Australia, Asia and the new football opportunity

‘Wogball’, or the World Game? Race and Soccer in Australian Journalism

“…According to Mavroudis (2013, p. 485), ‘through the medium of soccer writing, migrant communities are given a voice they may otherwise lack in the mainstream media’, although he notes that this diversity has its limits, including narrowly defined boundaries when it comes to the inclusion of Indigenous or female voices. Hay (2006) argues that it would be wrong to determine the significance of football (soccer) in the Australian sporting narrative through media treatment alone, yet despite having one of the country’s highest rates of actual participation (Hallinan et al, 2007; Hay, 2006; Pajic, 2013)—as opposed to spectators, or media attention—football remains in the Australian public’s imagination and that of Australian journalism as very much an ethnic sport, derided as ‘wogball’ and depicted in journalistic narratives as the domain of migrants, and outside the boundaries of ‘real’ Australia (Georgakis & Molloy, 2014; Hallinan & Heenan, 2013; Hay, 2006; Pajic, 2013).…”

“…While football lagged in the amount of mainstream media attention given to it compared with other codes including Aussie Rules and NRL (Hallinan et al, 2007), it did enjoy the occasional burst of journalistic attention particularly on those occasions, such as World Cup qualifiers, where there was the need to band together to support the national team. Otherwise, the local game was ignored in favour of the elite competitions of Europe (Hallinan & Heenan, 2013). Even though the extensive coverage of the game on specialist public broadcaster SBS helped to consistently keep football in the national sporting narrative, Rowe and Gilmour (2009) argue that it also inadvertently coded the sport as ‘foreign’ through appealing to SBS’s niche and target audience of Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds.…”