
Issue No 44		03 March 2000

The Locker Room

Global Gladiators

Extracted from Good Sports - Australian sport and the myth of the fair go - by Peter Kell

The new global sporting environment creates a reworked concept of team loyalty, which attempts to span national, regional, familial, racial and religious boundaries to develop the notion of the transnational global team.

Both the Chicago Bulls, and the British soccer club Manchester United are examples of this trend in which the teams are no longer the esclusive property of their cities but operate as a worldwide corporation. Twenty years ago these teams were successful sides in their own national competition that involved few "foreigners". Now, however, they demonstrate a greater heterogeneity in their composition, acting as a focus for the world's best players. Teams such as Manchester United span both the local, with its hysterical and occasionally riotous hometown loyalty, and the global, with an equally fanatical devotion from chapters of supporters in every corner of the world.

Their supranational status and identity is confirmed with universally recognised United recently playing fixtures against national teams such as Australia. Manchester United tours are not just a series of football matches but are events which resemble a call for a religious crusade or a barbarian invasion. They are a sophisticated corporate promotion, with the matches being a rallying call to the famous "Red Arm". Their global populatiry, as one of England's last great colonial exports, is confirmed by Rupert Murdoch's unsuccessful attempt to but the club as an addition to his sporting and media trophy cabinet.

These shifting national loyalties lead to a type of schizophrenia for the new professional athletes. Periodic tensions between national and supranational loyalties emerge when Australian players elect to decline national selection. Playing for y our country, traditionally seen as the pinnacle of a sporting career, is no longer the lure that it once was. Professional footballers such as Harry Kewell and Mark Bosnich - both European-based Australian players - have at various stages in their careers been either unable to secure release from their European clubs or unwilling to put their national team duties ahead of professional overseas priorities. Usually citing injury, to avoid the ire of the Australian governing authorities, professional players have been able to confine their national duties to only the most prestigious occasions. Indeed, some talented players such as Craig Johnson, a long-time resident of Australia, chose to pass up opportunities for selection in Australian sides in an effort to secure a position with either Middlesborough or Liverpool and thus qualify for eventual selection to play for England.

National allegiances are not eradicated but become more subject to negotiation within the context of a globalised and professional sporting culture. Contractual and career obligations create uncertainty about player loyalties, as professional athletes jockey for career advancement, taxation advantages and contractural stability in the short period they have in the limelight. Loyalty is an expendable luxury to professional sportsmen and women, who are becoming nomads willing to swap citizenship and residency to gain financial security.

Professional tennis has witnessed the recent defection of former Canadian Greg Rusedski to the English team, using family connections to claim British citizenship. While the Rusedski defection has angered American champion Pet Sampras, he has been less critical of Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl - all top players who became naturalised Americans. A new category of skills migration is emerging as elite and aspiring sportsmen and women resituate their careers in new countries. Australia has been the beneficiary of a recent wave of athletes from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, athletes who have emigrated to Australia and, like Victor Tchistiastov and Tatiana Grigorieva, are competing in relatively new boutique events such as pole vaulting. At the same time, Australian cricketers, frustrated with an inability to gain selection in a stable and unchanging Australian side, have sought selection in other national sides. Players like Alan Mullally played for England in the recent 1998-99 Ashes series, after playing in Australia since his junior days.

This transnational trade in professional sports people is a growing trend which sees international fixtures and national teams becoming sidelined by more franchised regional and transnational competitions. Many of these competitions, such as the North American Hockey League and the National Rugby League (NRL) in Australia, span national boundaries creating uncertainties about traditional international matches. Canadian teams have topped the North American Hockey League and the Auckland Warriors are a fixture in the NRL competition. Their presence suggests that international competition is manifested in a range of options and combinations. The status and prestige of national competition was originally eroded by the demarcation between "establishment" and "rebel" games, which saw two international sides of moderate quality as a consequence of the splits that followed the emergence of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket and Rupert Murdoch's Super League. An added complication emerged from Super League's international club competition which even included a Russian contigent, though the sport is not played there at all.

In an effort to revive interest in international Rugby League test matches, after the disasters of the Super League split, in which supporters deserted a game flooded with money and bereft of talent, administrators have resorted to some rather perplexing derivations of nationalism to rekindle interest in the game. For instance, the Rugby League contest between Australia and New Zealand has now enlisted the Anzac legend in a blatant attempt to sell the game. The prize from this annual clash has been called the Anzac Cup. This use of the image of the Anzac spirit is a curious one which has been reproduced in a series of other contests between Australia and New Zealand, including women's netball and Rugby Union. It represents a spurious positioning of the two nations as opponents in a contest when they were actually allies fighting against Turkey in 1915. Perhaps a true Anzac trophy should involve a match up against Turkey!

These hyped-up contests do little to honour the sense of sacrifice, grief and loss - the true emotions at the core of the Anzac spirit. Instead, bored television audiences are treated to the signt of highly paid footballers trotting around the field to play game plans determined in advance by coaches. In comparison to club matches, these international matches lack the colour and excitement of the big mat appeal traditionally associated with test match football. Now, owing to poor attendances in cities, these matches have been relegated to regional centres. Such international events are now bypassed by some players who are more interested in prolonging their lucrative club careers, suggesting that the pride in donning the green and gold is fading. International Rugby League tours are not received with the same enthusiasm that saw large crowds regularly sell out such venues as the Sydney Cricket Ground.

The appropriation of the Anzac legend is hardly new. In fact it has been a regular feature of Australian sport - there is hardly a swimming pool in Australia that doesn't bear the name Anzac or that of some distant battlefield where Australians fought an imperial war. However, invoking the imagery of war and the symbolism of Anzac, which is mostly associated with an anglocentric view of Australian nationalism, does little to forge internal marketing links with the changing demographic and ethnic composition of Australia.

The eroding popularity, not only of fans but to some extent of players, with these Rugby League international test matches suggests that there is a significant reshaping of the relationship between nations and sport. The previously tight linkages between nationalism and sport are showing signs of a fundamental shift in sports where there is an increasing level of professionalisaton and globalisation.

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  Issue 44 contents

Interview: The Big Fella
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley speaks about Labor�s evolving relationship with the trade union movement in the post-Accord era.

Unions: An Interactive Resource
The priority for unions in the 21st century is organising and growth. Greg Combet�s unions @work report identified the direction unions should be moving.

Media: Public Hearings
As the big media players look increasingly tarnished, the broadcasting minnows like FBi are seeking their share of the airwaves.

History: Labour History Under Siege
In good labour tradition, the history section of Workers Online begins the year with a call to arms.

Olympics: Games Greed Boosts Homeless Numbers
'Homeless in Sydney' is shaping up to be the theme of the Olympics with many property owners evicting tenants and pushing up rents.

Women: No Time To Be Casual
International Women�s Day is a day to take action. As a shop steward or union delegate why not use IWD as an opportunity to encourage the women in your workplace to join the union?

International: Serbian And Kosovo Unions Meet
The Italian metalworkers has hosted meetings on how to build a different future for the workers in the Balkans.

Labour Review: What's New
Read the latest issue of Labour Review our resource for students, activists and officials.

Review: Rock and a Hard Place
A hippie festival? Alternative? No way...the music festival know as the Big Day Out (BDO) is fast becoming a mainstream youth cultural event, a snapshot of the broader society that unions are struggling to engage.

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» Track Workers Face Spot Drug Tests

» Big Bird Fights Ansett Jobs Flight

» LaborNet A Step Forward in Democracy

» From the Lorry to the Creche, We're Watching

» Penal Provisions Against Teachers Condemned

» Auditor General Moves on TAFE

» Yahoo! Under Fire for Union Censorship

» Unrest Bubbles Over Coke Sackings

» Jennie To Sign Off Online

» Basic Goods Sought for East Timorese

» Western Sydney Added to Campus Tour

» Pay Equity Update

» STOP PRESS: Mac Attack Tuesday