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Home and Away: The Grounding of New Football Teams in Perth, Western Australia
Author(s) -
Jones Roy
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2002.tb00209.x
Subject(s) - football , league , metropolitan area , context (archaeology) , glory , loyalty , stadium , colonialism , capital (architecture) , inner cities , geography , inner city , political science , media studies , sociology , economic geography , archaeology , law , physics , geometry , mathematics , astronomy , optics
Metropolitan sporting, and particularly football, competitions were established in all of Australia's colonial state capital cities about a century ago. Typically, they were comprised of teams from and were supported by the inhabitants of working‐class, inner suburbs. These competitions were the primary foci of Australians' sporting interest and loyalty for almost a century. But, with the shift of public attention and private capital to national competitions, the former stadia of many local clubs have become redundant spaces in what are now gentrifying inner suburbs. Simultaneously new, and even old, national league teams have sought larger, more modern (near) city centre venues for their operations. In this context, two new national league teams in Perth—Fremantle Dockers and Perth Glory—have experienced considerable challenges in establishing both physical ‘homes’ and local identities. These have included both the supplanting of traditional local clubs and the placating of new kinds of inner suburban residents.