The Containment of Soccer in Australia: Fencing Off the World Game

Soccer has become the most popular organised team sport for Australian children. It far outstrips the popularity of the three other football codes that are played in Australia-rugby league, rugby union and Australian Rules football.

Yet the soccer participation phenomenon in Australia is matched neither by the media coverage of the game, nor by the academic interest in the game. With a few notable exceptions in academic sports history, the game of soccer remains understudied in comparison with the other football codes. And, apart from interest that is generated by World Cup campaigns, the media coverage of soccer is largely marginalised, and becomes most emphasised when reporting on aspects of `hooligan' crowd behaviour. Issues associated with national identity and citizenship are far more likely to be raised around soccer than the three other football codes.

This book investigates some of the ways that soccer has been maintained as marginal to Australian identity, and why the sport remains vitally important to some marginalised groups within these communities.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Chris Hallinan is Associate Professor with the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests are within the politics of ethnic, racial and national identities, youth studies, and ethnographic research methods.
John Hughson is a Professor of Sport and Cultural Studies with the Univesity of Central Lancashire. He was educated in Australia. His research interests are broadly within the social and historial study of culture with an emphasis on sport, particularly the connections between sport and other ares of culture including the arts.