21st century football wars: and the winner is …
Columnist By Spiro Zavos, 28 Feb 2008 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert
The announcement by the AFL that it is going to invade the western suburbs of Sydney, the heartland of rugby league, has reignited the always simmering football wars.
The period between the 1880s and the end of the First World War in 1918 could be described as ‘the era of the football wars’ in Australia.
This initial series of conflicts for the hearts, minds and bodies of Australian males was a contest to become the national winter sport. The first battles were between what has become known as Australian Rules and rugby union.
In 1883, Australian Rules (then known as Victorian Football) moved outside Victoria and seeds of the game were planted in Brisbane. A year earlier, however, VFL authorities had rejected a plea to subsidise VFL players living in Brisbane to come down to Sydney to play VFL football against a team of Sydneysiders. A game of rugby union was played instead, with a number of the Queenslanders needing to have the laws of rugby explained to them.
The venture was so successful a return match in Brisbane was arranged, and this was the start of the NSW-Queensland rivalry – the Blues against the Reds – which has has lasted through to Super 14 rugby. It is one of the longest state (or provincial) rugby rivalries in the history of the code.
Touring has always been an essential part of the rugby ethic. Dr Arnold at Rugby School, where the game was created in the 1840s, used to go to Europe at the end of every school term. This touring ethic was picked up by rugby players, even in Australia. In 1882, following their tour to Brisbane, the NSW players embarked on the first rugby tour of New Zealand by an overseas team. A year or so later, an Auckland team toured NSW.
The touring ethic of rugby became so entrenched in NZ and Australia that in 1904 a team from the famous Maori College, Te Aute, came to Sydney. The Te Aute style of vigorous, skillful, fast and expansive play was picked up by St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, after their match against the unbeaten New Zealanders.
While rugby was entrenching itself in NSW and Queensland, the VFL was trying to convince rugby authorities in New Zealand, Australia and in the UK that the IRB should convert from rugby to what they insisted was the more skillful ‘Victorian science’ game. For a time the VFL started to call its game, ‘Australasian Football.’ But when the overtures to New Zealand were rejected, even in flat Christchurch where the Victorian game was quite popular, the VFL began to call its game ‘Australian Rules football.’
In a fascinating article in the SMH, the sports historian Sean Fagan points out that an Australian Rules 11-club competition was established in Sydney in 1903. One of the backers of the competition was the great cricketer Victor Trumper. The competition was kicked off by a match between Fitzroy and Collingwood. The crowd at the SCG was 26,000. A few weeks later Australia played New Zealand for the first time at the SCG in front of 30,000 people.
Sean Fagan argues that Australian Rules gained a significant hold in Sydney by 1905 with as many youngsters playing the Victorian game as there were playing rugby. Two of Dally Messenger’s younger brothers were Australian Rules players, and, according to Fagan, Dally Messenger himself played for Easts in 1905.
Sydney, and with it NSW and Queensland, was saved for the rugby code (but rugby league rather than rugby union), according to Fagan, by ‘the advent of professional rugby league.’ Because league was professional, it generated the cash to pay footballers, who might otherwise have defected to Australian Rules. League entrenched its popularity as the dominant football code in NSW and Queensland during the First World War when rugby union shut down its grade competitions. The Queensland Rugby Union actually went out of existence until 1929.
By 1919 the football wars had reached a stalemate. NSW and Queensland were predominantly rugby league states, with rugby union having a significant hold with the middle and upper middle classes, a passion generated in the main because rugby union was the football code of choice since the 1890s of the GPS colleges.
There was what sports historians called a Barassi Line protecting the rest of Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, for Australian Rules.
This Barassi Line, with Australian Rules ruling to the south and west and the rugby codes ruling along the eastern seaboard, was as static as the line of trenches across Europe in the First World War up to the 1980s.
The 1980s onwards saw breakthroughs in the football wars on both sides of the Barassi Line. The AFL established the Swans in Sydney and the Lions in Brisbane. The NRL established teams (unsuccessfully) in Perth and Adelaide, and successfully in Melbourne with the Storm. Rugby union became a professional sport in 1996. Super Rugby was set up and rugby tests were played in front of huge crowds at the spiritual home of Australian Rules, the MCG.
Huge televisions receipts, from free-to-air television (for AFL and rugby league) and from Pay TV (for rugby union and football with its A-League) commercialised the sports, and gave them the revenue to promote their codes in what had hitherto been enemy territory.
Now flush with money and with the ambitions of world domination retained from the 1880s, the AFL has launched a major offensive into the western suburbs of Sydney, the heartland of rugby league. The AFL has announced that it wants to have a second Sydney side, playing out of the western suburbs, as soon as possible.
This decision by the AFL has restarted the football wars in earnest. The rugby league establishment has enjoined the battle. We’ve had Sean Fagan’s historical article in the SMH insisting ‘hold hard, fellow rugby-ites (of either brand) and footballers of the round-ball kind, we’ve heard all this hot air before.’
Roy Masters, the great writer on rugby league, and a former coach of the famous St George club, is adamant that AFL is desperate to break into ‘larger media markets’ in Australia and around the world but that ‘west Sydney may prove the Rubicon the AFL will never cross.’
In Melbourne, the biggest-selling daily newspaper in Australia, the Herald-Sun, is gung-ho in its support of the AFL invasion of the hostile territory of west Sydney. But in Sydney, the Daily Telegraph (also a News Ltd newspaper), the voice of rugby league (its advertisement for an assistant sports editor specifically mentioned a knowledge of rugby league as a requirement) has taken up the fight for its code.
This is the context to the opening paragraph of a report of a Swans-Port Adelaide trial match: ‘The AFL’s plan to take over western Sydney by 2012 received a healthy reality check after a small crowd turned up to the Swans’ pre-season game … at the same time across town, the pre-season match between the Roosters and the West Tigers at the SFS attracted a crowd of 15,197.’ Ouch!
The football wars in Australia have been going on for about 120 years. It’s impossible to predict when they might end. I think it’s fair to argue, though, that it is most unlikely that any one code will wipe out all the other codes. My guess is that in time (but don’t ask me when) football/soccer will displace AFL as Australia’s major national football code.
Football already has a national coverage: it has huge numbers of players; it has a national league that has the potential to grow much bigger; it has a huge market in Asia that its clubs and national side, the Socceroos, can play into; it has the Football World Cup tournament and the Olympics to energise the local game every two years.
Rugby union also, although a much smaller level in Australia and around the world, is getting the same national reach, together with its vibrant international footprint. The Investec Super 14 is attractive to an up-market finance/investment company because it is played in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, and watched with great interest in the UK. Rugby’s World Cup tournament, held every four years, is the biggest sporting event in the year it is held.
The two other combatants in the football wars, the AFL and NRL, have deeply entrenched positions within their heartlands. But no amount of posturing, especially by the AFL, can disguise the fact that their international presence is relatively small.
If football in world terms is Coca-Cola, then rugby union is Pepsi Cola. Using the same analogy, AFL and NRL are Bundaberg ginger beer, a terrific local brand but with limited overseas appeal. If this analogy is correct, the winner of the Australian 21st century football wars will be …
Recommend this story.
We're hiring. Find out more.
- Explore:
February 28th 2008 @ 1:27pm
Michael C said | February 28th 2008 @ 1:27pm | Report comment
Given that in Melbourne the VFL continued during WW1, and in WW2 simply shortened the seasons of 1942 and 1943 – - I might suggest that the done thing at the time was that the pro leagues continued.
I have no family history in Australia let alone the Commonwealth dating back to either war so I have no vested interest to say ‘big deal’ or ‘cowards, how dare they’ – all I can say is that I’d never stand almost 100 years hence and judge those at the time……..however, perhaps if somebody said ‘sorry’…..
Is it not in general the approach that you try not to shut down the home front entirely, the ‘big league’ was good for morale etc etc. However, if that outcome was only reached at the lobbying of both parties (and any others in that boat). Again, as above, I wouldn’t judge them in retrospect knowing the outcomes.
February 28th 2008 @ 1:41pm
The Boar said | February 28th 2008 @ 1:41pm | Report comment
Steve – perhaps you would care to tell us which other professional sports around the planet (outside of war zones) ceased thier competitions in WW1? The VFL didn’t stop in WW1.
By all means we can all have contrary views, but in your original post & in Spiros article we only got – as sheek so well put it – “the tired, old mantras of rugby union’s superior place in the sun over rugby league.”
February 28th 2008 @ 2:19pm
Steve said | February 28th 2008 @ 2:19pm | Report comment
Michael C
You seem to be trying to put words in my mouth. I didnt use terms that you have attributed to me like…”big deal’ or ‘cowards, how dare they’ ”
My intention from the outset was to recite a simple fact – not to be judgemental. It seems that some people cant handle the truth.
The Boar
As I said to Michael C, I have set out to present a fact not to be judgemental. I didnt realise facts could be so controversial.
February 28th 2008 @ 2:34pm
Chas said | February 28th 2008 @ 2:34pm | Report comment
Steve:
Why should we agree to disagree about an issue that has truth attached to it? Sean Fagen is not the only writer/researcher to have reported something different to Rugby Union spin. Like you, I am an interested hobbyist in relation to this topic and have been convinced by impartial writers on this subject. To dismiss Sean Fagen as a Rugby League apologist is to continue the myth started by Rugby Union followers during the 1920s. Sean Fagen is NOT a Rugby League follower. He is an acknowledged impartial leader in his field. To state otherwise is to continue the myth.
February 28th 2008 @ 2:35pm
Michael C said | February 28th 2008 @ 2:35pm | Report comment
Steve -
NO, no —– I wasn’t trying to put words in your mouth, I was more musing about the 2 extreme positions that might be taken on passing judgement – were I to do so (let alone anything in between). I was trying to make clear why any comments I make on this issue are totally NON-JUDGEMENTAL and the reason why.
I have no position re your position or that of Chas – and, just as Rugby folk may have never had any idea that VFL was running through the wars – I have never cared either way or known about what Rugby was doing all that time ago and had no idea that there might be a perhaps murky story behind such.
I also support that you clarified that it wasn’t just 1903 that saw Victorian/Melb/Australian Football establishing a ‘beach head’. It had already done that to a lesser degree, it was more the question of the likelihood of being a professional organisation going forward. And Sydney was in a far greater state of flux in all such respects than Melbourne – as below illustrates:
“A point to remember is that, at least until the 1890s, football in Melbourne was on a much bigger scale than in Sydney. In 1881 Melbourne’s population was 282,000 and Sydney’s was 225,000, but the disparity in the popularity of football was much greater. According to Twopenny, Melbourne had eight times as many clubs as Sydney, the biggest crowds were three times the size of Sydney’s best, and about ten times as many people watched football in Melbourne as in Sydney on any given Saturday. Moreover, the sixpence charged at Melbourne grounds had helped to create a chain of well-appointed suburban grounds while in Sydney, with one exception, matches were played on unenclosed grounds such as Moore Park and the Domain, and disruptions to play were common as spectators spilled on to playing areas.”
cheers.
February 28th 2008 @ 2:40pm
The Boar said | February 28th 2008 @ 2:40pm | Report comment
“Steve – “I didnt realise facts could be so controversial.” Because (in regard to WW1) all you did was offer up your opinion of those events. You can call Fagan’s piece on WW1 opinion too, but at least he backs up what he says with reasoning: http://www.rl1908.com/articles/war.htm
February 28th 2008 @ 2:54pm
Steve said | February 28th 2008 @ 2:54pm | Report comment
Gentelmen , gentlemen, gentelmen,
Some people seem to be confusing, facts,opinions and judgments.
Its a fact that, with some exceptions on both sides, rugby men enlisted in WW1 while league men did not, in Sydney. Can we all agree on that?
Secondly, the Queensland situation after WW1 is very well documented. Or is that fact in dispute as well?
I’m not making judgements – merely presenting facts.
Chas,
I’m shocked that you disown Fagan as a Rugby League man despite his numerous books and websites devoted to his beloved game. Who acknowledges his alleged impartiality?… the NRL? Maybe the home of rugby.
league, the Daily Telegraph?
February 28th 2008 @ 3:04pm
sheek said | February 28th 2008 @ 3:04pm | Report comment
Steve et al,
Firstly, Sean Fagan. I have a lot of faith in him because he has spent countless hours trawling old newspapers of the day for his info. Newspapers are next to primary sources, primary being face to face. The rest of us are happy to read someone’s opinion/research from a book, often 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th hand, which might/might not be factually accurate.
Also, I don’t think Fagan is biased towards league. It is obviously his first love, but he’s willing to shoot down any of the codes fiddling with the truth. And he’s researched more thoroughly than most.
This stuff about about rugby union players going off to war & rugby league players remaining behind has got to stop! Let’s not start re-writing history. Most of the young men who went off to war thought it was a jaunt. It was only later, too late for some of them, that the horror of war dawned on them.
But at the beginning, many of them thought it would be a lark. It had nothing to do with King, country, duty, patriotism or whatever. There’s was also a very anti-British feeling in Australia. Some of it Irish catholic based, but also anti-empire based .
I don’t know the full story of Queensland rugby union/league. But I do know, from reading Ian Diehm’s book, “Red, Red, Red: The Story Of Queensland Rugby’, that rugby union owed a great deal of its revival to a spat (civil war) between the QRL & BRL in the late 1920s, if I remember correctly.
So union can think league for that!!!
February 28th 2008 @ 5:30pm
Spiro Zavos said | February 28th 2008 @ 5:30pm | Report comment
I want to clear up a matter that has been raised against me in The Roar from time to time about the issue of the rugby league code and its attitude to conscription in the First World War. The context for my article in the SMH was an Anzac Day RL test match between Australia and NZ. The advertising for the match showed Australian players in the old Anzac uniforms confronting NZ players in the old Anzac military uniforms.
I wrote a piece in the SMH pointing out that this advertising was false to history in that NZers and Australians actually fought on the same side at Gallipoli. They did not attack each other as the advertising implied.
I also pointed out that it was also unbecoming of the RL authorities, and unhistorical, to try to appropriate Anzac Day for the RL code. My reason for arguing this was officials of the RL throughout the First World War did their utmost to ensure that few RL players volunteered to serve overseas, while 90 per dent of first grade rugby union players served overseas. RL players were encouraged to serve a local conscription which allowed them to play in the RL grade competitions.
The media person for ARL wrote a bitter letter to the SMH accusing me of denigrating the RL players who served overseas and sometimes died overseas. The SMH published this letter, despite the fact that it quoted me inaccurately, as an article.
I replied to this article/letter, making the point once again that it was inappropriate for the ARL to try to appropriate Anzac Day for the RL code. I think that Roy Masters some time later endorsed this opinion.
From time to time on The Roar some writers have brought up the ARL attack on me as if it were the truth. I hope that this clarification ends this. Once more, for the record, my article made the point that the RL authorities continued playing their grade competitions. They encouraged their players not to volunteer. That this position was widely condemned at the time by the chauvinstic The Bulletin. And that it was wrong historically to dress up players in the old uniforms to promote the Anzac Day RL test.
My personal view is that the RL authorities were right to continue their grade competitions. The rugby union authorities were carried away with ultra-British jingoism with their decision to close down their men’s competitions, and to encourage rugby players to volunteer.
My understanding, too, is that opposition to the British motives in the First World War was behind the decision of most of the Christian Brothers schools in the western suburbs of Sydney to change from rugby union to rugby league. The Christian Brothers were mainly of Irish origin and they did not identify with a war that they believed (with some justification) involved aspects of British imperialism. This was especially the case after the terrible retribution of the Black and Tans in Dublin and the countryside after the Easter Rebellion.
February 28th 2008 @ 6:00pm
sheek said | February 28th 2008 @ 6:00pm | Report comment
Spiro,
To clarify, none of my post above was directed at you. We have previously crossed swords on this matter, & following the same story you gave to me that is relayed above, I have been totally cool about how you approached that particular SMH article you refer to.
Unfortunately, there are visitors to The Roar who remain ignorant of the events of WW1, especially those who have an axe to grind with one football code or another.