Australian Football clubs have traditionally been seen as contributing social benefits to the rural communities in which they are embedded. Declining numbers of participants, both players and volunteers, suggest that this role may not be as strong today. Critical explorations of the extent to which football has driven social inclusion and exclusion in such environments emphasizes a historic masculine culture of drinking and violence that segregates and marginalizes women and children. Less is known about the contemporary strategic efforts of clubs to use social capital to support their activities, and whether the resources they generate have positive impacts on social inclusion in the wider community. We use evidence from the Parliament of Victoria’s Inquiry into Country Football (2004) to explore the current focus of rural Australian Football clubs regarding social inclusion, in light of changes occurring in society and rural towns in the 21st century.

The Australian Football League (AFL) is the largest professional sports competition in Australia. Most AFL clubs began as amateur bodies in the nineteenth century, but to survive they have had to adapt to changes in demand and production costs by adopting a commercial management approach. Because financial management is seen by most club members as secondary to the core business of winning games, accounting data is generally invisible in football histories. We use a range of accounting information from annual reports, committee Minute Books and media commentaries from 1910 to 1917 to demonstrate how financial data can be used to enhance our understanding of the history of one AFL club -Carlton. In particular, we show how previously overlooked accounting records can enrich the history of this sporting club as well as challenge long held "myths", thus creating new understandings of Australian football history.

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It is generally accepted by historians that in the early twentieth century, clubs in Australian Football's Victorian Football League (VFL) made payments to 'amateur' players prior to the legalization of professionalism and that such payments were not disclosed in club financial reports. Previously, financial reports have not been used to support or refute such claims. This paper presents findings from a detailed examination of the financial reports and other records of six of the 10 VFL clubs for the years surrounding the legalization of professional football in 1911 (1909-1912). Prior to 1911, most clubs engaged in fraudulent financial reporting practices by misrepresenting player payments as other forms of permitted expenditures, thus concealing prohibited remunerative payments to players within their financial reports. Using isomorphic influences to explain the reasons for this misrepresentation, we conclude that the financial reports were used to legitimate the majority of clubs as amateur organizations. Competing isomorphic pressures, particularly conflicting coercive factors related to the VFL's prohibition on player payments and normative pressures associated with increasing professionalism amongst players, contributed to clubs engaging in fraudulent financial reporting.

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