38 reasons why Australians shouldn't play (or support) soccer

Here's a bit of fun! This is a work-in-progress so I'd be interested in feedback, especially if you think there are any reasons I've missed. I'd be happy to supply archival proof for any of the dot points if required.

I’ve spent the past four years examining the digital newspaper archive in the NLA’s Trove collection. I have been interested in the newspaper reporting of soccer through the years, particularly in Melbourne and the other states colonised by Victorian rules in the late 1800s. I am working towards a history of spin (positive, negative or neutral) used to describe the game over the past 150 years.

The material presented here is derived from a limited archive in terms of dates (up until mid-1950s) and variety. Only the Argus (and a few suburban papers) in Melbourne have been digitised.

The newspapers regularly articulate a cultural rejection of Soccer as an appropriate game for Australians. This is conveyed via notions that echo down through the years, many of which go back to the first flowerings of soccer in Australia – something that might be reflected on by contemporary utterers of such criticism. They belong to a long tradition, one which has continually figured soccer as a new and foreign game for the past 130 years.

The rhetoric of refusal comes in 4 phases:

 

1.     Initial response (1883-1914)

1.             Foreign

2.             New

3.             Soft

4.             Degenerate and enfeebling

5.             Unmanly

6.             Sneakily violent

7.             Absurd

8.             Mysterious

9.             Boring

10.           Meritless

11.            Unpopular

These are limited technical criticisms and observations of the game. They are also judgements about the kind of people who play it. There is a sense in much of this criticism that this feeble game is not worthy of expending too much journalistic energy on. Let them play their game. They’re not troubling anyone.

 

2.     Cultural-political (1905-1939)

12.        English

13.        Culturally inappropriate or unnatural

14.        Run by foreigners, notably British headmasters and/or civil servants

15.        Brainwashing of children

16.        Creation of artificial taste

17.        Occupation of our land

18.        Cultural invader

19.        Threat to our way of life

20.        Limiter to our “manifest destiny”

21.        Unpatriotic

22.        Betrayal of our armed forces

The second phase of reception tends to be much tougher in its criticism. Layered onto the attitudes of phase 1 are cultural-political tropes. Generally, soccer is seen as a “wicked foreign game” as Roy Hay has noted. Crucially, the rise of these criticisms also co-incides with the rise of ground allocation stress, initially in Perth and then spreading to the rest of the Australian rules states after ww1.

 

3.     Post ww2 xenophobia (1950-1970)

23.        European

24.        Anti-integrationist

25.        Facilitator of unAustralian crowd violence

26.        An invader with massive external financial support

27.        Stealer of our land

This is a period of massive influx of European migrants during which an at times xenophobic community is confronted by significant cultural and sporting difference. These tensions come to a head in the 1950s in Melbourne with a serious moral panic created around soccer’s presumed intensions to smash footy and steal its ovals. No longer is it “let them play their game”, it’s “let them play in the gutter.” For many people it is a kind of war.

 

4.     Post 70s

28.        A sport to keep mums happy

29.        Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters

30.        Storehouse of ethnic hatreds

31.        Misuser of public funds

32.        Communist

33.        Anti-competitive

34.        Vehicle of globalisation

35.        Corrupt game

In this phase soccer is no longer a dirty ‘secret’. The broader community is aware of the game as never before

• Participation figures are rising
• First World Cup Qualification
• Broad consumption of English football via television
• NSL is the very first national league in any football code.

Overall

36.        Unestablished

37.        UnAustralian

38.        Not Australian rules football/Rugby League

The final three points are ones that can be distilled from the 35 previous ones. Soccer is unestablished (even when it is established) and unAustralian (even when played by Australians). Ultimately soccer's greatest sin is that it is simply not Australian rules football or Rugby League.