AUSTRALIA
(land of the fair go)
Ethnic Sports and New
Games
Objectives
By the end of this lesson you will:
•Be able to describe the nature and purpose of the
sports and pastimes of the aboriginal people.
•Understand the reason for the rapid rise of
athleticism during the development of sport in
Australia
•Understand the development of soccer, tennis,
swimming, rugby, aussie football and cricket in
Australia
Ethinic Sports and Games in Aboriginal
Society
Thinking back to what you learned last year, what sort of activities do
tribal societies do? Therefore, what activities do you think are
popular in Aboriginal society?
• As well as doing functional activities, Aborigines
also played games for fun.
• With a ball made from possum skin, Aboriginal
tribes played a game called ‘marn-grook’
• It is though the leaping tactic employed in play
was copied as a marking strategy in what
was to become Aussie Rules.
•Early British settlers regarded Aborigines as subhuman.
•Many died because of a lack of resistance to
infections brought to Australia by the settlers. Many
thousands were also massacred by the British
•Despite this, between 2 massacres in 1868, an
aboriginal cricket team became the first to tour
England in what was called a ‘dignified episode in
race relations.
In reality it was more like a circus in which the
aborigines were good but novel performers.
Although the inclusion of ethnic minorities in
sport in the UK has steadily risen in the last 25
years, they are only slowly emerging into
international sport.
Evonne Goolagong
Mal Meninga
Lionel Rose
Cathy Freeman
Today in Australia, native aborigines make up
less than 2% of inhabitants.
Despite their under representation in many
sports, they have been disproportionately
successful at a high level in major sports like
Aussie Rules, Rugby League an boxing.
The Development of New Sports
Football (4
codes)
Tennis
Swimming
Popularity of Colonial Games.
• The colonial elite established the hunt, golf and
later tennis as places where people of high social
status could socialise.
• Unlike in England, snobbery was less evident as
survival and prosperity depended on people
working together (frontier spirit = to the USA).
• People believed that true sportsmanship
demanded moral effort and sport was good for
society. This philosophy is called
‘Athleticism’
Sport and Athleticism was seen to have 3 purposes.
1. The elite private schools believed that athleticism
prepared boys for leadership, government and
business roles.
2. Athleticism gave a chance to a rapidly evolving
newspaper industry to foster national pride
through sport.
3. Organised sport was an agent of social
control during the rough ‘frontier days’ of the
colonial period when early settlers arrived.
Migration expansion and economic
growth
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Fuelled by gold rush
Resulted in rapid urbanisation
By 1891 most urbanised country in world
Resulted in a powerful middle class
Adoption of middle class sports
- Rugby, Tennis & Cricket
Expansion of responsible
government
Level of independence from Britain
 Led to invention /adaption of sports
 Australian Rules
 Geographical isolation of football
codes
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The Rise of Swimming as
Australia’s National Sport
Factors
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Climate & access to beaches
Urbanisation – need for public baths
Urban middle class and their views on
cleanliness and athleticism
Invention of the Australian crawl.
Revolutionising speed swimming
Suits the Australian ‘beach culture’.
The majority of the population live near the
coast
Tennis
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An expression of Anglo-Saxon status
urbanised game favoured Australia's
demography
ideal climate for an outdoor sport
Role models throughout its development
 Rosewall - Laver - Cash - Hewitt
•Cricket began as the sport of middle-class
gentlemen but it has always been played by all who
could muster a bat, a ball and some flat land. Cricket
differed only in where and by whom it was played.
Cricket has always been considered the one
sport where Aussies can get one over the
‘motherland’ and prove their world domination.
The Ashes
Aussie Rules Football
Australian football is not an international game but
has developed beyond its Melbourne origins to
become a popular national game.
Aussie football was invented by English born Tom
Willis.
He took aspects of Marn-Grook and combined
them with basic principles of the ball sports he
had encountered in England.
As a result, the sport of Melbourne Rules was
codified in 1858
Australian Football has been shaped by several
cultures in its development.
1. The Aborigines contributed the athleticism
2. The Irish contributed the strength and
ruggedness
3. The ‘cornstalks’ (2nd and 3rd generation
Australians) brought the manly image of frontier
Australia.)
Populi ludos populo
Game of the people for the people.
• Australian football:
1)Suits their culture (Aborigines, Irish, Europeans,
etc.)
2)Suits their geography (space is boundless and the
game is played on huge cricket ovals)
3)Suits the social and economic environment of the
nation.
Soccer
Soccer was originally not accepted by the
Australians as it was considered to be ‘the Pommie
Game’. Soccer brought dissent towards officials as
well as shirt pulling and foul tactics which weren’t
desirable in Aussie society.
Teams were divided by ethnic group according to
where they settled. Each community reflected
the country of origin in its name for example:
Melbourne Croatia
St George Budapest
Sydney Hellas
As a result the media were opposed to giving
coverage to a sport which appeared to divide the
country and stimulate racial rivalry and crowd
violence.
More recently these names have been changed
(For example Sydney Hellas became Sydney
Knights). The media are now less hostile and
soccer is now seen as the main game of
Australia
• Rugby was the game of the “ruling elite”, which even
as an amateur game generated income and influence
for both players and ruling body alike.
•Rugby League, as in English Rugby League, has
developed mainly in one area, in the case of Australia,
in New South Wales.
Football divides Australia
AUSSIE RULES
Colonial links with
Rugby School and
Melbourne cricket
club led to birth of a
handling game which
was then shaped by
the Irish immigrants.
RUGBY
Development around
Sydney and Brisbane due
to proportion of Northern
English and Welsh, though
industrial areas meant that
Rugby League became
dominant code.
SOCCER
Did not develop due to middle class culture and
lack of major industrialisation, eventually
brought in by Italian and Greek immigrants in
the 1950’s.
Football & Australian Geography
•Brisbane - Rugby
League
•Perth - Aussie Rules
•Adelaide - Aussie Rules
•Sydney - Rugby League
•Canberra - Rugby Union
Melbourne - Aussie Rules
History of Australian Sport
- a summary
Reflects developments in UK
 Middle class developments remained
dominant because there was little
industrial working class influence. (A
major reason why soccer didn’t become
popular earlier).
 Geographical and Topographical factors
were a major influence.
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End of lesson test
1.
What is the name of the activity played by Aboriginals that lend some aspects
of its game play to Aussie Football. (1)
2. Name 2 famous Aboriginal sports stars. (1)
3. Give 3 reasons why sports and athleticism were so popular in Australia’s
development. (3)
4. What does Populi ludos populo mean and what sport does it apply to? (1)
5. Outline the development of Aussie Football including cultural variables and
reasons for its popularity. (5)
6. Why was soccer not originally adopted by Australians when it was first
introduced. (2)
7. What sport and competition provides Australians with the perfect opportunity to
get one over the ‘motherland’? (1)
8. What is Australia’s national sport and what lead to its development and
popularity? (2)
Out of 16
Answers
1. Marn-Grook
2. Evonne Goolagong, Cathy Freeman, Mal Meninga, Lionel Rose
3. See slide 10
4. ‘Game of the people, for the people’. Aussie Football
5. See slides 20-23
6. See Slide 24
7. Cricket – The Ashes
8. Swimming. See slide 14