Soccer and Anzac: Forgetting and Remembering in Western Sydney

[neososmos]

Sorry if this breaks etiquette but I thought some of you might be interested in this piece I have in @shootfarken. I've put the first part here. You'll need to go to the site if you want to read more.

 

 

 

Soccer has trouble remembering itself.

This failing leaves it open to accusations of foreignness and unbelonging, accusations levelled from without and often complacently accepted from within. One of the more curious moments of amnesia in the game is its failure to acknowledge the soccer Anzacs – the soccer players who fought in both World Wars. The Caledonians in Perth, for example, lost many of their champion players during World War One, but the club holds no special place in the official history of Australian sport. Tiny Irymple, near Mildura, lost five of its players. Anzac Day is instead dominated by Australian Rules and to a lesser extent rugby league, which celebrate and memorialise their fallen heroes in an annual Anzac Day clash.

The tireless work of Kevin Sheedy and RSL President Bruce Ruxton in 1994 to set up the Anzac Day match is part of the legend. “How do we grow the game as well as remember an area of society that needs recognition?†wrote Sheedy, “We needed something to bring us together, not tear us apart. We proposed the idea of a game on Anzac Day that would celebrate the spirit of the diggers.†Amid the hubbub of the NRL and AFL Anzac football commemorations, soccer will gaze in wonder from the sidelines about where, if at all, it fits in the picture.

In a competitive marketplace for football, soccer’s culture of forgetting has left it open to broadsides and backhanders from other football codes. In May 2013, Sheedy, at that time a temporary immigrant from Victoria to New South Wales, opened another of his many propaganda fronts via an infamous remark about the relationship between soccer and immigration. As coach of the new AFL franchise Greater Western Sydney Giants, then in its second ever season, he was feeling the pressure after a 135-point battering from Adelaide in the first game at their ‘home’ ground, the Sydney Showgrounds. A paltry crowd of 5830 watched the dismal performance. Clearly frustrated, Sheedy asked for patience. “We don’t have the recruiting officer called the immigration department recruiting fans for the West Sydney Wanderersâ€, he said. “We don’t have that on our side.â€

A missionary in a foreign land, Sheedy’s jibe at soccer was an expression of his own need for legitimacy and desire to belong. And his team kept losing, week after week. And few people were turning up to watch them lose. Derisory crowds of 6000 (for a game that usually averages over 30,000 wherever else it is played in Australia) suggested that this latest episode in Victorian cultural imperialism was struggling to make an impact in its target of Western Sydney.

Meanwhile, Western Sydney Wanderers, an A-League franchise in its inaugural season had achieved remarkable success on and off the field, winning the Premiership and losing the Grand Final. Despite Sheedy’s suggestion of their unbelonging, the Wanderers were playing to packed crowds at Parramatta Stadium, some of them full houses.

Sheedy’s ‘immigration department’ comment implied that soccer was having an easy time because of the number of immigrants settled in the western suburbs whereas his ‘Aussie’ game was flailing because it did not have the ready-made market – something of which the AFL was fully aware prior to establishing the franchise. Ironically, Sheedy’s claim was made around the same time that Greater Western Sydney Giants had successfully lobbied for government assistance in attracting migrants to the club. Some would be excused for seeing a classic case of projection.

Whatever might be made of the psychoanalytic reading, what is clear is that the Victorian imperialist had inverted logic and history and turned the locally embedded game into the foreign one while promoting his imported culture as the one that truly belonged. His sense of belonging was based not on felt inclusion or “terrains of commonality†but on imperial desire and mythological projection. To be fair to Sheedy, he was not the first to make that mistake. Nor will he be the last. Soccer’s history and cultural importance in Western Sydney runs farther back than many realise.

Someone who should know better, soccer reporter Michael Lynch, recently deployed the immigrant trope in arguing that the Asian Cup will be a decent consolation for Australian soccer’s missing out on holding the World Cup. “The stadia are there, and the immigrant population to help build the crowds is here, too. Let’s hope they, along with the locals, turn out to show FIFA what might have been possible.â€

It’s as if the Sheedy moment and its aftermath had never actually happened.

continued . . . 

 

 

[dmixtaaa]

We don't need to be whipped up into a marketing frenzy at the expense of our dead war heroes. I think it's disgusting to think that NRL and AFL commemorate the ANZAC Spirit by comparing their 'warriors' as showing the same team spirit. It is disgusting to even think that these despicable human beings can compare this and think that this is ok. We know the history that football played during wartime. We know that the World Cup has never been missed besides for in wartime such as in 1942 and 1946. We can go to the local dawn service if we want to pay our respects for our war heroes. I'm glad Football doesn't involve themselves in this disgusting marketing propaganda.

[TehSmileyBandit]

It sincerely wanted to, Dmixtaaa. De Bohun was creaming himself over the prospect of an ANZAC Day Sydney a Derby semi at Stadium Australia. Had the cards fallen the way FFA wanted last weekend, you can bet your disgust and outrage that there would have been some wonderful tie-in created by the geniuses in the FFA marketing dept. Possibly something subtle and tasteful, about the brave white lads from the Eastern Suburbs invading the Turka-Leba-Woga-nese fortress called Stadium Gallipoli in Homebush.

 

I really wish that I didn't believe that as much as I do.

[wendybr]

 

Someone who should know better, soccer reporter Michael Lynch, recently deployed the immigrant trope in arguing that the Asian Cup will be a decent consolation for Australian soccer’s missing out on holding the World Cup. “The stadia are there, and the immigrant population to help build the crowds is here, too. Let’s hope they, along with the locals, turn out to show FIFA what might have been possible.â€

It’s as if the Sheedy moment and its aftermath had never actually happened.

continued . . . 

 

A little bit of a side issue I guesss...But to me,  it's as though the majority of the Australian people have amnesia about their "immigrant' roots. On my mother's side, my ancestors arrived in Australia in the early 1800s from England/Scotland.  On my father's side, my family moved out from England after World War 1. Doesn't stop me from understanding that I came from an 'Immigrant background" even if the family history goes back a long way in this country. 

 

People of non indigenous heritage, who want to overlook their own "immigrant" backgrounds in  thinking along those lines, are  arrogant and ignorant.

[Prydzopolis]

I wish that even though it was a day after Anzac Day we should have played the last post before kickoff, with any Wanderers fans who are service men to stand along side the trumpeter as a homage to there service and the sacrifice to the many lost fighting for Australia. No over marketing or hyping of it, just a simple message for service men or women to contact the club mid week for it to happen.

[TehSmileyBandit]

No. Keep ADF propaganda away from my club please.

[hawks2767]

The ADF doesn't engage in propaganda, and the FFA should maintain some integrity and not try cash in on ANZAC day like the AFL has unashamedly done.

[dochers]

Thanks Neososmos, a really thoughtful and well-researched piece on the Granville Magpies and contemporary football identity issues. Everyone on this thread should try to read the full piece and understand how deep the roots are.

[Nnnnnathan12]

It's an interesting debate,

 

Some people can argue the only reason why the NRL and the AFL have games on ANZAC Day is to cash in on near sellout crowds,

But then again, isn't a part of ANZAC Day to commentate those that fought for our nation and to celebrate the freedom that we have as a result of the sacrifice that those before us made.

And often the best way to celebrate that freedom is to have a great time with out mates at the football, whatever code of footy that may be

[marron]

I thought it was about remembering our war dead....