BOOK REVIEW: "The Death & Life of Australian Soccer (Joe Gorman)", by Kieran James, 23 August 2018.

BOOK REVIEW: The Death & Life of Australian Soccer (Joe Gorman), by Kieran James, 23 August 2018.

According to the book’s front cover, Tracey Holmes says that this is a “remarkable book”. For me, I would not call it “remarkable” but I would call it interesting, important, colourful, detailed, thoughtful, and complete. It basically traces the history of Australian soccer from the post-war migrant boom through the National Soccer League (NSL) (1977-2004) era and on to the A-League and FFA Cup; as well as various matches involving the Socceroos at various stages in their history. It looks at soccer through the dual lens of economics and ethnicity, refusing to bow down to the dominant ideology promulgated around 2003-2005 that ethnic clubs and the NSL were uniformly and unambiguously terrible and that all soccer history before the A-League should be removed from consciousness.  This ideology can be termed “ground zero” or “scorched earth” ideology and the term “ethnic cleansing” has even been used by various people at various times to describe the fact that the A-League refused to accept traditional ethnic soccer clubs (Melbourne Croatia, South Melbourne Hellas, et al.).

A strength of the book is its almost dialectical (to describe the philosophical way of argumentation aimed at by Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, and other communists over the years) writing style where two facts or aspects or perspectives of a situation, which appear to be almost or even completely contradictory, are presented side by side; and often there is no attempt made to harmonize or integrate the opposites which leads to an unresolved but informative tension. For example, the formation of the A-League and the fate of the ethnic clubs is told from different perspectives side by side, one pro-the A-League or seemingly so, and then the next bemoaning the destruction of the ethnic clubs’ cultures (e.g. pages 273-274, 338-339, 353-354). (The dialectical style is also used effectively in the Iron Maiden songs “22 Acacia Avenue” and “Run to the Hills” where, respectively, the perspective of a prostitute’s mentor / parent and client (first song) and Native Americans and White settlers (second song) are presented back to back.)

Usually this writing style is effectively used but there are times in the book when the contradictions become almost too much to bear and the reader cries out for at least an insertion of opinion from the author. Although the writing is colourful and descriptions detailed (of people and events), we get very few actual real personal opinions offered by the author. Is he on the “side” of the ethnic clubs? Or is he “against” the ethnic clubs? Is he “pro” the ethnic clubs as long as they play in the state leagues only? Is he “pro” the ethnic clubs but only if they can pay their own way? Is he “pro” the ethnic clubs but against ethnic names? Narrowing it down to key events, Gorman discusses Collingwood Warriors and Carlton Blues but we don’t get his heartfelt opinion on either these two interesting ventures. All we get are histories and descriptions which could have come from earlier books on Australian soccer or even from Wikipedia. What does he think of Lowy pulling Sydney City Slickers (Hakoah) out of the NSL after one round (page 140)? What does he think of St George Budapest’s axing from the NSL (pages 169-170)? He may feel he was too young to have experienced these events first-hand and so does not want to comment; but I would have loved to have heard his opinions. To me, Lowy was totally unethical as the basic ethical rule of even junior football is that your team must complete the season. Why not withdraw before the season began? His decision showed zero regard for the other clubs, players, and supporters, and angered even some Hakoah people. Yet this was the person who people were begging to take over management of the game again around 2003.

Another reviewer sees Kimon Taliadoros as one of the themes holding the book together in the sense that he started his playing career with a semi-professional ethnic club, South Melbourne Hellas, but was involved in the efforts of the players’ association to gain improved wages at national-league level; he annoyed many administrators of the game and his career ended without fanfare. He failed to share in the benefits he later obtained for others through his efforts, making him an almost priest-like figure in Gorman’s book which is strangely appropriate given the Greek Orthodox Church heritage and background of most people associated with South Melbourne and other Greek clubs. I respect this view of Taliadoros but I choose to read Gorman’s book through another lens. To me, Taliadoros is not as interesting as some other characters in the book; in most industries it is commonplace for union organisers, shop stewards, and workers to strive for improved wages and better working conditions; it is not interesting or different in and of itself; rugby-league and Aussie Rules also moved from semi-professionalism to full professionalism over the same period as soccer (just without the ethnic club factor and the NSL / A-League distinction).

To me, the most interesting figure in the book is Andrew Howe (pages 164ff.); and he is the answer to the principle dilemma of Australian soccer which Gorman grapples with: even when the ethnic clubs tried to become more “mainstream”, Anglo supporters still would not support them (e.g. pages 103, 165, 198). Because of this, the A-League had to be formed (although other solutions were possible, e.g. an A-League of eight plastic franchises plus the biggest four ethnic clubs). Howe was the exception: a 19-year-old Anglo-Australian from the Sutherland Shire who supported Cronulla Sharks in the National Rugby League (NRL). One day, he and his mates (for reasons that seem to be lost in the mists of time) decided to go to Italian club APIA Leichardt to watch a game of ethnic soccer in the NSL. He was completely hooked as I was in 1990 when (aged 22) I started watching Perth Italia games at Dorrien Gardens. Here was something unique and, in some ways, totally foreign but, in other ways, tied up forever with the immigrant experience and hence completely Australian. Rugby-league and Aussie Rules could not replicate such atmospheres. There were few Anglos like Howe unfortunately (exactly how many is unclear). If there had been thousands of Howe-type figures, the NSL would not have had to die. I know Melbourne Knights still has non-Croatian supporters. Vice-President, Pave Jusup, told me in 2011 of the Melbourne Croatia Fans (MCF) group member who stood, in his West Ham United shirt, for two years on the terraces at Knights’ Stadium before people found out that he was not ethnically Croatian!

Howe is hilarious and took the ethnic soccer aspect to extremes not even imagined by the ethnic people themselves: one wonders if a Steel Panther-type irony was intended or whether Howe was in fact just “taking the mickey”; his total passion for ethnic soccer makes the latter possibility seem unlikely. The book tells of Howe starting a Croatian soccer club in the Southern Sydney Churches competition (page 166), wearing red, white, and blue, despite the fact that there were no ethnic Croatians involved (apparently). He informally renamed the clubs in his competition to take on ethnic names (“St Philips was ‘Filipino’[;] St Giles became ‘Macedonian’” etc. (page 166)). Although this is all hilarious, one serious question remains: Why did Australia have so few Andrew Howe-types back in the NSL era? I used to love entering the world of ethnic soccer for an afternoon back in the early-1990s. Three memorable matches were: Perth Italia versus North Perth Croatia at Perry Lakes around 1991 (great atmosphere); a thrilling 0-0 draw between Perth Italia and Sorrento Gulls at Dorrien Gardens around 1990; and a 3-3 cliff-hanger between Italia and Croatia (then called Western Knights) in 2003 or 2004 also at Dorrien Gardens. I knew that I could retreat to Aussie Rules if I wanted an Anglo-atmosphere. I could come and go as I chose. Ethnic clubs were no threat to me, I revelled in them. I broke one “rule” of ethnic soccer which I could as an Anglo-Australian: my teams were Perth Italia and Melbourne Croatia. I recall watching the Melbourne Croatia team of 1990 on SBS on a Sunday evening, when Francis Awaritefe was up front and Alan Davidson was marshalling the mid-field.

There are certain other weaknesses of the book. The author expresses the modern left-wing views about the European colonization of Australia as being an “invasion” and the White Australia Policy being disgraceful. However, he fails to condemn (although here and there he does despair at the narrow-mindedness of Anglos who run a mile from any club perceived as ethnic) the banning of ethnic clubs from the A-League when this can be viewed as similar in spirit to the White Australia Policy. It banned clubs purely because of the ethnic origins of the clubs’ founders and it is very hard to see how this constitutes anything other than racism or discrimination. All are welcome as individuals, Gorman points out, but you can’t bring your clubs with you into the closely policed world of Modern Football.

The best parts of the book to me are about ethnicity and the NSL. I loved the season-by-season history of the NSL which has not been done before with this level of rigour. However, I feel that the author probably tries to do too much. I think everything about the Socceroos could have been left out for example. The Socceroos’ campaigns are not covered as rigorously as the NSL seasons; the 1990 World Cup is ignored, and Fiji’s shock 1-0 win over Australia in Nadi in 1988 is not mentioned (nor the 5-1 return game back in Australia). (Fiji is not even in the book index.) Gorman seems to have subconsciously adopted the current worldview that only Asia matters and that Oceania’s history (which included Australia) and its present are to be ignored (for more on Fiji soccer see my blog “Nadi Legends Club” at http://nadilegendsclub.blogspot.com). It was also not really interesting to me to hear how Ayr United fan Roy Hay switched from supporting Scotland to supporting Australia in the middle of a World Cup match. It might be important to Hay but, sociologically, I don’t view it as being as important as the killing off of the NSL.

I would have also liked to have read a bit more on Western Sydney Wanderers and the FFA Cup, but we can’t have it all and space limitations are always an issue. Perth domestic soccer is also totally ignored when Richard Kreider has written history books on this topic which could have been consulted (Kreider, 1996, 2012); club football history post-1945 is not all about Sydney and Melbourne. The Perth Kangaroos’ venture could have had a longer treatment as this interesting and bold venture was 20 years ahead of its time. (It is a pity that the administrators realized only too late that it is the Malaysian league that gets the crowds, not the Singapore league.) Gorman talks about spending time with Melbourne Knights’ Pave Jusup, but that treasure-trove of wisdom and information about his club is not quoted in the actual book (unlike in my two published articles).

Nowadays, we have mostly plastic franchises in all national-leagues in all codes and the ethnic atmosphere of soccer has been destroyed. Yes, we have the same clubs playing at state-league level in front of a few hundred fans but atmosphere is based on crowd size and the old Croatia-versus-Hellas-in-front-of-8,000-people type atmosphere is, sadly, gone forever (unless, as Knights’ president, Ange Cimera, has said, they decide to stop ethnic cleansing). Perth Glory versus Melbourne Knights in the A-League? I would like to see that!

On page 143, Gorman calls Hakoah’s new Sydney City name “utterly meaningless”; in fact, I would argue that the name is overloaded with unintended meaning; Mr. Lowy himself was and is the “Sydney City Slicker” personified, surely?

Despite the criticisms, this is a worthwhile and important book which refuses to ignore or suppress or repress the ethnic history of Australian soccer. More historical work should follow, from fan, journalist, and academic perspectives [by Kieran James, 23 August 2018].

References cited in this review:

Kreider, R. (1996), A Soccer Century: A Chronicle of Western Australian Soccer from 1896 to 1996 (Leederville: SportsWest Media).

Kreider, R. (2012), Paddock to Pitches: The Definitive History of Western Australian Football (Leederville: SportsWest Media).

My published articles on Australian soccer:

James, K., Tolliday, C. and Walsh, R. (2011), Where to now, Melbourne Croatia? Football Federation Australia’s use of accounting numbers to institute exclusion upon ethnic clubs, Asian Review of Accounting, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 112-124. 

James, K. and Walsh, R. (2018), The expropriation of goodwill and migrant labour in the transition to Australian football’s A-League, International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 430-452 [to be published soon].

Book review author contact details:

Kieran.James@uws.ac.uk

Kieran.James99@yahoo.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/kieran.james.94 (Kieran James).

Henry Dyer (left) and Lote Delai @ Fiji Football Veterans' Dinner, Nadi, Saturday, 4 October 2014. Henry Dyer was dropped from the Fiji team for the first 1988 game (versus Australia) due to an alleged connection with a motor vehicle which was involved in a robbery in Suva. Lote Delai set up the goal in the first game and scored the only Fiji goal in the second game.

Perth Glory historian Chris Egan and friend Reuben @ Dorrien Gardens, home of Perth Italia Soccer Club.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Death & Life of Australian Soccer (Joe Gorman)", by Billy Diakos, 6 September 2017.

A new book chronicles the rise and fall of the National Soccer League competition and highlights the journey of one of the main characters - Socceroos boss Ange Postecoglou. The day after iconic SBS broadcaster Les Murray's funeral, Joe Gorman's book The Death and Life of Australian Soccer was launched at a café in Sydney's Leichhardt. The publication is an impressive look at the 1950s and 60s and beyond, when the European migrant communities inspired a football boom and the creation of what would become Australia's first national sporting competition – the NSL.

Through archival research and interviews Gorman highlights how Greek and other migrant-backed soccer clubs influenced the round ball game in Australia. 

    'The amount of money and time and energy that Greek-Australians have put into the game is unbelievably enormous and that effort will probably never be recognised and truly be appreciated as it should be," he says.

"Sydney Olympic, South Melbourne, and Heidelberg are the major ones from the NSL who produced a great number of Socceroos, and not just from a Greek background but from all walks of life. But the question is, what role will those clubs have in the future? Maybe South Melbourne Hellas will be an A-League franchise one day and I hope they are. I hope they do succeed in doing that as Greek Australians have always been a part of Australian soccer and always will be."

Postecoglou's journey from Greek migrant ball boy to Australian national team coach is examined, and one chapter features an excerpt from an article that the then South Melbourne coach wrote in a 1997 match day programme. It's a call to arms to South supporters that came during one of the most tumultuous period of the NSL, when teams like Heidelberg and Parramatta Melita had been axed in favour of non-ethnic backed teams. 

"When I watch the (Victorian) Premier League and see Heidelberg and Preston play in front of 500 supporters, it makes me sick to my stomach," Postecoglou wrote at the time. "It is then I realise that I don't want one day to be talking to my children about a club that no longer exists, or is a pale shadow of its former self. I remember those clubs that no longer exist and they were all great clubs. I'm sure they felt as indestructible as we do now. Yes, we've managed to survive whilst others have fallen, but survival is no longer enough. We must prosper and stay ahead of everyone else in order to ensure our future."

Postecoglou left South Melbourne in 2000 but not before he guided the club to two successive NSL championships. His subsequent coaching career in the A-League and for the Socceroos also yielded silverware. 

However, Gorman believes that despite all that success, Postecoglou has suffered an existential crisis caused by the demise of the NSL in 2004, which saw his beloved South Melbourne consigned to the Victorian State League.

"So, in the space of 20 years after he wrote that article in the match programme and, I'm not having a go at him here, he has essentially given up the fight for his club and I think part of the reason was because times had changed around him," Gorman says.

"He had to change with the times. He had to move, he won't say it publicly but I think the demise of South Melbourne has hurt Ange and I think it has hurt him in a place he won't talk about publicly. 

"He has seen the NSL and the journey of soccer as a supporter, as a ball boy, as a player, as a captain of a NSL club, as a Socceroo, as an A-League coach and as a Socceroos coach."

In writing the book, Gorman feels that Postecoglou's story also is also the story of the first ten years of the A-League; the message the competition sends is that as an ethnic person you can succeed but your community will no longer come with you.

"When Ange had success in the 80s and 90s, South Melbourne rode his coat-tails and came along with him," he says. "The same happened with Mark Viduka and the Croatians. Mark Viduka succeeded and the entire Croatian community rode that success with him. In the A-League now the individual person can succeed but their community no longer goes on the ride with them and that I think is a real shame but it's also the inevitable result of a highly corporatized, privatised sport.

"So, Ange's story embodies the modern era of the A-League in a lot of ways. The A-League is just not a positive story, it's also quite heartbreaking as you realise what we've lost, we've lost that community spirit and that real ethnic community spirit which we all love, we've lost that now and it's became much more mainstream if you want to use that word."

Gorman added," So, Ange has literally seen everything. He has been at the coalface of the game since he got here in 1971. That is why he is important. He articulates the journey of the game better than anyone else. He talks about the game so beautifully and the reason he's so good at that is because he has lived and worked in Australia football almost the whole of his life."

Also featured in Gorman's book is Peter Filopoulos who was only 25 when he became the club's first general manager. In 1996, he appointed Postecoglou as senior coach, and Gorman highlights how as general manager he attempted to broaden South Melbourne's supporter base. Filopoulos left the club in 1999 to pursue opportunities at various sporting organisations and like Postecoglou, South provided a springboard to future success. Looking back on the demise of the NSL, Filopoulos believes the formation of the A-League was inevitable.

"The game had to be corporatised," he tells Neos Kosmos. "We didn't have big sponsors in the NSL; we didn't have a Hyundai that is pouring in millions and millions of dollars like we do today. We didn't have a broadcast deal that was pouring in tens of millions of dollars, and in order for that to happen the game had to be corporatised."

After 10 years away from football, Filopoulos returned to his main passion when he joined Perth Glory in 2015 as its CEO and he feels it's time that some aspects of the NSL be adopted by the A-League.

"Football's shopfront window is much glossier than it has ever been," he says. "But as part of that corporatisation, yes, we have lost that bit of community feel as a collective that the NSL clubs had with that deep rich connection with their community.

"The other thing we don't see as much as we did back then is Ange Postecoglou played under-8s for South Melbourne and he played right up and represented the senior teams and then the country. It was a different era.

"When the A-League was formed we really didn't worry about any of that; it was more about corporatising the game and making it a glossy league attracting the corporate and TV dollars and building a product. I think we have managed to do that quite well but now is the time to build those other elements that the NSL had and have it come across to the A-League."

BOOK REVIEW: "Goodbye Leederville Oval" - More than an Oval, by Chris Egan, 12/9/2017

Chris Egan (left) and friend @ Dorrien Gardens Soccer Ground, North Perth. Neither Chris nor Kieran James have much time for code-wars.

Dr Kieran James’ book – Goodbye Leederville Oval is a unique and credible insight into Perth’s sporting culture. It covers three major themes – the fluidity of Perth’s sporting culture, the pain of transition in Australia of sports moving from semi-professional to professional pathways and one that is currently being further examined across the state. What is it to be a Western Australian?

James uses soccer to elicit his supporter group as part of an intimidatory force and uses the literature from the United Kingdom soccer scene to introduce his supporter group. It is the fluid connections that come through that are the highlight of the experiences of Kieran’s youth. There is a transient connection to the WAFL by boys of his generation, especially when compared to the intensity of support in the VFL.  This is challenged by the ‘parochialism’ at state level which superseded the interest in metropolitan clashes. 

Dedication came with the ‘cultural’ acceptance that kids would be ‘permissed’ to wag school to watch the WA state team play Victoria. That this was something that ‘everyone’ did. This is where the real heart of sporting culture comes alive, something that saw little ability to be transient. The pride of their Western Australian identity was at a peak, school was nowhere near as important and there was a ‘tactful’ acceptance of this by the Education Department with not cracking down on it.

For Kieran, there is ever-lasting pain from the transition as he has a strong engagement to the league and the game. But he is also part of the fluidity, he sees no difference between his love of Dorrien Gardens and Leederville Oval, the culture he critiques allows him to create a book with no code hostility. He crosses over League, Soccer and Australian Rules throughout this book, framed by a city which as a whole allows people to pick and choose what elements of Western Australian society that you engage with.

It doesn’t require you to stay with West Perth and the Eagles. It doesn’t require you to ignore academic literature from soccer to frame the experience of an Australian Rules cheer squad. There is a freedom of affiliation that is bound by the cultural and social freedom to interact in the many world’s of Perth – with no social, academic or economic punishment.

It is expertly sourced, referenced and memorialised. He transects a critical lense on Western Australian societies ‘either/or’ rather than ‘yes/and’ which he suggests is framed by the West Coast Eagles who were able to delineate the attachment to the Western Australian State of Origin side when it was created in 1987.  James challenges this with how Queenslanders supported their Rugby League club sides and their State of Origin heroes. That in Perth this eroded and the passion of the state was transferred to its club side.

The processes of the construction of this period is critical for future studies into the game, including my present book on Perth Glory which utilised the passion behind the WA state side which was then transferred into the ground-breaking records that Perth Glory attracted when it entered into the National Soccer League in 1996. It provides further understandings that sport in WA is fluid, it is about state pride at its heart – not the code of sport you play.  

Kieran James @ Leederville Oval

What is the highlight though is the insight into mid 80s supporter culture in Western Australia, the lack of class, political and social friction within James supporter group is similar to my experience when part of the home end at Perth Glory. The group I sung with was from all walks of life, but our connection was our united passion for the Glory, which is shaped by our shared strength of Western Australian identity.

If there is any critique of the book, is that it did not look at the clash points within Leederville Oval when Perth Glory tried to transfer the ground into a rectangular venue. With so much insight and academic theory being integrated from a soccer background, this would have been a valuable area to analyse by James.

The book is integral for anybody that is interested in Perth’s sporting and social history, it engages with the reader a mixture of memoir/analysis of the pain of reform. It crosses code boundaries and defines the characteristics of Western Australian society.

Dr Kieran James should be congratulated on a text that will have long-standing benefits to the study of sports history in Western Australia.

[This review was first published at Australianrules.com.au and is used here with the kind permission of Chris Egan.]

To buy paperback edition:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/kieran-james/goodbye-leederville-oval-history-of-west-perth-cheer-squad-1984-86/paperback/product-23296331.html

To buy hardcover edition:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/kieran-james/goodbye-leederville-oval-history-of-west-perth-cheer-squad-1984-86/hardcover/product-23511884.html

Also available on Amazon (type the book title into the search function). 

BOOK REVIEW: Review of "FITZROY", by Dyson Hore-Lacy (2000)

Fitzroy farewells fans, 1996

I could introduce this review by saying this is the book the AFL does not want you to read. However, at the end of the day, the AFL is now far too powerful as a Stalinist authoritarian regime in the Australian sporting landscape to care about websites such as mine or books such as this one. This book is absolutely depressing from the viewpoint of a traditional football supporter and from the viewpoint of a person who admires fair-play and decency on the football fields and in the corporate boardrooms. It discusses the last few years of Fitzroy FC as an AFL club and then discusses in detail the demise of Fitzroy and the enforced merger with Brisbane Bears. It is written by Fitzroy's then President, Dyson Hore-Lacy, four years after the events in question. It chronicles the proposed merger with North Melbourne to form the North-Fitzroy Kangaroos which was thwarted by the AFL at the last minute because it preferred the Brisbane merger for "strategic reasons". We see here the AFL coming to power as an authoritarian body with new corporatist-managerial type leaders who had taken full power over from the club presidents based on recommendations contained in the Crawford Report. At the end Hore-Lacy and his board were rendered even more powerless because creditor Nauru Insurance Corporation put the club in receivership and called in Michael Brennan as administrator (not the West Coast footballer). Brennan apparently was bullied by the AFL and he broke his fiduciary and legal duty by not accepting the North Melbourne merger even though North had offered to match Brisbane's offer in all respects and the North merger was the one accepted by the Fitzroy directors and preferred by most Fitzroy supporters. Initially it was to be called North Melbourne-Fitzroy Kangaroos with a mixed jersey. Then North supporters objected and finally the compromise North-Fitzroy Kangaroos name was accepted by both parties with the word "Melbourne" removed. This is an interesting name as it is open to multiple interpretations. Fitzroy FC people could have interpreted it as referring to North Fitzroy the actual suburb while North Melbourne people of course could have interpreted it to refer to the old North Melbourne club.

Home @ Brunswick Street Oval

We read of the AFL's desire to destroy Fitzroy as a club and force merger. Then we read of the AFL forcing the Brisbane merger rather than the North Melbourne merger for "strategic reasons" (as then AFL Commissioner John Kennedy Sr. said). Firstly the AFL introduced a rule giving Brisbane and Sydney access through the draft to uncontracted players which decimated Fitzroy's playing stock. Secondly, the AFL, completely unreasonably, forbid Fitzroy to play some AFL matches in Canberra, although it later permitted North Melbourne to play games in Canberra, Sydney, and Gold Coast, and allowed Hawthorn to play games in Tasmania. We read of Ross Oakley's rude comment (p. 132) that it would not allow "their worst product" (Fitzroy) to be sent up to Canberra, an offensive statement made against a foundation VFL/AFL club with eight premierships and which had made the final-five several times in the 1980s. It shows how the AFL was viewing clubs and players merely as "products for sale" in the 1990s, and it wanted to determine which products were sold in which markets. We read of the AFL's authoritarianism by continually demanding Fitzroy directors provide proof of solvency, a very difficult thing to offer positive proof of. The wishes of all the Fitzroy directors and most of its supporters to merge with North or stand-alone were completely disregarded by the AFL. The AFL cares about nobody but only about revenue dollars, marketing, vision, and the strategic plan. I urge football people not to contribute more of their hard-earned money to the AFL but to support second-tier football instead (SANFL, VFL, WAFL, etc.).

The Fitzroy Football Club still legally exists to this day. The Fitzroy Reds play at the old Brunswick Street ground in the amateur league and play in the 1950s-70s Fitzroy jersey. It is a pity that the club could not be represented at the higher VFL level and this may happen in the future. Ironically one of the terms of a possible Collingwood merger had been that Fitzroy play as Fitzroy in the reserves which now means the VFL competition. Perhaps this offer should have been accepted? While the AFL is the clear Darth Vader here, Hore-Lacy's board appeared to be genuine in its actions but was just outbullied and outsmarted by the AFL working in conjunction with the club receiver Mr Brennan and Brisbane Bears (and with the anti-Fitzroy Melbourne media in the background always ready to pounce). The club could only have held on for a few more years with yet another white knight.

Fitzroy Reds @ Brunswick St (amateurs)

However, the structural problems of moving to a higher stage of brutal capitalism within the AFL industry were always going to exist. When West Coast and Adelaide entered the competition with lots of money, supporters, members, and sponsors it was clear that the smaller Melbourne clubs would suffer the most by comparison. Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon and perhaps Richmond could compete with the bigger interstate clubs but the smaller clubs in Melbourne could not. Smaller Melbourne-based clubs today are being funded by the AFL to a significant extent. It appears that AFL policy has changed and it is no longer coercing or even encouraging mergers. However the AFL's arrogance and authoritarianism continue on unabated. Only the tactics on the ground change. The AFL's reason to see Fitzroy merge was so that Port Adelaide could enter the competition in 1997. One of the funniest parts of a depressing book is the proposed merger of Port Power and Fitzroy as the (wait for it) Port Power Lions or, as Hore-Lacy says, the "power lines".

I like the front cover cartoon picture of a lion hanging on a cross in Christlike fashion with a black-suited person with a football for a head (the AFL) shooting arrows at the lion's chest. Although I think it is usually unwise to apply religious analogies to secular contexts, I support the use of the cross here as the picture perfectly sums up the situation of the Fitzroy Football Club. The AFL should apologize to Fitzroy FC and its supporters, the vast majority of whom now no longer follow AFL but have gone across to support Melbourne Victory and / or Melbourne Storm and / or other teams in other codes. The AFL does not deserve their support or their dollars. Its behaviour was completely reprehensible. Might does not make right [by Jack Frost, 2 January 2014].