Amanda Smith: Today, the progress of football teams trying to capture the hearts and minds of a new city: rugby league in Melbourne, Aussie rules in Sydney, and soccer in Perth.

THEME

Amanda Smith: Now the modern history of football across all the codes in Australia has been one of clubs forming and de-forming, merging and relocating, as the various leagues attempt to break out of their traditional geographic centres and nationalise.

So on The Sports Factor we're going to look at how teams in new or alien territories are faring.

SOCCER CROWD

Man: We are all Perth, all W.A. behind the team. Irrespective of where we come from - Greeks, Italians, English and Yugoslav - wherever we come from, we just all of us scream for one name, Glory.

Amanda Smith: And the Glory is the Perth Glory, which became part of the National Soccer League in 1996, the first and only Western Australian team in the NSL, and a big success in terms of the enthusiasm of its fans. And we'll hear more about supporting soccer, Perth Glory style, later in the program.

But the first, and probably the most fraught and dramatic of the football codes drives to nationalise, happened in Australian Rules football. Back in 1982, the South Melbourne Football Club was exiled to Sydney and renamed the Sydney Swans. This was eight years before the Victorian Football League became the Australian Football League and before teams based in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia were also added to the competition.

And through a lot of ups and downs it's taken a long time for the game commonly known north of the Murray as 'aerial ping-pong' to get a foothold in Sydney. In fact it's really only been in the last three years, since the Swans played in the 1996 Grand Final and with the rugby league/super league upheavals at the same time, that this has really happened.

Sally Freud is a Sydney Swans supporter and the co-author of a new book called 'Flying North for the Winter'. It's the story not only of the Swans' turbulent years trying to succeed as an outposted team, but also the 100-year plus history of their predecessors, South Melbourne. And according to Sally Freud, the story of the Sydney Swans is incomplete without that South Melbourne history.

Sally Freud: Very, very important. You know it's funny, I spoke to someone while we were doing the book, in fact it was Bob Skilton who said at one stage he couldn't -

Amanda Smith: I should just say Bobby Skilton of course, a famous, famous former South Melbourne player.

Sally Freud: Yes. Of course. Three-time Brownlow medallist, nine-time best and fairest player, absolute legend for South. He was saying how initially when Richard Colless came on board as the President and the new board was formed, that they almost scorned the entire South Melbourne heritage, and they were saying, 'We're going to concentrate specifically on Sydney culture'. And Skilton said that was a real bugbear for him. In fact he'd abused Richard Colless to his face about doing this, saying, 'This is so important', And of course they're now great mates because Colless had said to him, 'Oh no, it's been misinterpreted; we've always wanted to keep that heritage'. But I think that that point with him and Bob Skilton really ingrained it into Richard Colless how important it was to keep that heritage and to work on those people from South Melbourne who had been deserted, and keep the heritage for South Melbourne on board.

Amanda Smith: Nevertheless, in all the researching and thinking you've done about the Swans, do you think Sydney would have been better off with an AFL team that was started from scratch, that didn't have all the baggage from the South Melbourne history?

Sally Freud: Oh yes. Yes, there's no question. Relocating such a huge squad of people which comes with family, which comes with the history, which comes with the politics of the move and the struggle, and trying to fit this round peg into a square hole. Yes, I believe that if they'd have done that, then their planning would have been better. I mean I think Melbourne Storm is a good example of that. They're very different in the respect that they've had a lot of planning behind them, they've got a lot more funding available, and also they've moved to Melbourne, which welcomes sport with open arms as well. The concept of having had a completely new club to go there would have been terrific, in a perfect world. But on the other hand, if we had have, South Melbourne would have disappeared, very likely to have disappeared.

Amanda Smith: Now Sally, the Swans played their first game in Sydney March 28th, 1982, which is nearly 17 years to the day. It's astonishing to think that another generation has grown up since that move, since the Swans flew north for the winter, isn't it?

Sally Freud: It is, it's astonishing to actually think of it in those terms, and also to think that they've in fact been there for 17 years and very few people have even realised that. It's only been the last three years I guess that Sydney's taken them to their hearts.

Amanda Smith: In your time going to Sydney Swans matches, has the crowd changed much, either in composition or in how they respond to this game?

Sally Freud: Oh yes. Extraordinarily so. You know, you've gone from '96 where people knew nothing and were still looking for Warwick Capper to the following year where they wanted to know more. But there was a lot of clapping happening, a lot of clapping would happen for marks, and that would be it. I mean there was never any abuse towards your own team players. All of that has changed a lot, greatly. And you can even pick that up in TV coverage now, there's a lot more noise, swirling noise, within the SCG than there used to be.

Amanda Smith: Well as a fan, Sally, what role do the Sydney Swans play in your life?

Sally Freud: Well huge actually. I mean I was having this conversation with girlfriends of mine the other day (remembering that the membership for the Swans these days is 45% women) and I was talking to a couple of friends of mine, one of them is a film director, another represents writers, and we were talking about - well I actually volunteered first, how I find Paul Kelly an incredible inspiration. I run a lot, and if I find that I'm flagging on a run I'll suddenly find myself mimicking Kel's style of putting my head down; and in times of adversity I'll grab for a vision of Paul Kelly as he's doing one of his courageous runs down the corridor. So there's that, which when I was saying it I was a little bit embarrassed, but at the same time we were all laughing because that is how ingrained that club has come in my head, that I'll use a captain from a football club as an inspiration.

Amanda Smith: So did you invent this project, the book to write, just because you were a fan and wanted to meet all the players?

Sally Freud: Funny you should say that. No. Again it goes back to the crowds, and specifically what we were talking about before, how now as opposed to a couple of years ago where you'd get people yelling 'Get the ref off!' or 'Offside!' you now have people yelling out for the umpire of course, and they're more correct in their terminology. But at the same time you'll hear behind you in the seats, 'Who was the last captain? I don't know', or 'When was it we played - have we ever been to a Grand Final?' So I specifically wrote this, because there's a lot of questions out there that just haven't been answered or addressed and a lot of the people in Sydney I guess, aren't going to go and buy a footy book that's full of statistics, and that's it, just straight footy writing. So I wanted to write a book to answer all those questions, and also the questions of the South Melbourne supporters as well who possibly turned away from the club when they went to Sydney, who've missed out on a major part of the development of the club's history, but have now come back. They all seemed to rejoin within '96 again. That is what inspired me to write the book, to answer the questions. Also the last Swans history book was written back in '87; a lot has happened since then. And also because I wanted to get testimonials from players, individual players, individual coaches, and find out what it was really like to be part of those people who were sent up to Sydney to play football, cast out of the heart of AFL to go into the heartland of Rugby League to spread the code. That is what inspired me, basically to educate all the new members, the former members and also to give the team the updated history.

Amanda Smith: Sally Freud, Sydney Swans fan, and one of the authors of 'Flying North for the Winter'.

Well, the reverse story of Australian football's move into Sydney started a year ago, with the formation of a National Rugby League team in Melbourne. The Melbourne Storm had a very successful debut season in the NRL last year, that looks like continuing this season. Last weekend they beat reigning premiers, the Brisbane Broncos, 48-6.

Chris Johns is the Chief Executive of the Melbourne Storm, himself a former Brisbane Broncos player. But is it truly possible for this code to flourish deep in Aussie Rules territory, and did the Melbourne Storm draw any lessons from the Sydney Swans' long and difficult path to acceptance?

Chris Johns: I think definitely looking at the Swans' experience, we definitely took some lessons out of there: not trying to transplant a team from somewhere else, or not try and half base a side down here, like commute down here for games or training. We really had to come in here and endear ourselves to the whole public, to the whole community. We really had to put a football team down here that they could actually say, it is Melbourne's team. They could be bumping into them at the butcher's shop or seeing them during the week on news shows, or current affairs shows, or lifestyle programs. We had to be down here and we had to be Melbourne; we had to get down here and be part of Melbourne. So I think that was probably one of our biggest lessons.

Amanda Smith: Was a relocation ever considered of one of the Sydney clubs to Melbourne, rather than setting up a whole new team?

Chris Johns: Yes, originally, when we first decided to start the franchise down here there was a lot of pressure and a lot of people talking about relocating the Perth franchise. I think one of the key decisions there is not only did we know we couldn't bring a team over here and jam it down the Melbourne public's throat and say it was just a relocated team from somewhere else. As I said before, it has to be a team that's got a Melbourne feel about it, and is about Melbourne. But also we had to make sure the team was successful, we couldn't afford to bring a team in here that had a record of being unsuccessful. From day one we knew we had to have a team that was going to be competitive on the football field, and so when any Melbourne Storm supporter was going to watch their team, they knew there was a very good chance that they'd walk away from Olympic Park with a good feeling and a win under their belt.

Amanda Smith: Were there particular things that you had to do in order to get a rugby league club going in Melbourne that you would have had to do differently if you were setting up somewhere else?

Chris Johns: This city is definitely a very, very parochial sport-loving city. And you know, just the membership philosophy down here, we couldn't believe it. Like you look at the Collingwoods and the Carltons and those clubs with 30,000, 40,000 members. Traditional rugby league clubs in Queensland and New South Wales have never attracted those sorts of memberships. So we knew we had to have a different philosophy, we really had to go in there and build a membership base. And we had a lot of success last year, and the players were very accessible, they were always willing to talk to supporters. They're very willing to get out in the shopping centres or into schools and those sorts of things, and they're the things we have to do, to make sure that we keep both our feet on the ground.

And we'll fail if we get too big for our boots and don't keep servicing the sponsors, and don't keep being accessible, and don't keep being out there with the general public and the person on the street and associating ourselves with them. That's when we'll start falling over and start to lose the plot.

Amanda Smith: Well Chris, where are you getting your supporter base from? Who in Melbourne has become a Melbourne Storm supporter and why?

Chris Johns: I think we're getting splatterings all over the place. Originally we got to look at some research charts that were showing us where X New South Welshmen were, or X Queenslanders were, or X New Zealanders were, and where X English people were, because obviously they would have had some affinity with the game. And we really target marketed into those areas. And I think we got a very, very good result. If we look at our figures (we survey our supporters every week after a game) and the research is showing us that initially there was probably 60% of those sort of people, people that were ex-pats, and people who knew a little bit about the game. But really by the end of the year they were probably around the 45% mark. We're starting to attract a new audience and it's very, very encouraging for us when we look at where all our membership base is going, it's really splattered all over the city of Melbourne.

Amanda Smith: Do you think there's a kind of honeymoon period for new teams like yours, where people are prepared to give something a go for a while and then may or may not commit their support?

Chris Johns: Well the onus is back on us to be successful and make sure that we give value for money, and we put a quality game on the football field that people are going to enjoy. But I think what we've got to be careful of as well is that we don't expect too much, too early. Like, we are only one year old as a franchise and everyone keeps talking about the Swans and how well they're going, and people have to remember they've been in the competition for 17 years. We've got a long road ahead of us but as I said, we're not trying to convert anyone, I think slowly but surely we can get down here and prove ourselves and really get the Melbourne public behind us.

Amanda Smith: How do you capture the hearts and minds of people in Melbourne who are surrounded by an Aussie Rules culture? I mean obviously winning games is a pretty good strategy, like last weekend's big win over the Brisbane Broncos, but beyond that?

Chris Johns: Beyond that we've just got to keep on pushing the message that we're here with the Grand Prix, we're here with the Australian Open tennis, we're here with the AFL clubs, we're just part of the sporting landscape of Melbourne, and we've got to just keep on. It's going to take time, but we have to make the average person on the street, when someone says, 'Who's your rugby league football team?' it's straight away, 'Melbourne Storm'. And if we can start doing that, like down here you ask someone what's their No.1 sport to watch. 'AFL', will be 90% of the reply. Well we want them to keep saying 90% of the reply is AFL, but the second question is, 'What else do you like to go and watch?'. We want them to say, 'Well I like going to watch my team, my rugby league team, Melbourne Storm'.

Amanda Smith: Melbourne Storm Chief Executive, Chris Johns.

Well Vicki and Peter Charleston are a Melbourne couple who've become mad-keen rugby league, and Melbourne Storm, supporters. But Vicki and Peter, both in their 60s, are also absolute, dyed-in-the-wool Aussie Rules folk. In Vicki's case, the Collingwood Football Club is the stuff of her family history.

Vicki Charleston: Well my background is that my maiden name was Battle, and they were connected with the forming of the Collingwood Football Club, along with the Sherrins, and the family were born in Easy Street, Collingwood, so my connection with Collingwood does go back a long, long way.

Amanda Smith: Peter, what's your story with Aussie Rules?

Peter Charleston: Oh well I've seen every Grand Final since 1936, so that goes back a long way. I barracked for South Melbourne until they went out of business.

Amanda Smith: All right, so you didn't transfer and become a Sydney Swans supporter?

Peter Charleston: I don't believe South Melbourne have anything to do with the Sydney Swans!

Amanda Smith: Now you were also a player for Hawthorn and for South Melbourne?

Peter Charleston: Yes, I played a few games for Hawthorn and a few games for South Melbourne. And when South Melbourne, as I say, went out of business, I transferred my allegiance to Hawthorn. Although I must say that having played for Hawthorn in the early '50s, you always had a soft spot for them after having worn the jumper.

Amanda Smith: Well now how did you two, a former VFL player in your case, Peter, and Vicki with one of the longest and best family pedigrees of Australian rules supporters in existence, how did you turn into rugby league fans?

Peter Charleston: Well it was originally my son. He went up to live in a place called Lightning Ridge in 1980 and he's been an opal miner ever since, and of course the only game they played up there at the time was rugby league. And he said to me after he'd been playing rugby league for a couple of years up there, he said it was the most rewarding team game he'd ever played, because of the reliance of each player upon the other, and that no player could dominate the game without the support of other players. He said, 'Well you can't do that in Australian rules.' As a result of that, we started in the middle '80s, we started to follow it. And Wally Lewis was the king at the time, and we sort of barracked for Brisbane, in an offhand way. And then of course when Melbourne Storm formed here two years ago we thought oh well, we can see Australian rules and rugby league. So from that point on we jumped - well we didn't jump on the bandwagon - we were there when they started. We've been foundation members, and we're very, very proud of it.

Amanda Smith: So Vicki, for you, has it been a total conversion, or do you follow both faiths?

Vicki Charleston: No, I follow both faiths. But it's just something that, I suppose all sport is of interest to me. The first night that we went to Melbourne Storm, I wasn't that convinced that perhaps I was going to enjoy it, but having been there that night I haven't missed a game since. Even followed them up to New South Wales for their semi-final. And I just love it. I just think that it's a great atmosphere. And it's a great team as far as for the people; they actually put a lot of time in meeting people after the matches, the family days they spend time with the children. You can't ask much more than that, can you? They are good promoters of the game.

Amanda Smith: So what does going to a rugby league game offer you that's different to going to an Australian rules game?

Vicki Charleston: I've told friends of mine who think I'm crazy, I am one of these unfortunate people that get involved, to the extent that I am pushing through the packs, literally. And of course when they get a try, everyone says, 'There she goes again'. I can't control that, I'm up in the air, or I'm shouting, and I'm doing all the things that I never would have done before. I mean I've got a ballet background, I would never do that in the theatre. But I love it, it's just great.

Amanda Smith: So Peter, do you go to a rugby league game and watch, comparing it to Australian football?

Peter Charleston: No Amanda, you don't go to watch rugby league and then say, 'Oh well, it's not as good as Australian rules.' You go to watch rugby league as an entirely different game. The only thing in common they've got is an oval football. They are entirely different games. And if I was a rugby league fan and I went to watch Australian rules, it would be no good saying, 'Oh I'm comparing it to rugby league', because it wouldn't be as good. You've got to go and watch an entirely different game and appreciate the positives in the game that you're going to watch. And rugby league most certainly can give you an enormous number of positives, when you watch it and let it stand alone.

Amanda Smith: So Peter, what about when a Melbourne Storm home game clashes with a Hawthorn match, which would you go to?

Peter Charleston: Well, as a member of the Hawthorn Social Club and Football Club, my emotions would be with Hawthorn, but equally I believe Melbourne Storm need as much support as they can get at this stage, and I would be giving preference to Melbourne Storm. Now that's not to say that I don't like them more than Hawthorn, or Hawthorn more than them, it's a case of evaluating the importance. We supported Hawthorn to the hilt in Operation Payback, when they were on their uppers, we were worried.

Amanda Smith: When they were going to be merged with Melbourne possibly.

Peter Charleston: I'm still not convinced that Melbourne Storm are a permanent fixture in Melbourne, and they need every bit of support they can get, so we'd be throwing our support behind Melbourne Storm.

Amanda Smith: Peter Charleston, and Vicki Charleston, and their ecumenical approach to two football faiths.

SOCCER CROWD SINGING

Amanda Smith: It may sound like an English soccer match, but it's actually a Perth Glory game. Since coming in to the National Soccer League for the 1996/96 season, the Perth Glory has attracted a strong supporter base, none more so than those who inhabit 'The Shed', as one part of their home ground is known as. And for this season, the Glory look set to become the first National Soccer League team to get over 200,000 spectators to their home games.

So what's the attraction? Colin Johnston is one of the Perth Glory's faithful.

Colin Johnston: I think it's a variety of things. There hasn't been a strong soccer presence in Perth. All of a sudden we now have a team that not only is representing W.A., because let's face it, they're in a one-team town, they're very much like the Eagles were in the AFL in the early days, it's a one-horse town, so everyone gets on the bandwagon to support them. There's no competition like there is now between the Eagles and the Dockers, but it's a one-team town, and there's no strong ethnic base to the support. There are still teams in Australia that we still tend to link, to some extent, with their old ethnic origins. You know, back in the days when we did have teams with names ending in Macedonia and Croatia etc. etc. Perth Glory, there isn't really that sort of identification factor, certainly not amongst the people I talk with.

Amanda Smith: Well Perth Glory fans, despite what you said about there being no one particular ethnic base to the team or the club, Perth Glory fans are often typified as being like English soccer fans. Is that true?

Colin Johnston: Sure. Well I do know up on The Shed, where shall we say the most high profile fans are, there is a very strong English contingent. I know a lot of English migrants who go up there. And I do know, at one of the early games I went to, I met some English tourists on the train heading to the ground, and directed them to the ground, showed them where to go, showed them where the stand was etc., and their comment was, 'It's just like home.' They were up in The Shed and they felt it was the same as going along to the local team back in England. There is certainly a very strong English element up in The Shed. But I sit in the side stands, I personally like to be able to have a seat for most of the game, and I can hear five or six different languages being spoken most weeks. And while there is a strong English element there, in conversations with people, none of us really identify it as a British team or an English team. There's no sort of overt display of any ethnic background or any nationalism there. It just so happens that there's a strong contingent of lads who like to sing and cheer, who congregate, and there's a strong English base to them.

Amanda Smith: You mention the singing and the chanting. The sound of singing and chanting from the terraces is very much a feature of English soccer, but it hasn't really been much of a feature of Australian soccer that I've been aware of.

Colin Johnston: The only singing I've heard at soccer in the past in Australia or in Western Australia anyway, has usually been minor little ditties aimed at offending or taking a rise out of an individual player, and it's been fairly limited. It might go on for two minutes and that's the end of it.

Amanda Smith: Give us an example of a Perth Glory song or chant, what sort of things do they sing?

Colin Johnston: Well a lot of them do cross the boundaries of good taste. In fact some of them are downright offensive. Otherwise, you know, they sing all the usual, 'We've got the best fans in the land' type songs. They sing their traditional, 'You'll never walk alone' the well-known soccer song that's fairly well associated with the Liverpool Football Club. Though I have noticed they tend to put their own slant on it as far as timing and rhythm goes. They do sing a couple of fairly offensive songs questioning the parenthood of the referees. And they like to make a point of the fact that opposition teams have no fans. They often sing songs along the lines of 'Can you hear Sydney, or Melbourne, sing?' I won't go into the punchline, but a lot of them are directed at emphasising the point that they're the only fans there, that the opposition have no fans to support them, and they're on their own. A little bit of intimidation going on.

Amanda Smith: Well just in terms of that crowd on The Shed, and the kind of English-ness of that section of the Perth Glory crowd: when Perth Glory was established, the National Soccer League administration was working very hard to loosen the specific ethnic associations of many of the clubs. But why was the English-ness, or that perceived English-ness of the Perth Glory culture seen as OK? Is that because we don't regard English ethnicity in the same way as Greek or Croatian, or Italian for example?

Colin Johnston: I think yes, possibly it's seen as being a safe kind of ethnic gathering. Whether it's got anything (and I'm a little out of my depth here) but whether it's got anything to do with the fact that the English lately haven't been in too many wars with people, as opposed to some of the other ethnic communities that we've had tied to soccer who are currently at loggerheads over various things so that conflict back at home has spilled over into the local communities here, I don't know.

Amanda Smith: And yet paradoxically, in Europe, English soccer fans are regarded as the scourge of the game.

Colin Johnston: Oh certainly.

Amanda Smith: Has any of that less attractive culture of English soccer fandom become part of the Perth Glory?

Colin Johnston: No, I don't think so. I mean there have been 'incidents', where like say there's some bottle-throwing. But it's interesting to note, and we've been discussing this in the last day or two with people who go to the soccer with me, it's interesting to note that when there are incidents such as bottle-throwing or things like that, they're always plastic bottles. Now it could be argued that's the only sort they sell at the ground, but it would seem to suggest that people aren't coming along with any expectation that they might need a better missile than a plastic bottle, or they need flares or any of the other various things that turn up at grounds where there is are troubles. I think you can fairly safely say that there's no organised group, probably no-one at all, coming with the intention of using the game as an opportunity to start some kind of trouble or some kind of violence. The hostility that there is there, and there's certainly a lot of hostility expressed, but it's very much expressed. There seems to be no likelihood, I've never felt at any game, even some of the ones that got a bit heated, I've never felt at any time that there's serious intent to 'Let's all have a riot' or 'Let's go bloody mental' etc., which is one of their favourite chants. There's never been any likelihood or expectation that they're going to act it out, though it has been pointed out that that's quite often the call to start something in other parts of the world, amongst English fans.

GLORY CHANT

Amanda Smith: Singin' for Glory, the Perth Glory National Soccer League team. And that was Colin Johnston, a dedicated Glory follower.

And that's The Sports Factor for this week. I'm Amanda Smith, thanks for your company this morning; hope you'll join me again next week for The Sports Factor.

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The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).

© 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation