
Issue No 91		06 April 2001

LaborNET	Ask Neale	Tool of the Week

The Locker Room

Newtown Footy Back from the Dead

By Peter Moss

If you drive past Sydney Park near St Peters next Saturday, slow down and take a look at the kids kicking an AFL footy around.

Against a background of wailing funeral laments for the death of community culture and tradition, these youngsters in their boots are the good news.

Their club - the Newtown Australian Football Club, with a 100-year history - is supposed to be long dead and buried.

In its hey day, the Newtown Angels (a variation on the Bloodstained Angels tag worn by South Melbourne for decades) drew a fair crowd to games at Erskineville Oval.

Sporting legends like boxing trainer Johnny Lewis and North Melbourne AFL wild man Sam Kekovich turned out in the Angels' red-and-white strip.

Club funds were generated through a boisterous licensed club on Cleveland Street, Redfern.

But by 1986 the Newtown area was changing fast with working-class families pushed out to cheaper postcodes.

Just a few years after the area lost its first grade rugby league team the Jets, the Newtown Angels AFL club lowered its colours also.

The amazing rebirth of this local AFL institution after 13 years in the grave is due to years of collective effort, but one person can take more credit than most.

Eddie Greenaway is a bloke who not only has ideas, he makes them happen.

A former Young Labor activist and inner-city band scene identity, Eddie found his AFL mission quite late in life.

Growing up in country Victoria and studying in Adelaide, Eddie probably always had football in his blood, but not at dangerous levels.

He moved to Sydney in 1986 - the same year the old Newtown Angels team folded - and moved into a tiny room above Newtown's Sandringham Hotel, then a thriving nerve-centre of live independent music.

Eddie co-published the influential Eddie magazine and organised gigs and fundraising events to keep the publication afloat.

In the mid-1990s Eddie started attending the odd Sydney Swans game at the SCG - at a time when the transplanted AFL club had few active fans and even fewer wins on the board.

When the Swans, with Plugger and Roos now stoking the engine, started their startling rise up the ladder culminating in a 1996 grand final appearance, Eddie Greenaway was just one of thousands swept up and on to the red-and-white bandwagon.

His self-titled fanzine was winding down, so Eddie reckoned the time was right to wind up a street football publication.

Footyzine, a seat-of-the-footy-shorts no-budget A5 pocket magazine, was born.

The magazine was launched at the Metro by Swans stars Mark Bayes and Andrew Dunkley.

Eddie and others, including regular Workers Online sports writer Terry O'Brien, built a culture round Footyzine with social AFL matches and band and quiz nights to raise funds.

A lot of ageing footy legends-in-their-own-minds who should have known better slipped a boot on for the first time in years at games organised by Footyzine.

On some lazy afternoons at Camperdown or Jubilee Ovals you might have caught a glimpse of this writer on the backline attempting to keep Workers Online editor Pete 'Mini-Plugger' Lewis in check.

And if you let the field glasses stray down the paddock, you might have picked out a sweaty puffing committee-load of labour movement activists clutching at various limbs and ligaments.

It was the injuries as the games became more frequent that got Eddie Greenaway thinking about the need for insurance and a higher level of organisation.

He approached the AFL in 1998 to support a rebirth of the old Newtown Australian Football Club, asking initially for access to better playing grounds.

The AFL people must have thought Eddie had something - they not only offered him playing facilities but asked him to start up a junior league as the focus of the reborn club.

Eddie and his group took the challenge on. In 1999 the first Newtown juniors since 1986 ran on to Alexandria Park ready to play.

Last year the Newtown club boasted 60 juniors. The under-10s made the finals and finished fourth.

In 2001 the club will be stronger again at junior level, while the seniors have also maintained their competition.

As Eddie repeatedly emphasises, the credit for this triumph belongs to many.

But Eddie, when pressed, admits his true motivation is not primarily about football, it's about community.

He and his mates should be deeply satisfied and proud because their efforts haven't just resurrected a footy club.

They've swum against the stream to generate and rebuild a living piece of community.

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Issue 91 contents

Interview: Costa on Compo
Labor Council�s secretary gives his take on the Big Stink over Della�s workers compensation package.

Politics: Della's List
All Labor members of Parliament were this week asked to indicate whether they would support injured workers. More than half said 'yes'. Here they are.

Unions: Picketing Joy
Rowan Cahill chronicled the definitive dispute of 2000 for Workers Online. He looks back on the battle and the lessons to be drawn from the workers at Joy.

History: Vale Tony Mulvihill
The environment, migrant workers and the hairy nosed wombat have reason to be thankful for the active citizenship of Tony Mulvihill.

Economics: Stopping the Rot
A national campaign is underway to persuade politicians from both the major parties that they need to be addressing the issue of poverty within Australia.

International: East Timor � Beyond the Headlines
It�s now more than 18 months since the violence and bloodshed following the popular consultation on the future of East Timor was front page news in Australia.

Technology: Online Breathing Space
The global collapse of faith in new technology has given journalists a chance to prepare themselves for the real revolution, writes David Higgins

Satire: Howard Cuts Beer Price to Get Voters Drunk
Prime Minister John Howard has agreed to cut the excise on beer, in the hope cheaper drinks will help get the country drunk enough to vote for him.

Review: The Battle for 96.9Fm is Over
What would you get if you crossed 2DAY FM, 2MMM, JJJ and MIX 106.5 FM? A fairly commercial radio station that wouldn�t know the difference between throwing up, stuffing up, growing up or breaking up.

» Compo Wars: Week Two to the Workers!

» Doctors Don�t Want to be Judges

» Cops Eye Ball Compo Changes

» Armoured Car Drivers To Consider Stop Work

» IT Workers � We Need You!

» Banks Workers Show They�re No Bunnies

» English Teachers Ripped Off

» Beazley Gives Boost To Bakery Workers

» Employment, Environment Vital to US-Australia Trade Deal

» Extra $1.37 Billion Needed for Unis

» Campaigning Workshop Establishes Local Campaign Initiative

» Activist Notebook