Sport in Australian National Identity

Kicking Goals

Tony Ward

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415575553
• eBook ISBN: 9781317987659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

For many Australians, there are two great passions: sport and 'taking the piss'. This book is about national identity – and especially about Australia's image as a sporting country. Whether reverent or not, any successful national image has to reflect something about the reality of the country. But it is also influenced by the reasons that people have for encouraging particular images – and by the conflicts between differing views of national identity, and of sport.

Buffeted by these elements, both the extent of Australian sports madness and the level of stirring have varied considerably over time. While many refer to long-lasting factors, such as the amount of sunshine, this book argues that the ebb and flow of sporting images are strongly linked to current views of national identity. Starting from Archer's win in the first Melbourne Cup in 1861, it traces the importance of trade unions in the formation of Australian Rules, the success of a small rural town in holding one of the world's foremost running races, and the win-from-behind of a fat arsed wombat knocking off the official mascots of Sydney 2000.

This book was based on a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Introduction

In early 2001, social commentator John Carroll went searching for iconic images of ‘Australian Dreaming’, and found himself at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. During the packed one-day cricket match:

the Mexican wave gets going, circling the ground. As it reaches the Members' segment it stops, giving way to booing, before taking up again, in rhythm, on the far side. The booing is good-natured, even affectionate, a way of saying we know there is some sort of social hierarchy in this country – differences of wealth, position and status – but don't imagine that you are any better.¹

If he visited the MCG a couple of years later, Carroll could have reported a surreal rejoinder. The old Members' Stand had been demolished for redevelopment – but when the Mexican wave reached the stark gap, the crowd still booed the members' ghosts for not joining in.²

Around the world, many commentators have chosen specific events as illustrating something typical about a national identity. And, like Carroll, many have visited sports stadiums looking for examples of a particular national spirit.

But Australia seems ahead of the pack in the frequency and importance of sport in descriptions of national character. When Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games in March 2006 many commentators, both Australian and overseas, agreed there was something especially ‘Aussie’ about the role of sports. One typical comment: ‘The Australian psyche is bound in sports, as a passion and as an essential component of national identity.’³

The Australian team was certainly very successful at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, winning 221 medals. This was more than the combined effort of the second and third place getters (England, with 110, and Canada, 86), despite Australia's significantly smaller population than either competitor.⁴

Some commentators explained these successes as part of the national identity. New Zealand journalist Greg Ansley saw the sports passion stemming originally from desires to wipe the ‘convict stain’ by beating the mother country, reinforced by greater opportunities for participation in a society more egalitarian than England.⁵ UK writer Nick Afka Thomas argued the Australian successes link to the ‘outdoors culture’ enabled by Australia averaging 3,000 hours of sunshine a year compared with southern England's 1,750 hours. For Thomas, however, the most telling factor was that athletes who had trained at the Australian Institute of Sports won half the Australian medals. He concluded that ‘winning medals is more about how much countries invest in their talent than anything else’.⁶

Looking more broadly than Commonwealth Games success, a Google search in January 2006 also emphasized the role of sports in the Australian image. This search found a total 899 occurrences of the four phrases ‘sports mad Australia’, ‘sports mad Australians’, ‘Australia is sports mad’ and ‘Australians are sports mad’. A similar search for ‘America’ and ‘Americans’ produced 56 matches, while the New Zealanders rated 36 matches (one of which was ‘like Australia, New Zealand is sports mad’). England, despite the efforts of soccer fans only achieved 11 mentions, while Canada tailed the field with three.

Nor is this a recent occurrence. In 1964, social commentator Donald Horne argued in his path breaking The Lucky Country:

Sport to many Australians is life and the rest a shadow. Sport has been the one national institution that has had no ‘knockers’. To many it is considered a sign of degeneracy not to be interested in it. To play sport, or watch others and to read and talk about it is to uphold the nation and build its character. Australia's success at competitive international sport is considered an important part of its foreign policy.⁷

Indeed, historian Ian Jobling has documented more than 30 such comments, from 1880 to 1980⁸ – and his list can be supplemented by many other examples discovered in the research for this collection.

So the image of sport as a key part of the Australian national identity is a very common one. But if we look in more detail at the image, surprises rapidly appear. The first surprise comes from looking behind the medal count at Melbourne 2006. Despite the archetypal image of the bronzed Aussie male athlete, Australian women were the real champions of the Commonwealth. Australian women won 42% of the gold medals open to them; their male counterparts only won one-quarter. Although these particular results were affected by the absence of two champion male swimmers, these statistics are part of a general pattern of better female performance, especially before 1980. In terms of the factors cited above, do Australian women benefit from the sunshine more than the men? Are they that much keener to wipe the convict stain? Neither seems likely.

The second surprise is considerable variation in the extent of sports passions amongst Australians – and in how they are expressed. For all those taking part in the Mexican wave at the MCG, there were many others, not least in the Members', sitting firmly in their seats. There have also long been differences between Australians in the sports they are mad about. Some follow a range of sports. Others concentrate their passion on particular sports – and in the case of football, since the 1950s the most popular spectator sport, different codes around Australia. Some have bitterly criticized any lure of money, especially gambling money, in sport and have militated to clip the hooves of sports such as racing.

And others have seemed immune to the whole virus. After all, even the renowned cricket madness of long time Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies did not convert his wife, Dame Pattie Menzies:

The only test match she saw in Australia was in 1924, with the hosts taking on England. According to Dame Menzies ‘my husband suggested I go to at least one day of the match. When I arrived at the ground Hobbs and Sutcliffe were batting, and after watching for a couple of hours, I became bored, and went home.’ The next time she attended the cricket was in 1926, when her husband suggested that she should see at least one match in England. Dame Menzies ‘went to the Oval where England was again playing Australia … When I arrived at the ground, there they were again, Hobbs and Sutcliffe. They were still batting.’⁹

And despite the many references going back to 1880 to Australian sports obsessions, a third surprise is the extent to which the detail of the image has varied over that time. For one measure, the extent of sporting success has waxed and waned, with many Australians seeing a ‘disaster’ at the Montreal 1976 Olympics, when the country won no gold medals. For another, sports' interactions with other aspects of the national identity have varied too. When Australian writer Gideon Haigh previewed the 2001 Australian cricket tour of England, he used another common image: ‘This being an Australian team, a degree of drinking is to be expected.’¹⁰

While they are of course not the only sportsmen renowned for their drinking, the linkage of Australians and drinking is a strong one. In 2005 Victoria Bitter beer used this image in an advertising campaign centred on 250,000 talking dolls in the likeness of cricket batsman David Boon. While successful both in test cricket and the one day game, Boon is most frequently remembered for his exploits on the Australian test team's trip to England in 1989. He set what many cite as an unofficial world record for the amount of beer consumed on a flight between the two countries – 52 cans.¹¹

This widely-held association with drinking has, however, varied. Modern sport emphasizes fitness – evident in much higher standards of fielding in cricket for example. So the degree of drinking tolerated in 2001 was less than in the 1960s tours, when a more relaxed attitude to carousing prevailed.

The drinking reputation of Australian cricketers goes back a long way, to at least the first English side to tour Australia in 1861–62. English batsman Roger Iddison, commented, ‘Well, O'I doant think mooch of their play, but they are a wonderful lot of drinking men’.¹² Australian teams took their drinking to the British Isles as well: in 1893, a drunken brawl among players left blood all over a railway compartment. In 1912, raucous Australians were refused service by stewards on a ferry to Ireland.

But it would be a mistake to draw a straight line from these early experiences to the Booney doll, and conclude an unchanging image of sports-mad drinkers. In marked contrast, the 1930 Australian team to England was celebrated by the temperance movement for fielding 12 abstainers including Don Bradman, captain Bill Woodfull, and 1931 Wisden's player of the year Clarrie Grimmett.¹³

An even bigger transition has occurred for smoking. Smokers' nights were a central part of sports culture for decades, and cigarette firms were some of the first businesses to put major finances into sports advertising and sponsorship. Both aspects have by 2008 completely disappeared.

So a little investigation indicates we don't have one constant image of sports and the Australian national identity, produced by the hours of sunlight or inspired by memories of the convict stain. Rather, we have a more diffuse and changing picture, with some elements, such as drinking and smoking, being more important at some times (and to some people) and less so at others.

So where does this image come from, and why does it change? These are the central questions of this collection.

In answering them, the key argument is that images of national identity do not just ‘happen’. To gain acceptance, they have to reflect something of a country, and are clearly influenced by events such as, in Australia's case, the sporting success at Melbourne 2006. But they are also strongly affected by the agendas of different people and social groups and the images they want to see of Australia.

As is documented throughout this collection, there have often been differences between people and groups in their preferred images of Australia. Between 1900 and 1940 the strong temperance movement aimed at a wholesome image, emphasizing amateur sport and decrying both drinking and gambling on sports. But another subculture at the same time was disdainful of the puritanical ‘wowsers’, and celebrated a vision of national character in which anti-authoritarian larrikins gambled, drank, smoked and enjoyed professional sport.

As in other countries, there was considerable variation over time in the interaction between the different visions of Australia, and the social groups promoting them. At times differen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Other titles in the Series
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Measuring sports madness
• 3. Sport and national identity
• 4. ‘The heart of what it means to be Australian’
• 5. The roar of the crowd
• 6. Lifeblood of the community
• 7. Start of this ‘sporting people’
• 8. Early sports 1860–1900
• 9. Visions of Australian sport in 1900
• 10. Sports images in a time of turmoil 1910–40
• 11. Heyday of the amateur?–1950s
• 12. Changing times 1960–75
• 13. Marketing sports nationalism 1975–85
• 14. Take the money and run, 1985–2007
• 15. Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Index