Reviews 107

Don Selth, More Than a Game: 's Sporting Heritage, 1854-1954, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide 2010, pp. 246, pb. For a national capital, it has taken Canberra some time to establish itself as a significant centre for professional or at least semi-professional sports. The Rugby Union Brumbies, in the National and the Capitals in the Women’s National Basketball League, have all now made their mark on the Australian sporting landscape. This book takes us back to an era in Canberra when there was little national competition and Canberra’s sport remained entirely local. From this survey it is clear that Canberra has played host to a wide and constantly changing array of sporting activities. A few of these do go back to 1854 as the title of the book suggests, but the main emphasis in this collection is on the years between 1921 and 1954. Given this focus (a space of little more than three decades with an interruption through war) one can wonder at a structural decision to take the story back to 1854. Perhaps 1908, when Canberra was chosen as the Australian capital, may have made a far more informative starting point for a century-long survey. In the chapters beginning from 1921, individual sports are structured by decade with a listing of sports under sub-headings and a brief summary of successes and failures. The sport-bv-sport summary is followed by a list of ‘heroes’ for the relevant era. Just what criteria by which someone became a hero is not all that apparent. The structure is thus neat and systematic but a little difficult to comprehend for anyone wanting to trace through a particular sport. The book has no index, and there is no bibliography. The empirical data is not footnoted. Each of the short commentaries on particular sports are useful in themselves but the absence of reference detail lessens their value. 108 SpOTtingTRADITIONS VOLUME 28 no 2 NOVEMBER 20,1

Some of the wider circumstances of sport in Canberra are mentioned in passing. Sports clubs do seem to have had difficulties caused by the arrangement of planning responsibilities in Canberra as hinted at here. The existence of a Federal Authority to run the town hindered the sorts of support which local municipal councils gave to sports clubs in other Australian towns. There is little to suggest that Walter Burley Griffin’s master plan took much account of sports. Selth has gathered together details of long forgotten sports in Canberra. It is interesting to learn that Canberra from 1947 had a lifesaving club to patrol the banks of the Murrumbidgee River and that in 1938 Canberra had its own Vigaro competition. experimented with Sunday matches in 1925, when spectators were urged not to barrack for their teams and watch in respectful silence. Illuminating too is the demise of Australian Rules football in Canberra, even though the game had an initial advantage over other codes because of the origin of most pubic service departments in Melbourne. There is, however, not much reflection here on the wider social circumstances in local sport. We could learn more about connections with neighbouring rural sports competitions. How did clubs arrange fixtures and use of open space in a planned national capital - whose designer had built a career in private house design and had apparently no experience in the provision of sporting facilities? What was distinctive in recruiting players and officials to sports in a place where there was one principal employer and sports clubs had little scope for small-business sponsorship so crucial to sports clubs elsewhere? More Than a Game reads then as a compendium or mini-encyclopedia in which entrees are brief, to-the-point and loosely connected by a sense of narrative. But as a guide and compendium it would have gained a great deal through detailed referencing, an index and more reflection on wider social and political circumstances.

Chris McConvillc, Victoria University, Melbourne