.
In Melbourne Channel 7 stereotype runs: Footy is a violent game, but one where all the violence happens on the field; spectators co-mingle in sweetness and light sharing sandwiches and thermoses of tea. Soccer is a game where so little happens on the field that the passions erupt off it. Given that the game is largely supported by wogs then it's no surprise that violence occurs. The only surprise is that there aren't more knives being used.
It's a nonsense; but it is a nonsense that has nonetheless taken root in the belief system of a city. It's hard not to see it as a product of the xenophobic resentment of foreigners following the arrival of European migrants in the post-war period. Prior to that soccer received plenty of negative press but little of it pertained to perceived spectator violence.
Looking at the history of spectator sporting violence in this city, far more brutal and terrifying events have occurred at cricket and Australian rules football. Even in recent years footy has kept up with many ugly incidents. Soccer has had its moments as well, to be sure, but they pale into insignificance.
It is of some interest to ponder two things: 1) how soccer rose to be seen as the code of spectator violence, even as more severe violence was occurring elsewhere and 2) how the real history of footy spectator violence faded into the mists of time as if it never, ever happened, thereby allowing present day footy spectator bashings to take on the character of isolated events without a pattern, a context or a history .
This is from 1948, reported in, of all places, the Charters Towers paper, The Northern Miner:
Football Violence
Brawls in Melbourne
MELBOURNE, May 15.
Three brawls occurred during a football match between Port Melbourne and Williamstown at Port Melbourne today.
Foot and mounted police escorted the umpire from the ground after the match.Two of the brawls. were between players, and one between spectators.
Just before the interval rough play developed into a free-for-all, involving nearly half the players. Trainers and a boundary umpire broke it up, while the remaining players continued the game.
Another ugly scene followed a collision between two players. An umpireintervened.
At the same time, some of the spectators began to fight They were quelled by police.Other examples of violence at Melbourne football in the past month have been:
On April 17, detectives were bashed by a mob of 200 outside South Melbourne Cricket Ground.
On April 24, police with batons, and a mounted constable, had to intervene to break up a brawl which developed in the outer ground during the last minutes of the Carlton-Fitzroy Victorian Football League game.
On May 1. after Preston had beaten Prahran at the Australian Rules Association match at Prahran, police with batons had to protect Umpire J. Egan from 300 angry Prahran barrackers.
Friday 31 August 2012
Collingwood Army dispensing Summary Justice
Just in case they take this Greg Baum piece down or edit it
At a luncheon Eddie McGuire:
At a luncheon Eddie McGuire:
recalled how as a 13-year-old, he rejoiced to watch the Magpies triumph over the Blues in a semi-final, then was distraught when, on his way home, a navy-blue clad thug reached through closing train carriage doors, snatched his beanie from his head and threw it under the train … then rejoiced again to look back to the receding platform and see a group of Collingwood fans dispensing summary justice on his behalf. ''It was the first time I felt part of the Collingwood army,'' he said.
Thursday 16 August 2012
Monday 25 June 2012
They've called it the Wanderers, yeah the Wanderers, they roam around . . . etc
So, 'Wanderers' it is!
The new Western Sydney team's name has been announced and the club can now get on with the business of organising the less symbolic and more substantive aspects of running an A League team.
The Wanderers was the name given to the very first organised team in Sydney in 1880. Even the first game played by the team was out west, at the King's School in Parramatta.
In July of 1880, a movement seemed to emerge in Sydney. A number of letters to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald were published, advocating the playing of football under the English Association rules.
This long letter from John Walter Fletcher published in the SMH on 17 July 1880 sums up the interest and takes the important step of suggesting a meeting. It is an important, if not founding, document.
In what seems very little time a meeting is convened for 3 August.
And two short weeks later, the first game is played with the second already planned.
Interestingly the team did not yet have a name. This situation was rectified at a meeting on 19 August at which the name was determined and a number of other decisions were ratified, including the decision to seek membership of the Football Association:
Yet from here the Wanderers name appears to fade from the records. Indeed, a subsequent use of the name in July 1888 is in reference to the Parramatta Wanderers, a Rugby team!
While the archives are sketchy, Phil Mosely's brilliant thesis, 'A Social History of Soccer in New South Wales, 1880-1957' gives a good coverage of the early history. We learn from it that the first Sydney Wanderers were a spent force by the 1890s. Maybe their spirit lived on in the Auburn Wanderers (referenced in 1893 and 1898) and the Balmain Wanderers in 1899, but it is hard to tell. Nonetheless, the Wanderers were a substantial force in the establishment of soccer as a competitive and organised sport in Sydney - no matter how historically fleeting their presence.
There were plenty of candidates for the new name of the West Sydney Club. None of them, however, had the claim to history that the 'Wanderers' has. Whether this was a good point or not was not for me to decide. There are many other names and arguments that needed to be looked at. But I'd love to think that a sense of this history is what gave the name the edge. What I do know is that I and some other (though by no means all) soccer historians are pleased that an acknowledgment of the game's historical roots and longevity have been made in the naming of the Australian soccer's newest professional club.
The new Western Sydney team's name has been announced and the club can now get on with the business of organising the less symbolic and more substantive aspects of running an A League team.
Like all such processes this naming has produced great consternation - something that is, admittedly, not all that difficult to create within soccer circles. While I didn't have a great stake in the outcome, I'm quietly pleased that the FFA has gone with the Wanderers. For once they might have got something right.
* * *
* * *
The Wanderers was the name given to the very first organised team in Sydney in 1880. Even the first game played by the team was out west, at the King's School in Parramatta.
In July of 1880, a movement seemed to emerge in Sydney. A number of letters to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald were published, advocating the playing of football under the English Association rules.
This long letter from John Walter Fletcher published in the SMH on 17 July 1880 sums up the interest and takes the important step of suggesting a meeting. It is an important, if not founding, document.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD.
Sir,-I was glad to see in your issue of this morning a letter advocating the introduction of the English Association game into New South Wales, and I am a little surprised that some old English player has not made the suggestion before. I have reason to think from conversations I have had on the subject that if the game could properly be started it would become very popular, not only with players, but with the public. Unfortunately, a very general misapprehension appears to exist as to the nature of the game, a great many people I have spoken to evidently confusing it with the Victorian Association game, whereas the two games have not a single point in common. As to its chances of popularity, let any one read in Bell's Life the accounts of International or club contests in Glasgow, Sheffield, London, &c. witnessed often by from 10,000 to 12,000 spectators. It is, I think, about twelve years since the game was first started in England, though its principle, that football is a game for feet and for hands, had long existed in the Eton and Harrow games. At the present time the football players of Great Britain, playing under Rugby and Association rules, are about equally divided, and the two games exist side by side without one interfering in the least with the other, save that of late the value of good dribbling has become universally acknowledged in the Rugby game. I feel that we are rather late in writing in advocacy of the English Association game, inasmuch as a large sectïon of the football players of New South Wales, dissatisfied with Rugby rules, appear to have committed themselves to the adoption of Victorian rules. Nevertheless, there must be many old English and Scotch Association players, or old Eton and Harrow men, who would be glad to see their old game played here, and who would make an effort to introduce it; and I am quite sure that the principle of the game, which forbids the use of the hands, except by goalkeeper, and does away with scrummaging, collaring, mauling, &c, will commend itself to a very large section or this community. The game is essentially a scientific one, requiring, above everything else, unselfish and organized combination. I do not wish to attack the old Rugby game, which, properly played, is interesting and exciting to players and spectators; but must enter a protest against the introduction of the Victorian game, which, though certainly interesting and amusing to look at, is, I believe, rougher than the Rugby, and violates the fundamental principle of all games like football - I mean the law of off side. The very thing condemned under the name of "sneaking" in the Eton game is here encouraged and applauded, and in fact may almost be said to be the chief art of the game. In the brief space of a letter it is impossible to say all that one would in behalf of the introduction of the rules of the English Association; but I hope that, since at the present time a radical change is demanded in the present code, football players and the public generally will give the matter a more thorough investigation than it has yet received before committing themselves to the Victorian game. I should be willing to communicate with gentlemen willing to assist in starting a club under the rules of the English Association, and perhaps it might be possible to convene a meeting to consider the whole question. I am, &c.,
J. W. FLETCHER.
Union Club, July 14.
In what seems very little time a meeting is convened for 3 August.
FOOTBALL UNDER ENGLISH ASSOCIATION RULES
A meeting convened by Messrs. J. W. Fletcher and J. A. Todd will take place this evening, at Aaron's Exchange Hotel, " to consider and promote the introduction of football under English Association rules." All football players and others who may be interested in the improvement of the winter pastime are invited to attend. (SMH, 3 August)
And two short weeks later, the first game is played with the second already planned.
FOOTBALL.
The first match in New South Wales played under English Association rules was played on Saturday last, by the newly formed club, against the King's School boys at Parramatta. The visitors had a very fair team, allowing for the fact that hardly one of them had played football for some years. This advantage was, however, balanced by the fact that the boys had not played these rules before. The game was well contested for an hour and a half, and terminated in favour of the visitors by five goals to none; the number of goals must not, however, be taken as a criterion of the play, which was remarkably even, particularly after half time, the boys on several occasions only failing to score on account of their want of familiarity with the art of passing and middling the ball. On the side of the English Association Club all played up well, but the play of D. Roxburgh as back was remarkably good and invaluable to his side, and Scott's goal-keeping deserves praise. On the King's School side the play of Fenwick was very fine, and he would make a grand Association player; all, however, played well. Mr Savage, an old International player, played with and coached Kings School. The names of the club players were -T.A .Todd (captain), W.J. Baker, T.W. Fletcher, C.E. Hewlett, C.F. Fletcher, Wastinage, W. Robertson, W. Simson, Chapman, D. Roxburgh, J Scott (goal).
A match has been arranged, under English Association rules, on Moore Park, for next Saturday, against the Redfern Club. (SMH, 18 August)
Interestingly the team did not yet have a name. This situation was rectified at a meeting on 19 August at which the name was determined and a number of other decisions were ratified, including the decision to seek membership of the Football Association:
FOOTBALL.The first game under the new name saw the team score another win, this time against a team from Redfern FC.
A committee meeting of the newly-formed English Association Football Club was held on Thursday evening last, at which the following resolutions were proposed and carried -
1. "That the club be called 'The Wanderers.'"
2. "That the uniform be white jersey and cap, with badge southern cross, and blue stockings."
3. "That an account of the proceedings be sent to England to the secretary of the English Association, for publication."'
4. "That the club be enrolled (with permission) in the English Association." (SMH, 24 August)
REDFERN v. WANDERERS.-The second match under the English Association Rules took place at Moore Park on Saturday last, and resulted in a win for the newly-named Wanderers by two goals to nil, both of which were secured in the first 10 minutes, after which the game was very even. Redfern Club, being strangers to the rules, played up well, ably assisted by W.J. Baker. For Redfern, J. Mulcahy and North played well, whilst for the Wanderers J. Fletcher, Harbottle, and M'Donald, were in grand form. (SMH, 28 August)The Wanderers name pops up in match reports throughout the rest of the decade. In 1888 a healthy competition seems to have been established in the Sydney region, one which is oriented significantly to a Scottish sensibility (thereby marking a long tradition in Australian soccer). The following article suggests that up to fourteen clubs, including the Wanderers, were active in metropolitan NSW at this time.
SOUTHERN BRITISH FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION.
The annual meeting of the Southern British Football Association was held on Tuesday night, at Hodge's Commercial Hotel, Mr. John Wallace occupied the chair, there being about 25 members present. The annual report stated that a new series of rules had been drawn up on the lines of those used by the Scottish Association, certain alterations being made to suit the game here. During the past season there were seven clubs in the association, viz.:- Parkgrove, Granville, Rovers, Wanderers, Caledonians, Hamilton Athletics, and Pyrmont Rangers, whilst almost an equal number did not join, but two of these - Bulli and Joadja - have joined for this season.
Yet from here the Wanderers name appears to fade from the records. Indeed, a subsequent use of the name in July 1888 is in reference to the Parramatta Wanderers, a Rugby team!
While the archives are sketchy, Phil Mosely's brilliant thesis, 'A Social History of Soccer in New South Wales, 1880-1957' gives a good coverage of the early history. We learn from it that the first Sydney Wanderers were a spent force by the 1890s. Maybe their spirit lived on in the Auburn Wanderers (referenced in 1893 and 1898) and the Balmain Wanderers in 1899, but it is hard to tell. Nonetheless, the Wanderers were a substantial force in the establishment of soccer as a competitive and organised sport in Sydney - no matter how historically fleeting their presence.
There were plenty of candidates for the new name of the West Sydney Club. None of them, however, had the claim to history that the 'Wanderers' has. Whether this was a good point or not was not for me to decide. There are many other names and arguments that needed to be looked at. But I'd love to think that a sense of this history is what gave the name the edge. What I do know is that I and some other (though by no means all) soccer historians are pleased that an acknowledgment of the game's historical roots and longevity have been made in the naming of the Australian soccer's newest professional club.
Monday 3 December 2007
OPEN LETTER TO KEVIN MUSCAT
Dear Kevin
No, I haven’t
played the game at professional level, so I don’t know first
hand the situations you face every week in the A-League or the top
leagues in England and Scotland, but I have watched your career
since you were an Under-9 at Green Gully and later at Sunshine George
Cross. You have marvellous talents and you can play a bit, but when
you were young I thought you were a thug and a very bad influence
on a youngster from Geelong who also could play the game, when you
were in under-age representative sides in Victoria. Your skill and
commitment and strength of mind led good coaches to select you for
the Young Socceroos and the Olyroos when you were younger than all
the other players. They could see in you something they needed for
their teams, for they were not romantics but hard-headed winners
like yourself.
It was a similar
story at Milwall, Glasgow Rangers and for the Socceroos. Talent
and refusal to accept defeat was written on your face and your body
in every game you played. Yet when you try to explain and excuse
your conduct in your
column in the sports section of the Sunday Age,
you show that you have never been able to distinguish commitment
and sacrifice on behalf of the team from violent conduct as defined
by the Laws of the Game.
Soccer has always
had its hard men who could play, like Roy Keane, Denis Wise, Billy
Bremner, Tommy Smith, Norman Hunter and Dave Mackay. Coaches and
managers have always been delighted to have these players in their
sides and at the end of their careers their exploits have been glossed
over or romanticised. But they did awful damage to other players
along the way, sometimes they would claim, as you do, accidentally
but on other occasions with malice or at least recklessness of the
consequences.
Some of the
work you have done for the Melbourne Victory under Ernie Merrick
deserves the highest praise. You have been the very public face
of the game in Victoria, have put in countless hours in promotion
of the game at all levels and are now engaged in training yourself
as a coach. In games, other A-League teams know that they are never
safely in control of a match while you are on the field. Yet like
many of those who follow this code in Australia and want desperately
for it to succeed, not in toppling Australian Rules or anything
like that, but just to become a normal part of the sporting scene
in this country, I fear that your behaviour is dangerously counter-productive
in one key respect.
It is not only
your propensity to launch the most violent tackles on opponents,
often from behind, but the snarling refusal to accept decisions
which go against you and the browbeating of officials and opponents
which sets an appalling example. Others believe if Muscat can get
away with it, so can I. If that conduct is allowed to persist the
skilful players will be driven out of the game. Juninho, the little
Brazilian magician playing for Sydney FC, has already made clear
his fears about the way the game is played in this country by a
few players like yourself.
I
am not in the slightest concerned about your kicking an advertising
hoarding. It is fascinating, and symptomatic of the modern game,
that your immediate apology was to the sponsor for the off-field
incident and not to the thousands of others you have let down for
the on-field behaviour.
Nor am I convinced
by you and your coach pointing to the disciplinary record of other
clubs as if it was their propensity to commit fouls which determined
their places on the A-League ladder. I found your attempt on television
to defend some of the crude tackling by some of Juninho’s
team-mates in the exhibition match against LA Galaxy hard to take
as well. I know this is a contact sport and if it becomes basketball
we will all be the poorer. But the kind of tackling which injures
others in the name of winning matches is something we can do without,
particularly if we want to succeed in Asian competition. I want
to see Australian teams which match others for skill, not physicality,
and I just wish you could curb your occasional but violent assaults
on your fellow players for the greater good of the game.
Yours in sorrow
more than anger,
Roy
Hay
Monday 4 December 2006
The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football
The Ball is Round: A Global
History
of Football
By David Goldblatt
THIS BOOK IS A monster: a 978-page, gloriously fat, thorough-going account of the history of association football, the world game. Beginning with the deep prehistory of football, David Goldblatt takes us on his 320,000-word journey through the developmental stages of the game as its tentacles spread relentlessly around the globe.
Football, in this account, is a product of industrialisation, global commerce and professionalism. It is the game of modernity. As regions and nations around the globe enter periods of modernisation, football seems most often to be the game that comes knocking, usually without competition from other sports.
For Goldblatt, the game's many imperial successes result from a potent brew. Its origins lie in the "rationalising thrust of Victorian society" that intensifies the desire of the English and Scottish middle classes to create a codified form of football out of a rowdy and disruptive pre-modern form of folk culture.
The game spreads outward via patterns of "industrial globalisation" that take the game to parts of the world that adopt football with ease and make it their own. Once transported, football is able to generate such immediate and near universal interest because of its simple adaptability and its inclusive emphasis on grace and fluidity over exclusive brawn and brutality.
The final key to the game's success is that no other "game embraces both the chaos and uncertainty and the spontaneity and reactivity of play like football". Goldblatt adds grimly, "at no moment in our history has humanity faced a world so threatened by the former and been so in need of the latter". Football, the beautiful and joyous game of risk, injustice and tragedy, is the game of and for our epoch.
These many histories of football are presented by Goldblatt with the aid of a sociological mirror. The waning of English and Scottish influence in Latin American football reflects the decline of the "de facto" British economic empire. The history of Spanish football is utterly embedded in Spanish politics; or is it the other way around? When France wins the World Cup in 1998 it's also a victory for French multiculturalism; its miserable run in the early 2000s parallels the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the racist right. It is never quite clear whether Goldblatt sees political, social and economic change as harbinger or product of events in the football world. He probably sees the relationships as dialectical, given his subtle but not infrequent Marxist reference points.
He shows that for all the economic hype around the game it's still a relatively small player in the global economy. Economic decisions in football are never really earth-shattering. Where football leads and directs history is at the levels of collective emotion and spirit, though Goldblatt might baulk at these terms.
Goldblatt's narrative is one that in hindsight seems so inevitable. He tracks the conquests as one might observe falling dominoes. Rather tantalising, then, is the suggestion that football's hegemony in Britain was determined by its better handling of the pressures of encroaching professionalism than rugby (which split into amateur and professional codes, thereby losing its unity and influence). Had rugby taken the same path as football the domino tracks of global sport today would make a very different pattern. Of course, some of the dominoes failed to fall, especially in the English-speaking world - though history has not had its final word on this.
The reasons association football fails to take hold fully in Ireland, the United States, Australia and New Zealand revolve around such matters as: the formation of colonial national identity as a rejection of the imperial centre and its cultural practices; association football's unavailability in codified form when the need or desire for regulated sporting competition is emerging in the colonies; and sheer serendipity.
For example, the All Blacks' 1905 successes against British rugby teams were vital in bolstering that code's already rising fortunes in New Zealand. By comparison, the New Zealand and Australian association football teams had to wait until the mid-1920s before they had the honour of being pummelled by a visiting English team. For all the much-vaunted Aussie and Kiwi fighting spirit we nonetheless turn our backs on our failures as readily as anyone else. It's a matter of record that association football has struggled to gain a strong foothold in Australia until very recently. Yet I write this review after having recently been a part of a crowd of 50,000 at Telstra Dome watching a domestic Australian match and having spent a year boggling at the unprecedented feats of the Socceroos.
For anyone trying to understand this phenomenon, The Ball is Round is an ideal place to start, even though it is wafer thin on Australian football history. As a global history it is ultimately a collection of stories about locality. Through his grand temporal and geographic sweep, Goldblatt builds story upon story, mapping patterns of growth, decay and regrowth that pulse to the beat of the history of modernity, adding local variations to the rhythm as he finds them. It's a framework that invites and accommodates further local comparisons.
The key to Australia's recent football history lies in Goldblatt's notion that the game enters a new era as the globalised economy heats up. Post-industrial football, with its global television deals, mega-rich players, corporate branding, architecturally sculptured all-seater stadiums and cashed-up "theatregoing" audiences, has fundamentally rewritten the guidelines for success.
The old modern industrial football was always a joint enterprise between the working-class masses who supported the game and the businessmen who obtained power, influence and cachet (but rarely capital) by owning and running football clubs. The loyalties of the majority of the Australian working class, having been captured by Australian rules or rugby league, were largely lost to association football in this country.
However, post-industrial football doesn't need the working-class masses, it needs customers. It doesn't need grassroots, it needs cable connections (apologies to Ken Wark) and the apparatuses of the post-industrial corporation. One beauty of The Ball is Round is that it gives the reader models for understanding the reasons association football can suddenly seem to bloom in Australia without ever broaching the topic directly.
Goldblatt also enables us to understand what football fans in Australia might be losing even as our game slides into the mainstream because he feels deeply the ebbs and flows of the global game.
But this is a book with many attractions. In the end it is simply magnificent; an exhaustive and exhausting, well-written and beautifully packaged story of the most popular game in the world, written by a man whose knowledge and research is encyclopedic if not maniacally obsessive. It is an absolute must for fan and aficionado alike.
Reviewed by Ian Syson
This review first appeared in the Age
By David Goldblatt
THIS BOOK IS A monster: a 978-page, gloriously fat, thorough-going account of the history of association football, the world game. Beginning with the deep prehistory of football, David Goldblatt takes us on his 320,000-word journey through the developmental stages of the game as its tentacles spread relentlessly around the globe.
Football, in this account, is a product of industrialisation, global commerce and professionalism. It is the game of modernity. As regions and nations around the globe enter periods of modernisation, football seems most often to be the game that comes knocking, usually without competition from other sports.
For Goldblatt, the game's many imperial successes result from a potent brew. Its origins lie in the "rationalising thrust of Victorian society" that intensifies the desire of the English and Scottish middle classes to create a codified form of football out of a rowdy and disruptive pre-modern form of folk culture.
The game spreads outward via patterns of "industrial globalisation" that take the game to parts of the world that adopt football with ease and make it their own. Once transported, football is able to generate such immediate and near universal interest because of its simple adaptability and its inclusive emphasis on grace and fluidity over exclusive brawn and brutality.
The final key to the game's success is that no other "game embraces both the chaos and uncertainty and the spontaneity and reactivity of play like football". Goldblatt adds grimly, "at no moment in our history has humanity faced a world so threatened by the former and been so in need of the latter". Football, the beautiful and joyous game of risk, injustice and tragedy, is the game of and for our epoch.
These many histories of football are presented by Goldblatt with the aid of a sociological mirror. The waning of English and Scottish influence in Latin American football reflects the decline of the "de facto" British economic empire. The history of Spanish football is utterly embedded in Spanish politics; or is it the other way around? When France wins the World Cup in 1998 it's also a victory for French multiculturalism; its miserable run in the early 2000s parallels the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the racist right. It is never quite clear whether Goldblatt sees political, social and economic change as harbinger or product of events in the football world. He probably sees the relationships as dialectical, given his subtle but not infrequent Marxist reference points.
He shows that for all the economic hype around the game it's still a relatively small player in the global economy. Economic decisions in football are never really earth-shattering. Where football leads and directs history is at the levels of collective emotion and spirit, though Goldblatt might baulk at these terms.
Goldblatt's narrative is one that in hindsight seems so inevitable. He tracks the conquests as one might observe falling dominoes. Rather tantalising, then, is the suggestion that football's hegemony in Britain was determined by its better handling of the pressures of encroaching professionalism than rugby (which split into amateur and professional codes, thereby losing its unity and influence). Had rugby taken the same path as football the domino tracks of global sport today would make a very different pattern. Of course, some of the dominoes failed to fall, especially in the English-speaking world - though history has not had its final word on this.
The reasons association football fails to take hold fully in Ireland, the United States, Australia and New Zealand revolve around such matters as: the formation of colonial national identity as a rejection of the imperial centre and its cultural practices; association football's unavailability in codified form when the need or desire for regulated sporting competition is emerging in the colonies; and sheer serendipity.
For example, the All Blacks' 1905 successes against British rugby teams were vital in bolstering that code's already rising fortunes in New Zealand. By comparison, the New Zealand and Australian association football teams had to wait until the mid-1920s before they had the honour of being pummelled by a visiting English team. For all the much-vaunted Aussie and Kiwi fighting spirit we nonetheless turn our backs on our failures as readily as anyone else. It's a matter of record that association football has struggled to gain a strong foothold in Australia until very recently. Yet I write this review after having recently been a part of a crowd of 50,000 at Telstra Dome watching a domestic Australian match and having spent a year boggling at the unprecedented feats of the Socceroos.
For anyone trying to understand this phenomenon, The Ball is Round is an ideal place to start, even though it is wafer thin on Australian football history. As a global history it is ultimately a collection of stories about locality. Through his grand temporal and geographic sweep, Goldblatt builds story upon story, mapping patterns of growth, decay and regrowth that pulse to the beat of the history of modernity, adding local variations to the rhythm as he finds them. It's a framework that invites and accommodates further local comparisons.
The key to Australia's recent football history lies in Goldblatt's notion that the game enters a new era as the globalised economy heats up. Post-industrial football, with its global television deals, mega-rich players, corporate branding, architecturally sculptured all-seater stadiums and cashed-up "theatregoing" audiences, has fundamentally rewritten the guidelines for success.
The old modern industrial football was always a joint enterprise between the working-class masses who supported the game and the businessmen who obtained power, influence and cachet (but rarely capital) by owning and running football clubs. The loyalties of the majority of the Australian working class, having been captured by Australian rules or rugby league, were largely lost to association football in this country.
However, post-industrial football doesn't need the working-class masses, it needs customers. It doesn't need grassroots, it needs cable connections (apologies to Ken Wark) and the apparatuses of the post-industrial corporation. One beauty of The Ball is Round is that it gives the reader models for understanding the reasons association football can suddenly seem to bloom in Australia without ever broaching the topic directly.
Goldblatt also enables us to understand what football fans in Australia might be losing even as our game slides into the mainstream because he feels deeply the ebbs and flows of the global game.
But this is a book with many attractions. In the end it is simply magnificent; an exhaustive and exhausting, well-written and beautifully packaged story of the most popular game in the world, written by a man whose knowledge and research is encyclopedic if not maniacally obsessive. It is an absolute must for fan and aficionado alike.
Reviewed by Ian Syson
This review first appeared in the Age
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