footy again

Posted on | September 22, 2004 | 2 Comments

It’s Grand Final week in Brisvegas and getting in the spirit I’ve started work on the AFL project. My toughest audience, the 2220 students, will get an overview in a couple of weeks’ time before I give what I hope will be a more developed argument at the Dialogues Across Cultures conference in November.

Surprising research findings for today:

1. Following St Kilda player Nicky Winmar’s defiant stance against racist taunts from Collingwood fans in the 1993 season, Collingwood’s then President, Allan McAlistair said: “As long as [Aborigines] conduct themselves like white peopleÖ everyone will admire and respect them.”

2. The Racial Vilification Code was officially adopted by the AFL in 1995, mostly in response to Essendon player Michael Long’s determination to rid the code of explicit racism as an on-field tactic. Yet a few weeks later, a banner in the Collingwood crowd read: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

3. In Reconciliation Week 2000, the Australian and Aboriginal flags were painted side by side on all AFL grounds across the nation with the support of the AFL Commissioner, all clubs and the players’ association.

4. Celebrations for the Indigenous Game between the Sydney Swans and Essendon were scaled back during 2004, meanwhile the game commemorating 60 years since the “Battle for Australia” in PNG included a parachute jump by the armyís Red Berets, performances by the Federation Guard Precision Drill Team and Army Band Newcastle, a vehicle cavalcade of veterans around the boundary line escorted by serving members of the Navy, Army and Air Force and a fast roping display from a Navy Seahawk helicopter. In fact as my mate Emma observed, the match ball was delivered to the ground by helicopter while a recruitment ad for the armed forces was broadcast on the stadium big screen. Ex-servicemen or women or their relatives wearing service medals or current service personnel wearing medals or a uniform were admitted to the game free.

Joking with Peter Cryle the other day about the ‘commercialisation’ prospects for this kind of project, he made a pithy observation: “The AFL has been simultaneously the most progressive and the most fraught attempt on the part of a corporate body to improve indigenous relations in this country.”

Today I’m feeling that the AFL has probably already passed the peak of any efforts it might make to reflect on indigenous histories and their place in its nationalist imaginary – that it is settling comfortably into a negotiable form of Howard’s ‘practical reconciliation’.

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