Australia’s Power Structures and the Legitimisation of Soccer (2003-2015)

Abstract

The codification of the football games played in Australia is a hotly contested stream of sports studies. Whilst it is not clear when, where and why soccer was first played, what is not hotly contested is that from its establishment and until 2003 it was a marginalised game, certainly compared with the mainstream Australian football games (Rugby Union, Australian Rules football and Rugby League). This move to the mainstream commenced with the implementation of Crawford Report (2003). Soccer’s Australian story was thereafter divided into two eras, pre-and post-Crawford (2003). This PhD with publications set out to understand this transformation by accessing the very protagonists who were responsible for it. This included, amongst others, former Prime Minister John Howard, Frank Lowy and David Crawford as well as key funding stakeholders, sport administrators, media and television broadcast partners. The data generated from interviews with this purposive sample of powerful people was coded and analysed using thematic analysis as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006). From this, Weber’s (1948) legitimacy theoretical framework was applied to understand the phenomenon. This theory posits that legitimacy has three key derivatives (charismatic, traditional, legal/rational). This data addressed the reasons why powerful people legitimised soccer whilst also providing the lens to better understand soccer’s place in Australia. From this thesis, six peer reviewed publications emerged in multi-disciplinary outlets, explaining the status and legitimisation of Australian soccer. These include a historiography of the literature that has thus far explained the sport, an historical paper which challenges the notion of ethnicity as being soccer’s key pivot, as well as a comparative papers that reinforce the legitimisation processes in different countries (China and the USA) and as they relate to Australia.