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Soccerphobia (Australia)

The following quotation from Philip Mosely's Ethnic Involvement in Australian Soccer: A History 1950–1990 (Australian Sports Commission, 1995) indicates what association football had to put up with in years past.

For decades soccer’s rivals had cruised along with virtually no competition. However with each new season in the 1950s they grew restive and even reactionary over soccer’s growth. The strongest responses were found in the Australian Rules states. Particular schools banned soccer and education authorities in charge of school sport were known to hinder the game as best they knew how. For example, staff at White Hills Technical School, Bendigo did not so much ban soccer outright as ban instead the use of school funds for soccer equipment. As early as 1951 buckets of glass were scattered on North Hobart Oval the night before a Tasmanian representative side took the fireld against a visiting English Professional XI. Next season the VFL directed its operatives to secure all available public sporting space in Melbourne in order to stifle the burgeoning threat posed by soccer’s migrant-inspired growth. Similar moves had been made in 1927 and 1928 when British migrants so rattled the VFL that it wrote “with alarm” of this “foreign code”. The 1950s boom in migration promised to be far more of a problem than that of the 1920s. In 1958 a Melbourne soccer club sought to lease a council ground usually used by an Australian Rules club. In response to the application one rules-supporting sneer, “let them play . . . in the gutter”. Melbourne’s reputation for paranoia was crowned in 1965 when youths daubed anti-soccer slogans over Middle Park, chopped down the goalposts and tried to set fire to the grandstand. (59-60)

Below you will find random examples of soccerphobia and its responses. Look to the right to find the usual suspects.

Nov 17, 2008 'Columnist Rebecca Wilson slams Reds as humiliating'
Nov 13, 2008 'Quality beats home-grown' Richard Hinds
Mar 11, 2007 'Put a soccer in it: Why I can't stand the game', Peter Goers
Jan 30, 2007 I don't like Soccer - it's a Stupid Game Phill Chadwick
June 28, 2006 Ugly aspects of the beautiful game, Malcolm Knox,
June 27, 2006 A force more powerful than footy, Gary Lyon (a thoughtful and positive piece by the ex-AFL star about rejecting soccerphobia)
June 20, 2006 Is Australia ready for a new national game? No, John Birmingham (Originally published in the Bulletin but wisely taken down from their site)
May 16, 2006 + May 31, 2005 Can You Smell the Fear? Parts 1 and 2 , Simon Hill
Nov 27 2005 World game needs a little respect to win us over, Kevin Naughton + Phil Chadwick's response
Nov 19, 2005 Why I fear for our own beautiful game, Geoffrey Blainey, (a good piece that openly and temperately expresses the author's fears for Australian Rules)
December 18, 2004, Richard Hinds Call it what you like, but to many of us it's just not footy
(a reasonable piece that nonetheless misunderstands the fact that Rugby League and Australian Rules are not cultural equivalents)
May 23 2003 AFL can repel soccer challenge: SOS
Anyone for a game of Wogball? Anthony Ferguson
Soccer, the racist code! (this article has been since edited to remove some of its silliness -- though some still remains)