As usual, this is excellent gear. The history of the game north of the Tweed is, at least from this Victorian’s perspective, so dense and fascinating.
It is endlessly wonderful and weird that across two sports, each of the five mainland states developed their own unique winter sporting cultures and the two monolithic states eventually tried to swallow them up into their own hegemony with mixed results.
It’s also fun to consider where to put the line of “modern history” without reverting to the malaise of the English Premier League “inventing football” in 1992… but it is tantalising to use 1988 in club rugby league (as opposed to 1995 or 1998), the same way that the AFL statistical history gets fuzzy around 1987 and/or 1990.
For mine, there’s a whole cultural shift in Australia in the 1980s where the older establishment institutions that were very heavily state-oriented begin to break down in the face of a more streamlined, corporate, national-orientation. The footy is emblematic of wider shifts in that regard.
I wonder if the older generations would see that as the completion of the drift towards nationalism away from parochialism in the lead up to the bicentenary, or if that’s just coincidence rather than any actual correlation. I mean I was in primary school in the 1980s so I can’t speak to any fervour or not.
I have extremely vague recollections that the Vic 150th celebrations in 1984/85 were a big deal at the time, but perhaps less formative for Victorian children than Expo ‘88 was for SEQ and 1988 might have been for the denizens of The Bad Place.
I don't have any hard evidence for it and am also too young to have direct experience but you see it in brewery consolidation, and I think you see it in TV. Planes replacing trains and holidays on the gold coast, etc as well as hosting more world events. I think some of it is downstream of guys like skase and bond. A thesis in the making.
As usual, this is excellent gear. The history of the game north of the Tweed is, at least from this Victorian’s perspective, so dense and fascinating.
It is endlessly wonderful and weird that across two sports, each of the five mainland states developed their own unique winter sporting cultures and the two monolithic states eventually tried to swallow them up into their own hegemony with mixed results.
It’s also fun to consider where to put the line of “modern history” without reverting to the malaise of the English Premier League “inventing football” in 1992… but it is tantalising to use 1988 in club rugby league (as opposed to 1995 or 1998), the same way that the AFL statistical history gets fuzzy around 1987 and/or 1990.
For mine, there’s a whole cultural shift in Australia in the 1980s where the older establishment institutions that were very heavily state-oriented begin to break down in the face of a more streamlined, corporate, national-orientation. The footy is emblematic of wider shifts in that regard.
I wonder if the older generations would see that as the completion of the drift towards nationalism away from parochialism in the lead up to the bicentenary, or if that’s just coincidence rather than any actual correlation. I mean I was in primary school in the 1980s so I can’t speak to any fervour or not.
I have extremely vague recollections that the Vic 150th celebrations in 1984/85 were a big deal at the time, but perhaps less formative for Victorian children than Expo ‘88 was for SEQ and 1988 might have been for the denizens of The Bad Place.
I don't have any hard evidence for it and am also too young to have direct experience but you see it in brewery consolidation, and I think you see it in TV. Planes replacing trains and holidays on the gold coast, etc as well as hosting more world events. I think some of it is downstream of guys like skase and bond. A thesis in the making.