OPINION ARTICLE: "The fall of the Glasgow Rangers" by Greg M., Mark M., Michael N. and others, April 2018

The fall of the Glasgow Rangers:

Ethical ramifications and lessons to be learned

By: Greg M., Michael N., Mark M., Michael I., and Anna M. (a mix of Rangers and Celtic supporters and non-football followers)

Abstract

In this article we apply business ethics theories (justice, ethics of care, deontology, and utilitarianism) to the actions of Scottish football’s Glasgow Rangers FC prior to its 2012 liquidation. In the authors’ opinion, justice was not done in Rangers’ case. Previous owner David Murray got off relatively lightly; there were no arrests in relation to the tax fraud involving Rangers. Rangers’ punishment did not fit the crime; even though it was demoted in the league (to the fourth-division backwater of League Two), it climbed relatively quickly to be one of the biggest clubs in Scottish football again. In our opinion, we could make a case for Rangers to be stripped of name and history as a deterrent to other football clubs. Using utilitarianism, we can see that Murray’s actions caused short-term happiness in the club; there was no concern for the longer term which ultimately saw the consequences of these actions cause more unhappiness than good. A further lesson that can be learned is that individual boards of directors must remain independent of the owner.

Introduction

In 2012, shockwaves were sent through Scottish Football when Rangers FC owner Craig Whyte formally filed for the club to enter administration, during a court battle over a tax bill owed to HMRC totalling £49million, including penalties from failing to pay tax previously. This tax bill Rangers faced arose from a row under previous owner David Murray, in which it was discovered that Murray had been using Employee Benefit Trusts (EBTs) between 2001 and 2010 to pay his players’ and staffs’ wages. HMRC argued that Rangers had managed to avoid paying substantial amounts of tax whilst using this scheme. This decision made by Craig Whyte left Rangers fans confused and concerned as to what would happen to their club and left fans of other Scottish clubs concerned about the future of Scottish football without one of the biggest clubs. In June 2012, a Company Voluntary Agreement set out by new prospective owner Charles Green was rejected by HMRC which left Green to buy Rangers’ assets and form a new company, whilst liquidating the old business and confining Rangers to the lowest tier of professional Scottish football, the  fourth- division (League Two).

Sir David Murray must also be in consideration for the blame for Rangers’ demise, due to the massive financial crisis he left the club in. Under his ownership, Rangers was hugely successful with Murray’s extravagant spending; however this led to the club reporting massive debts and large annual losses during this period. Rangers even reached a net debt of £82million in 2003 during the peak of Murray’s ownership. Fans did eventually realize the cost this success meant for Rangers, as in 2009 they urged Murray to sell his share in the club, with Lloyds Banking Group looking to recover debts owed to them, which were estimated to be £25-£30million. Walter Smith, manager of Rangers at the time, even said that effectively Lloyds Banking Group were in charge of the club’s spending, which also meant uncertainty involving the future of the club’s players.

Rangers’ demise has not gone unnoticed; one of the most successful football teams - in terms of trophies – had failed and collapsed despite assurances from many influential figures that the club would be safe. Players and staff were left facing uncertain futures and supporters potentially having no team to support. This article looks into detail how ethically Rangers acted during this period and how the club’s owners’ actions pre-administration and during administration had effectively pushed a financially sinking ship underwater.

Justice

Justice, according to the Cambridge dictionary (Cambridge Dictionary, n/d), is the fairness in which people are dealt with. By using tax avoidance schemes, Rangers Football Club gained an unfair sporting advantage and therefore acted in an unethical manner. Therefore, it must be considered whether the company was punished fairly for acting unethically and whether the company was punished in line with the other football scandals that happened previously.

Any company that uses understatement or concealment can be punished by up to 200% of the tax due. This includes companies which move money to secret bank accounts and companies which use false contracts to facilitate paying less tax (Anon., n/d). In fact, the penalties for tax avoidance can be as severe as lengthy prison sentences, as occurred in various cases in 2016. For example, four men were sentenced to a total of twenty-nine years for falsely inflating company expenses by more than £275million. In another case, two men were sentenced to a total of 19 years when they fraudulently claimed more than £5million in gift aid payments (HMRC, 2017). Therefore, it can be seen that the punishments for tax avoidance can be very serious and severe.

The ethics of Rangers’ collapse are very similar to that of Enron, as that company’s collapse had huge financial implications for its staff and the taxpayers. The case of Enron occurred in 2001 and it is still one of the most famous cases of tax avoidance in the world. Enron had grown to become one of the largest companies in America and this was partly due to the fact that it was using Mark to Market accounting procedures, whereby the company would measure the value of an asset based on its current market value rather than its book value. Enron would transfer any losses to its subsidiaries, allowing the company to look more profitable (Segal, 2018). It was found out that the company had paid no income tax between the years of 1996 and 1999, which, although it wasn’t explicitly illegal, was still hugely unethical (Teather, 2003). As the company went into bankruptcy most of the company staff were unable to sell their shares because of 401K restrictions, leaving many of them without life savings (CNN, 2017). However, what is different about Rangers’ situation is the fact that none of the directors has been sentenced to any prison time. Therefore, in that sense justice hasn’t been done. Although Enron had much higher debts than Rangers, the comparison is still relevant as both companies cheated the taxpayer.

Rangers Football Club also acted unethically in a sporting sense and did not act with sporting integrity. Rangers used Employee Benefit Trusts to pay players in loans rather than in pay, and thus avoiding tax, with Chairman David Murray claiming, “It gave us an opportunity to get players that we perhaps would not be able to afford” (Murray cited in McCafferty, 2017). The company incurred significant debt in this period and made losses of tens of millions of pounds year on year. Rangers was able to win various trophies, with players that it couldn’t afford and in doing so gained an unfair advantage (The Guardian, n/d; Thomson, 2015)

Gretna was a small club which came from playing in the non-professional Unibond League in England to representing Scotland in European competition within a matter of six years. With the financial backing of millionaire Brooks Mileson, the team had three successive promotions and took its place in the final of the premier cup competition in Scotland before representing Scotland in the Uefa Cup. However, as Mileson took ill, the finances of the football club began to crumble with the club eventually being liquidated. The new club had to start form the very bottom as Gretna 2008 (Macpherson, 2015).

This Gretna case is significant for the Rangers’ situation as the punishments that were handed out to Gretna were not handed out to Rangers. Rangers FC have not been stripped of the trophies that it won in its period of gaining an unfair advantage and it was not automatically demoted to the lower divisions (below League Two). In fact every club in Scotland was given the right to vote as to whether the new Rangers club should remain in the top division after its liquidation (Evening Times, 2012). One could argue that, had Rangers been allowed to stay in the top division, it would not have been punished at all for its wrongdoing.

Therefore, although the use of Employee Benefit Trusts (EBT) was not illegal, it still allowed Rangers to attract a higher calibre of player that it could have otherwise afforded. Furthermore, the use of EBTs has subsequently been outlawed to stop other companies using them. Rangers cheated the taxpayer and many creditors out of millions of pounds and therefore it was hugely unethical. The question as to whether it was punished fairly is harder to answer. But by looking at the evidence for tax avoidance and the punishments handed out in the previous footballing cases, it could be argued that Rangers was not punished in line with the standards that had already been set.

Ethics of care

The two moral demands placed by the ethics of care theory within a business setting are:

(a)    preserving relationships with all stakeholders; and

(b)  exercising special care with the stakeholders by attending to their needs, values, and desires.

And within these there are four elements of care ethics as noted by Tronto (n/d):

(a)  Attentiveness - the requirement to recognize stakeholders’ needs and to respond to them;

(b)   Responsibility - although ambiguous and not the right of obligation (situation where a reaction or action is due), it does however allow for ebbs and flows between gender roles and class structure, that ties responsibility to those befitting the roles;

(c)   Competence - to provide the necessary care, not to simply acknowledge it but to accept responsibility to provide it; and

(d)  Responsiveness – another method to understand vulnerability inequality by understanding what has been expressed by stakeholders.

When asking how an institution such as Rangers could end up in liquidation we have to look at the ethical dilemmas faced by this and ask if all was done to protect the stakeholders within the company. Rangers had been carrying debts to fund its success and ambitions and, while trying to maintain these, it ran into serious tax problems resulting from the payments of employees through Employee Benefit Trusts, of which over £50million back tax was due and this resulted in the current process of liquidation being carried out.

Stakeholders within a football company can be split into two groups:

(a)    a group that is primarily concerned with the ability to provide success with no emphasis placed on sustainability (fans etc.); and

(b)   a group that is concerned with the club as a business and its ability to continue as a profit-making entity (this includes shareholders, directors, employees from playing staff to admin staff, creditors etc.)

When looking at the collapse of Rangers the ethical questions posed to these two different groups of stakeholders will have differing answers.

It can be argued that the ethics of care was initially provided to this first group of stakeholders as the main focus was on the success of the club (Attentiveness to the fans’ wants and needs). Enabling the club to obtain far superior players is giving the fans what is required to be able to provide the success, but then you have to question the price to be paid.

Inevitably the use of EBTs and subsequent tax demands which led to liquidation, eventually breached the care duty owed to the fans (Responsibility, Competence, and Responsiveness) as a result of the death of the club (the club-versus-company debate is one for the legal teams of HMRC to sift through) so the ethic of care was breached by the directors, owners, and shareholders in that respect due to their decisions in allowing the club’s finances to be perilous, and leaving the fans with an inferior team languishing in the depths of the football leagues with very little opportunity to increase revenues and become successful.

So how could the club have acted morally and ethically to provide the care to maintain a sustainable business? Well, the main issue would have been to operate within its financial limits, with the addition of playing staff and their remunerations being within financial constraints and also being legal within the tax system. 

Deontology

Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong. It is based on the work of the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, who believed that ethical actions follow universal moral laws. These laws dictate where the ethical limits stand and simply require that people follow the set rules and do their duty. The theory does not require weighing the costs and benefits of a situation because, unlike consequentialism, it does not judge actions by their results and therefore avoids uncertainty and subjectivity. However, there is also a significant limitation in following deontology, which is the fact that many people find it unacceptable. A classic example illustrates this point: suppose an engineer learns that a nuclear missile is about to launch and start a war but he has the skills to hack the network and cancel the launch. Although breaking into any software system without permission is against the employee professional code of ethics, letting the missile launch will lead to thousands of deaths. According to the theory it is right not to violate this rule; however personal moral values may dictate the person to act otherwise.

In the case of the liquidation of the world-famous Rangers Football Club, a breach of ethical codes happened. The road to disaster started in 1988, when Sir David Murray, one of Scotland’s greatest self-made businessmen, bought Rangers and instantly pumped the football club with money. The 1990s turned out to be very successful for Rangers, with just a few minor voices expressing their worry at the road being taken by the club. The owner was wealthy and this wealth was very much built on debt. Murray never worried about bearing hundreds of millions in debt viewing the problem instead as a necessary stepping-stone to greater rewards. However, it was soon proven that Murray overestimated the amount of debts which he could bear.

Coming back to the example of a software engineer who had a choice of preventing a nuclear war or following professional code of ethics, it can be concluded that, in the case of Rangers Football Club, the owners decided to launch the bomb, and they did this continuously. Murray’s ideology reflects the fact that he has viewed debt as a means to success and tax avoidance as a way to prosperity. Although he followed his own set of rules, he could not foresee the danger of his actions and the outcomes they were leading to. If he was more concerned with the potential results, in line with consequentialism theory, he would be in a position to measure the advantages and disadvantages of his decisions, which would perhaps have led to different and more responsible actions. So, although following the rules makes deontology easy to apply, it also means disregarding the possible consequences of our actions when determining what is right and what is wrong.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism theory is based on a moral code; acts should be judged as right or wrong based on their consequences (Glover, 1990). Everything else achieved is only good or bad according to its tendency to produce happiness or unhappiness. Individuals using this theory consider an action to be right if it maximizes the overall wellbeing of society and wrong if it does not. Businesses applying utilitarianism will engage in activities that increase their profits while at the same time serve the best interests of their customers, community, and the government (AWB, 2016).

Sir David Murray’s running of Rangers defied this moral theory on several different occasions with respect to the customers, community or government. Murray’s spending had huge short-term gains but was the catalyst for the longer-term problems which Rangers faced. Murray spent amounts of cash acquiring and paying wages which were unheard of in Scottish football at the time. These assets allowed Rangers to dominate Scottish football during the 1990s. Applying the theory here was a good thing for the customers (fans) as it brought them happiness when they saw their team take trophies. This hugely benefited the community as with large wins comes in large revenues and Rangers could employ more locals in their area of Ibrox; these wins were also beneficial for the taxman for increased revenue equals increased corporation tax. However, this was a dangerous cocktail of success as it led Murray to state that “for every five pounds Celtic spends we will spend ten”.

The long-term ramifications were starting to show as in 1999 the Bank of Scotland secured a floating charge over the club, and two years later Rangers’ debt stood at £50million. It was around this time that Rangers employed EBTs. While these were technically allowed, Rangers employed over 80 individual workers on these contracts, compared to Celtic only having one person on this type of contract.  Applying the theory, we feel that these EBTs did break a “moral (utilitarian) duty”. This allowed Rangers to avoid taxation and National Insurance for sorely the company’s benefit.  This would have resulted in a loss of tax receipts and national insurance for the government; you can see this would be “bad” from the government’s point of view. This would eventually affect the community and customers later down the line, as by September the taxman gave Rangers a final warning over a £49million tax bill due. This eventually led to administrators taking control and freezing the assets. The damages of the EBTs now hit the fans (customers) as their trust was completely broken in their club. The community was also badly affected by this as Rangers went into liquidation. Ordinary creditors including small businesses received nothing while HMRC is still in the process of trying to recover its tax bill.

Conclusion

In regard to ethics of care within a business setting, the lessons that can be learned from these breaches are that directors must stay within a reasonable spending limit, which should be a main objective of all companies. However, within Rangers, reviewing its downfall leads us to believe that its dream of conquering the European Cup was more important to it than were wise restraints on spending. The lesson learnt from this is that, while a company should dream big dreams, those dreams should be acted upon in a sustainable and realistic manner.

In our opinion, justice was not done in Rangers’ case. David Murray got off relatively lightly; there were no arrests in relation to the tax fraud involving Rangers. To save this happening again there must be a united front from HMRC and the governing bodies that make the rules for football. Rangers’ punishment did not fit the crime; even though it was demoted in the league it climbed relatively quickly to be one of the biggest clubs in Scottish football. In our opinion, we could make a case for Rangers to be stripped of name and history as a deterrent to other football clubs. History is an important part of any football club; we feel the stripping of this would be the strongest punishment for any club. HMRC fully restricted EBTs, and the case created a precedent that tax and national insurance must be repaid.

The lessons learned from the ethics we have discussed are quite plain to see. Using utilitarianism first we can see that David Murray’s actions caused short-term happiness in the club; there was no concern for the longer term which ultimately saw the consequences of these actions cause more unhappiness than good. A strong ethical duty must be the backbone of a company, and instilled from the owner and the board.

A further lesson that can be learned is that individual boards of directors must remain independent of the owner; Murray had too much influence and power over his board, this led to decisions that were in the best interests of Murray’s dreams and goals and not in the long-term best interests of the club. Decisions such as the EBTs and financing debt with loans from his other companies should have been scrutinized by his board more closely. An owner shouldn’t be able to spend what he wants; a club should only spend based on its own revenues and serviced debt, and not based on the owner’s wealth. This is what UEFA is trying to achieve with its financial fair play.

This article was an essay submitted to the University of the West of Scotland for the Business & Professional Ethics module, 2017-18 (posted here with authors’ permission).

References

Anon, (n/d). HMRC Penalties | Tax Evasion Penalties | Kinsella Tax. [Online] Available: https://www.kinsellatax.co.uk/tax-investigation-advice-and-services/hmrc-tax-investigation-penalties/ [Accessed 16 Mar. 2018].

AWB (2016) Applying Utilitarianism In Business. Available: https://www.academicwritersbureau.com/samples/219-applying-utilitarianism-in-business [Accessed: 27 March 2018].

Cambridge Dictionary (n/d). Justice Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [Online] Available: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/justice [Accessed 6 Mar. 2018].

CNN. (2017). Enron Fast Facts. [Online] Available: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/02/us/enron-fast-facts/index.html [Accessed 14 Mar. 2018].

Evening Times. (2012). Clubs vote to keep Rangers out of SPL. [Online] Available: http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/13235130.Clubs_vote_to_keep_Rangers_out_of_SPL/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2018].

Glover, J. (1990) Utilitarianism And Its Critics. 1st ed. New York: Macmillan.

Guardian. (n/d). How the mighty Glasgow Rangers have fallen. [Online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/18/how-the-mighty-glasgow-rangers-have-fallen [Accessed 14 Mar. 2018].

HMRC, (2017). Beating the tax cheats – HMRC’s criminal case highlights of 2016 - GOV.UK. [Online] Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/beating-the-tax-cheats-hmrcs-criminal-case-highlights-of-2016 [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

Macpherson, G. (2015). A return to the quiet life: the rise, fall and rebirth of Gretna football. [Online] Available: http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/13887109.A_return_to_the_quiet_life__the_rise__fall_and_rebirth_of_Gretna_football/ [Accessed 16 Mar. 2018].

McCafferty, G. (2017). Dave King hits back at Celtic over Rangers ‘big tax case’. [Online] Available: https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/rangers/dave-king-hits-back-at-celtic-over-rangers-big-tax-case-1-4498096 [Accessed 15 Mar. 2018].

Segal, T. (2018). Enron Scandal: The Fall of a Wall Street Darling. [Online] Available: https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2018].

Teather, D. (2003). Scandal of crashed company's tax evasion. [Online] Available: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/14/corporatefraud.enron1 [Accessed 15 Mar. 2018].

Thomson, A. (2015). Rangers cheated at football: the fraudulent silverware must go. [Online] Available: https://www.channel4.com/news/by/alex-thomson/blogs/rangers-cheated-football-fraudulent-silverware [Accessed 16 Mar. 2018].

Tronto, J. (n/d) Care Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy. Available: https://www.iep.utm.edu/care-eth/#SSH1cv [Accessed: 18 March 2018].

OPINION: "How the WAFL could have been saved in 1986 (if anyone had cared)", by Jack Frost, 13/2/2018

How the WAFL could have been saved in 1986 (if anyone had cared), by Jack Frost

Indicative of Western Australia’s “either-or” (not “both-and”) mentality in relation to higher-level sport, no-one in Western Australian football ever seriously suggested in 1986 that the VFL/AFL or the WAFL make any type of reasonable effort to safeguard the WAFL competition’s future. Possible alternative formats never considered include any or all of the following:

(a) playing VFL/AFL games mid-week on Tuesday or Wednesday nights as the National Football League’s Wills Cup was played in the 1970s and how State of Origin rugby-league and Champions League European soccer are played today; and / or

(b) reducing the size of both seasons and playing the VFL/AFL and WAFL seasons one after the other with one running from January to June and the other from July to November similar to how the A-League plays in summer and the state soccer premier leagues in winter or how the “Super 15” rugby competition season finishes several months prior to the finish of the club-based rugby competitions in Sydney and Brisbane; and / or

(c) accepting only extant, traditional club teams into a national league rather than composite teams. This model is more likely to keep the second-tier leagues strong as supporters of the clubs left in the second-tier will be less likely to switch to the national league side than under the composite-club model. You would then have a situation similar, at least in theory, to one Midlands-based club being promoted one division in English soccer (say, Birmingham City) while all the others stayed where they were (Aston Villa, Walsall, etc.) It would not have a great effect on any of the divisions/leagues. My preferred options would have been (a) combined with (c).

If any or all of these ideas had been tried perhaps the WAFL might have larger crowds and a higher profile than it has today. However, we must remember Brisbane Strikers’ soccer player Frank Farina’s comments about Australian sporting crowds. English fans “who support Huddersfield Town in division five will [always] support Huddersfield Town”, according to Farina. In the case of English soccer, in the Blue Square Premier League (the former Vauxhall Conference and fifth-tier of the pyramid), the once strong Football League clubs Cambridge United, Luton Town, and Oxford United averaged crowds of 3156, 6816, and 6376 respectively in the 2008-09 season with the highest crowds for these three clubs being 4870, 8223, and 10613 (up to and including 9 November 2008) (source: Non League magazine [UK], December 2009 edition, p. 42). These are obviously very good crowds for teams playing at the fifth-tier of the pyramid and outside the Football League and are indicative of strong supporter loyalty towards these traditional clubs.

Luton Town’s record average home crowd of 13,452 in 1982-83 (source: Luton Town FC on Wikipedia), when the club played in the then First Division, means that crowds dropped only by 55% between 1982-83 and 2008-09 despite a drop of four tiers. In contrast to English fans, according to Frank Farina, Australian fans will only watch, in any significant numbers, what they perceive to be the premier or the national competition in any sport. This caveat must be borne in mind when considering any of my suggested alternative solutions (a) to (c) above. WAFL crowds have fallen by around 75% since 1986 although the WAFL clubs have effectively dropped down only by one tier if we regard the old VFL, WAFL, and SANFL as having all been on tier-one of the pyramid in the pre-West Coast era. We can compare that decline to the 55% drop off in crowds experienced by Luton Town after it dropped by four tiers.

To buy the book Goodbye Leederville Oval about the WAFL in the 1984-86 period:

Paperback version: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kieran-james/goodbye-leederville-oval-history-of-west-perth-cheer-squad-1984-86/paperback/product-23448563.html

Hardcover version: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kieran-james/goodbye-leederville-oval-history-of-west-perth-cheer-squad-1984-86/hardcover/product-23516768.html
Large-print paperback version (hardcover large-print also available): http://www.lulu.com/shop/kieran-james/goodbye-leederville-oval-history-of-west-perth-cheer-squad-1984-86-large-print/paperback/product-23477328.html

You can also find the book by typing the book title into Amazon.

SUMMARY: This book will allow supporters to relive great teams, great players, and great matches from a wonderful era in WA football 1984-86 before West Coast Eagles joined the expanded VFL.

NEW INTERVIEW: WORKING CLASS CULTURE AND MECHANICAL HARE RACING IN SYDNEY - Max Solling speaks with Rex Walsh, 15/3/2015

Glebe Town Hall. This photograph is copyright Max Solling (used with permission).

Max Solling

WORKING CLASS CULTURE AND MECHANICAL HARE RACING IN SYDNEY

An Interview with historian and author Max Solling conducted by Rex Walsh

Max Solling is one of Australia’s leading urban and sports historians.

Born in Sydney, Max Solling has been a resident of Glebe since 1960. He was educated at Newington College (1955-1959) and the University of Sydney where he was awarded a University Sporting Blue in boxing and was Australian Universities boxing champion. In 1972 he completed his MA on the development of nineteenth-century Glebe and he was a founding editor of the Leichhardt Historical Journal. He is a qualified and practicing solicitor.

Publications

• Town and Country A Historical of the Manning Valley Halstead Press ISBN 9781920831561
• Grandeur and Grit: A History of Glebe (2007), Halstead Press, ISBN 1-920831-38-X
• The Boatshed on Blackwattle Bay (1993), Glebe Rowing Club, ISBN 0-646-14811-7
• Leichhardt: On the Margins of the City (1997) with Peter Reynolds, Allen & Unwin. (A social history of Leichhardt and the former municipalities of Annandale, Balmain and Glebe.)
• Contributor, Oxford Companion to Australian Sport
• Contributor, Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket

Awards

• Australian Sports Medal as a local sporting historian (2000) ^[3]
• Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community, particularly through researching, recording and publishing the history of Glebe.

Max Solling is working on his latest book with a focus on: Working Class Culture and Mechanical Hare Racing in Sydney.  I spoke with Max regarding this latest project.

Rex Walsh: Max, what drew you to do a project on Mechanical Hare Racing?

Max Solling: It is closely connected to my passionate area of working class culture and this is why I decided to write my next book [on this topic]. Writing a history of mechanical hare racing is very much a cultural, social, economic and political enterprise. And it is closely connected with the circumstances and values of ordinary people during the inter-war years. The racing tracks were in inner city Sydney and offered a chance to win a wage from gambling and a night out for ordinary working class residents. These areas were occupied by residents, transients, boarding and lodging house populations. These years represented a time of militant trade union and working class mobilisation.

Working class men who breed greyhounds for racing were able to adopt an affordable hobby and way to earn a little more money.  Times were tough!

At the heart of the worker militancy and class consciousness lay a striving for order and predictability within a world that offered the working class very little. These activities helped to sustain close-knit communities amid the alienation of modern industrial society.

Mechanical Hare Racing represented an exciting and dramatic cheap form of entertainment that could easily be reached in the evening after work. “Going to the dogs” was distinctly working class. The high levels of unemployment (30 per cent in 1932) and a general fall in working hours only added to the popularity. The low and irregular wages of manual workers would ensure that people remained in their position in society.

The local rag, The Referee told readers that mechanical hare racing provides remarkable opportunities for small owners to achieve both fame and fortune on the track (4 March, 1931, p. 10). Greyhounds provided an opportunity for working class people to participate in a way that was not possible with other forms of racing such as horse racing. They could be breeders, owners, trainers and punters expressing their individuality and collective solidarity. Greyhounds became symbols of their owners' skill and ability and made those who raced and owned them sporting heroes.

[By Rex Walsh].

Rex Walsh

Rex Walsh Bio: 

Rex Walsh has qualifications in Business, Law and Education. He has been fortunate to work across many universities and has also taught in most units within his disciplines of Business and Law. He finds that this assists him greatly in his teaching of all units and in his ability to provide additional support to his students.

His particular areas of research interest involve ethics and contemporary issues in accounting particularly social and environmental reporting. He also works in industry and he is currently working for a community legal service and undertaking professional consultancy work.

As a very passionate teacher Rex Walsh has been fortunate enough to have his lecturing honored with several awards. He has been the recipient of the Curtin Excellence Award, CPA award, received several Commendations from Curtin for teaching excellence, and received commendations from Notre Dame University and nominations for excellence with CQU.

This photograph is copyrighted Max Solling (used with permission)

ARTICLE: "The Divergence of Sporting Culture in Perth's Inner Eastern Suburbs", by Chris Egan

State premier league soccer @ Frank Drago Reserve, Bayswater. (Bayswater SC plays in the blue-and-black shirts which is a reference to Inter Milan and not to East Perth.) Chris Egan argues that Bayswater was historically a soccer town whereas neighbouring Maylands was an Australian Rules town and this difference is because of divergent immigration patterns in the early days.

The divergence of sporting culture in Perth’s inner eastern suburbs

The author Chris Egan

Sport in Western Australia is traditionally analysed on a state-wide perspective rather than a suburb by suburb approach. This skews our understanding on a rather complicated sporting environment which modern Perth is founded on.

Attitudes towards codes is variant depending on what ‘village’ of Perth you lived in. This article is to explore Maylands' fervent support of Australian Rules Football in juxtaposition to its minority status in neighbouring Bayswater.

While a British Association team was played out of Bayswater in the Great War and was allocated part of Bayswater Oval in 1928 (Changes They’ve Seen – The City and People of Bayswater 1827-2013), it did not enter East Maylands Primary School until 1973 (A History of East Maylands Primary School 1954-2003, by Laura Nolan).  While Australian Rules football was an entrenched part of Maylands' social fabric, it did not enter the City of Bayswater until 1948 when Bedford and Inglewood RSL clubs started one up for the children of returned servicemen (Changes They’ve Seen – The City and People of Bayswater 1827-2013).

This divergence shows how sporting culture is as divided on a town by town approach as in the north of England. That class, employment and social fabric was insular and cross cultural influences were constrained. Oral recounts are being supported by the historical archives to substantiate this.

We also see an evangelical rivalry. Australian Rules Football in Maylands was played by a Protestant majority, while the Church of England was also very influential in both junior and senior soccer circles in Perth. Victorian Protestants who had come over with the gold rush were fervent supporters of Australian Rules Football, while Western Australian/ British Protestants, particularly those in high positions within government/clergy, would have soccer as their code of choice.

Bayswater was on the outskirts with farms and bush a majority. Its history has been said to be ‘unconstrained’ by Western Australian fabric because the suburb was essentially a suburb of new migrants. It had little of the entrenched class system that existed in other parts of Perth with tennis and athletics being more popular than any of the ball sports (Changes They’ve Seen – The City and People of Bayswater 1827-2013, by Catherine May). With a large British migration into the suburb its sports choices began to reflect the pastimes of tennis and athletics – sports which were individual by nature. Soccer became a pastime later on, with Australian Rules Football a minority sport. This is a story that is played out throughout the different villages of Perth, not dissimilar to what occurs in the north of England.

So what occurs in Maylands, which in the 1890’s was called Falkirk?  (Original Crown grants and locations within the City of Stirling, Gordon and Olga Sherwood, 1988)

Mephan Ferguson is largely influential in the establishment of the suburb of Maylands, the name has been changed because of his daughter May Ferguson who became Mephan’s housekeeper after his wife passed away. (Original Crown Grants and Locations with the City of Stirling, Gordon and Olga Sherwood, 1988).

Ferguson was a renowned engineer and won the contract to build the Water Pipeline from Perth to Coolgardie. A Scotsman who came out to Australia during the Gold Rush and did his apprenticeship in Ballarat, he went on to develop a large engineering workshop in Footscray. After winning the contract to develop the water pipeline he established a workshop in Maylands. Migration and skills in a full employment city would have come from a Victorian economy entering recession. Skills that had been developed in Footscray would have been transferable to the ‘state building’ of Western Australia.

This development would have seen the sport of choice Australian Rules Football to be infiltrated within this community by the residents who came and clustered. We see the insularity of the region with it not infiltrating into the region immediately east. So this Australian Rules cluster which had been seen as a sport of religion in the Victorian colonies came head to head with it being given a ‘working class’ typecast in the Western Australian society.

While Mephan Ferguson donated two pounds to the Footscray Football Club in 1895 (Independent, 11^th May 1895), his role in Perth fitted into the class structure where he as an influential member of society was a patron of British Association Football (The Daily News, 23^rd March 1906). This social and class structure that had seen him move from an influential backer of Australian Rules Football to Association Football.

Ferguson’s workers however would have seen their sport of choice Australian Rules Football ingrained by their social class. Joe Barbaro said even with post-war migration, Italians within Maylands adapted to this entrenched Australian Rules culture in the early 70’s.  

“We used to play football and it was probably the only reason I came to school. We used to have a division between Perth supporters and East Perth supporters. We’d get into a few fights with kids calling us ‘dings’ in particular…but it wasn’t a regular thing. I did take on a lot of the Anglo-saxon type things. Like I didn’t play soccer, I played footy…basically we assimilated pretty well because I think we had to” (A history of East Maylands Primary School, 1954-2003, Laura Nolan).

So how does this relate to today? Well with council amalgamations being a hot topic, we see why there is such great opposition within metropolitan Perth. In 1997 Maylands residents did not want to be part of the greater City of Bayswater and wanted to maintain its links to the old Perth Roads Board – City of Stirling. In the documentation of the meeting held to discuss the proposal to amalgamate Maylands to Bayswater, a 700 strong petition was delivered stating that historical links with Stirling were stronger than they were with Bayswater.

We see the great difference in culture between the regions, Maylands established within class and economic developments linked into Perth’s culture and Bayswater developed with British and more general interstate migration, not simply working class tradesmen building the great engineering feat of the water pipeline.

Frank Drago Reserve (Bayswater City SC)

In Bayswater, the council allows soccer a part of ‘the rec’  in 1928. It becomes the headquarters for soccer in Perth in 1953. Catherine May touches on the underlying tension between amateur and professional sport within the town and that the council’s desire to bring soccer to the region was a ‘welcome move to commercialisation of sport’ (Changes They’ve Seen – The City and People of Bayswater 1827-2013, Catherine May).

This had been a driver of sport in both Perth and Fremantle. Councils such as Bayswater which had a past not defined by any of the traditional Western Australian social structures would give the round ball game its first home. Bayswater Oval was first a facility for athletics, tennis, lawn bowls and more gentle sport.

The Landscape Archaeology of suburban grounds from Fremantle to Bayswater are often around commercial hubs. This is no accident, sport defined how the city moved and breathed. Merchants would see increased trade on days where sporting events were hosted. While today we see state governments seeing the benefits of hosting events, in regions throughout Perth, businesses wanted sporting events to get the visitors to stimulate their economies.

Bayswater’s move in the 1950s was a movement to stimulate commercial activity in their town centre which was not far away from Bayswater Oval. Sporting grounds in Perth are close to town nodes and commercial activity because of the economic trends that delivered gain to the business community on game days.

In this essay I’ve elicited the juxtaposition between two suburbs that although are geographically close have a cultural and economic divide that shapes their sporting culture. While post-war migrants found it socially acceptable to play the world game in Bayswater, which had this as its football code of hegemony, Italians were forced to assimilate to Australian Rules Football in a suburb [Maylands] which lived and breathed the ‘Australian’ game.

By Chris Egan

@perthforever 

[This article is published here with the kind written permission of Chris Egan.]

Joe Barbaro is quoted here as saying that East Maylands Primary School in the early-1970s was divided into gangs of Perth and East Perth supporters without soccer being a visible presence at the school. This is despite the Italian-based Baywater City (formerly Bayswater Inter) playing in neighbouring Bayswater. Now of course the East Perth WAFL club has moved to Leederville Oval (see above picture).

The author Chris Egan (left) and friend Reuben enjoying watching state premier league soccer at Dorrien Gardens, home of Perth Soccer Club (formerly Perth Italia), August 2012.