July 8, 2006
Last week-end, for the first time ever, I entered the Bowls Club in Fitzroy. In the far corner was a list of bowls champions going back to 1879. In the foreground, a crowd of football die-hards whose traditions went back just as far.
Ian Syson’s Vulgar Press was launching a book* about the Fitzroy Football Club. If you’re nowhere near Melbourne, or you don’t share its religion, maybe I should explain: this club disappeared ten years ago, swallowed up in the rationalisation that created the Brisbane Lions.
Business is business. Football teams’ community base has become a secondary consideration to the people now running Australian Rules football, and the crowd at the launch knew it better than most.
The speeches and songs were light-hearted, yet they kept coming back to what capitalism had done to their club. "Footy now is business, and money rules as king" sang one; another lamented the new era when a footy club is "just some fat boy‘s marketing tool". The legendary Bernie Quinlan, who kicked 576 goals for the Lions, suggested Fitzroy and its working class club "shouldn’t be part of this modern crass society".
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But it’s hard to avoid, isn’t it? I’ve spent hours watching the that monster cash cow called the World Cup even though, dogged Marxist internationalist that I am, I found myself barracking for every single country that played against the Socceroos. And of course the reason the Socceroos play well is partly because they spent a fortune on the coach, who is Dutch rather than Australian, which is bizarre given the patriotic hysteria. And partly because they spent a fortune on building a team. And partly because Harry Kewell et al are top professionals making heaps of money in Europe.
The money power in sport is an issue the Australian left should consider more closely. In 2000 two academics published a paper called "The Price of Olympic Gold", which found that each gold medal Australia won in the period 1980-96 cost about $37 million dollars. The justification offered for this splurge was firstly that it was really, really important for Australia to win lots of gold medals. Self-evident, is it not.
And secondly, that the effect would trickle down to more sporting activity among the masses with consequent health benefits. The academics found no evidence whatsoever for this. I guess the investment splurge just created more couch potatoes.
Someone should write a book about this. Speaking of which…
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Until Vulgar Press appeared on the scene, I had lost interest in book launches. They always seemed to be precious little in-group affairs. This small publisher has turned them into political rallies and community festivals.
What made me realise something important was happening was the launch of Liz Ross’s "Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!" about the Builders’ Labourers. The State President of the CFMEU launched it. Scores of blue collar militants turned up to buy a book that told their story. Like the Fitzroy launch, we began with a song that brought history alive, one many of us had sung in the old days.
The old days … During both launches, amidst the festive atmosphere, I felt that tremor of melancholy you get when you realise something is gone forever. There will be plenty of class struggles in the future, but the particular working class culture represented by the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation will not return. Neither will community-based sport in the particular form that Aussie Rules still represented two or three decades ago.
Which is why our enemies call us dinosaurs, for not wanting to let go of the past.
But the past is a key to the future. The people who run sport, the building industry and everything else want us to believe things can be no other way. Capturing the past allows us to answer that another world is possible. We know because we’ve learnt our history.
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*The book is Adam Muyt, "Maroon & Blue" from Vulgar Press: