THE GOALPOSTS HAVE MOVED. Football, and the way it is played, supported, watched and managed, has changed. Soccer is now being called australian football. Games are not just played on Saturday afternoons. Players are banned because of what they do off the field, rather than on it. Television stations go to war for broadcast rights, which are now worth far more than gate takings. Competitive balance, the draft and equalisation strategies are now part of footballs water cooler talk. Players can be convinced to change codes, let alone clubs. Audiences beyond Australias borders are just as important as those within them. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, footballs terrain is shifting under the feet of players, clubs, leagues and fans.
Building on the success of Football Fever: Grassroots and Football Fever: Crossing Boundaries, this current volume is a collection of research that critically examines the dual themes of change and challenge. In some cases, the chapters focus on moments in which the goalposts moved so far that the game was never the same, such as the professionalisation of rugby union in the mid 1990s, while others seek to move the goalposts of football research, such as by examining the neural and spiritual correlates of football consumption. Football Fever: Moving the Goalposts consists of eighteen chapters of original research from some of the most well respected sport academics in Australia, complemented by up-and-coming authors presenting new perspectives on football-related research.
CONTENTS
1 Moving the Goalposts: Change and Challenge in a Competitive Football Market
Matthew Nicholson
2 Haydn Bunton Goes Alien!: Copyright, Globalisation and Football Images
Ian Warren
3 Just Think It: The Neural and Spiritual Correlates of Football Consumption
Aaron Smith
4 Managing the Move From the Amateur to the Professional Game: Canterbury Rugby Football Union, 1996-2001
Russell Hoye and Sonia Francis
5 From Boys to Men: Blood, Sweat and Tears off the Field
Tilda Khoshaba
6 Crossroads Blues: Carlton Football Club in the Early Twenty-First Century
Lionel Frost
7 Fan Culture in Australian Football (Soccer): From Ethnic to Mainstream?
Roy Hay
8 The World Anti-Doping Agency and the Australian Football League: The Irresistible Force Bludgeons the Immoveable Object
Bob Stewart
9 Some Economic Effects of Changes to Gate-Sharing Arrangements in the Australian Football League
Ross Booth
10 Key Milestones Affecting Community and Administration in the Brisbane Rugby League: 19221987
Greg Mallory
11 When Sports Collide: Basketball and Australian Rules Football in Melbourne During the 1950s
Rob Hess
12 On-Field Performance and the Business of Football: Comparing the Fitzroy Football Club Merger and the Relocation of the Baltimore Colts
Ian Warren
13 Victorian Rules, Australian Rules?: Parochialism, the National Game and the Brisbane Bears
Cyrus Wong
14 Kicking into the Wind: Australian Songwriters Singing Football
Jack Frawley
15 Emotional Devotees: Approaching the Inner World of Australian Rules Football Fans
Matthew Klugman
16 Fathers and Daughters at Play
John Cash and Joy Damousi
17 What If?: Australian Rules Football and the Uchronic Imagination Collingwood, Grand Finals and Memory
Melissa Walsh
18 The Agon of the Collingwood Football Club
Phillip Dimitriadis
moving the goalposts
moving the goalposts
