Soccer & Society, Vol
Hay, Roy and McDonald, Heath 2007, A victory for the fans? Melbourne's new football club in recent historical perspective, Soccer & society, vol. 8, no. 2/3, pp. 298-315. This is the postprint version. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Soccer & society in 2007, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14660970701224558 ©2007, Taylor & Francis Reproduced by Deakin University with the kind permission of the copyright owner. Available from Deakin Research Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30007257 A Victory for the fans? Melbourne’s new football club in recent historical perspective.1 Roy Hay and Heath McDonald © Sports and Editorial Services Australia and Deakin University In 2005 a completely new football (soccer) team, the Melbourne Victory, was created in Victoria, Australia to play in a new national league, the A-League.2 Within a year it was drawing more than 50 000 fans to a regular season home game against Sydney FC in a league whose eight participants stretch from Perth, Western Australia to Auckland in New Zealand.3 This was the third time in less than a decade that a new soccer team had been launched in a city which is best known for its devotion to Australian Rules football, cricket and horse racing.4 The other two, Collingwood Warriors and Carlton, lasted one season and three seasons and eight games respectively before collapsing in acrimony and debt. Collingwood and Carlton began with on-field success. Collingwood won the National Soccer League (NSL) cup in 1996–67,
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