Religion and Soccer Subculture Symbolism1 John Hughson

4 ‘We are red, white and blue, we are Catholic, why aren’t you?’ Religion and soccer subculture symbolism1 John Hughson The Bad Blue Boys (BBB), a group of young Australian-born men of Croatian parentage, use soccer support as a means of displaying nationalistic allegiance to their ancestral homeland, though the performance of ethnicity occurs across a range of different cultural, social and religious sites. This display and expression of Croatianness is indicative of a unique collective social identity constructed by the young men within the BBB subculture, which is promulgated in their reverence for, and devotion to, soccer. This chapter examines a particular aspect of that subcultural expression – religion – and explores how the BBB incorporate their ‘devotion’ to Roman Catholicism into football support. Whilst religious commitment is not strictly central to soccer fandom, the role of the Roman Catholic Church in providing a means by which the BBB can distinguish themselves from their athletic rivals is important. At the same time, religious spaces, as well as sporting locales, are critical learning sites where Croatian ethnicity is rehearsed, performed and, in the case of the BBB, aggressively communicated to rival fans typically from differing ethnic backgrounds. Theoretically, the chapter draws on the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli’s idea of the neo-tribe, in order to explain the BBB in terms of a postmodern grouping, exhibiting an affectual commitment to subcultural life.2 As such their approach to religion cannot be considered in traditional terms, and, indeed, it can be seen that their particular expression of religion is indicative of the happy confusion between the sacred and profane that typifies postmodern life. Soccer, ethnicity and community in Australia To followers of soccer in Britain the association of the colours red, white and blue with Roman Catholicism will no doubt seem strange. In relation to the major site of the religious rivalry in British soccer, red, white and blue are the combination of colours seen on the strip of the Protestant Glasgow Rangers, and Roman Catholicism remains very closely associated with the green and white of Glasgow Celtic. For the BBB, however, there is no contradiction, as their team, Sydney United, carry the colours of their ‘We are red, white and blue’ 57 parental homeland and the national religion of Croatia is Roman Catholicism. Within Australia, the relationship between soccer clubs and religious denominations has not been particularly apparent, yet that is not to say that there have been few links. By contrast, particularly since World War II, there have been visible links between ethnicity and soccer clubs. Contrary to the typical model of sports organisation in Australia, which favours spatial relationships between a club and its suburb, for example, soccer clubs have often been organised and maintained by ethnic communities as a way of preserving their national traditions, including language, religion, customs and habits. Sydney Croatia was founded in 1958 and quickly became a means by which new Croatian immigrants could ease themselves into Australian life, without abandoning their cultural heritage. The club was renamed Sydney United in the early 1990s following an edict by the Australian Soccer Federation (ASF), banning the allegiance by name of soccer teams in the national league to ethnic communities.3 The ASF ruling struck at the heart of soccer support for many of those from non-English-speaking ethnic backgrounds. Since the post-war years the history of Australian soccer has traced the history of immigration.4 Ethnic communities, particularly those from Southern Europe, developed soccer clubs and teams that soon became prominent at the premier level of the sport. Their success on the field was accompanied by a growth in organisational power and the respective clubs gained a strong voice in how soccer was administered. This situation was not without rancour as the traditional Anglo-Australian elements within the sport wrestled to maintain organisational control. A constant key site of contestation, as indicated, was the on-field representation of ethnicity in the very names of teams such as Sydney Croatia, Pan Hellenic, Preston Macedonia and Sydney Hakoah. Over the years the opponents of this relationship advanced a number of initiatives to sever the explicit linkages between ethnicity and soccer. This culminated in the Bradley Report, which was tabled with the ASF in 1990.5 Compiled by an academic in accounting, the report was commissioned by the ASF to investigate a viable commercial and organisational future for premier-level soccer. One of its major findings was that soccer needed to relinquish its association with ethnic communities and establish other types of support bases, determined principally on geographical locations, such as districts and cities. The Bradley Report gave the opponents of ethnic affiliation an economic imprimatur – soccer needed to establish alternative support arrangements if it was to compete commercially with the dominant football codes in other states, namely rugby league and Australian rules. Whilst the report was never properly implemented by the ASF, it certainly provided the air of legitimacy needed for the 1993 decision to remove ‘ethnic’ team names from the premier league. To say that this was a slap in the face to the tradition established by particular ethnic communities in the post-war years would be an understate- ment, particularly as soccer clubs fulfilled functions beyond simply 58 John Hughson providing recreational opportunities. They were central to the community and acted as support networks for a number of ethnic groups. Indeed, the centrality of soccer to the Australian migrant experience was recognised in the exemplary work of the Australian sociologist Jean Martin and in other related studies.6 For example, Rachel Unikoski claims that ‘outside the sphere of economic development … [soccer] is probably the largest single contribution by migrants to Australian life’.7 Of course, soccer clubs were one amongst a number of avenues through which community or ethnic identity was cultivated, that also included social and religious organisations. The relationship between soccer, religion and ethnic communities may be explored utilising Australian sociological analyses of community. Whilst most of this work, with the notable exclusion of Martin, does not address soccer per se, it does provide a means for explaining the significance of the sport within the overall ethnic community realm. For the most part, the sociology of community studies within Australia has followed a Weberian interpretation of community as being based in shared non-coercive experience. In effect, this shifts an emphasis from the notion of community, as traditionally understood in fairly restrictive terms, to the concept of the communion or the communal. Accordingly, Ronald Wild offers the following terminological distinction: a community is a ‘social order developed on the basis of natural interdependence through traditional relationships’;8 a communion is based on shared concerns, feelings or senti- ment. Communities are given – they simply exist, whereas the communion is experienced. Wild argues that people might remain unaware of belonging to a community but that they have a ‘conscious recognition’ of belonging to a communion.9 As suggested, this typology offers an interesting means for reflecting on the nature and workings of ethnic communities and groups in Australia. What emerges when we look at the relationship of a group such as the BBB to their parent culture is a complicated picture, one that embraces dimensions of both community and communion. Important to this picture is the pattern of institutional networking, which draws together the members of an ethnic émigré community in the Australian metropolis. Again, Martin is instructive.10 In her study of Adelaide residents, she observes three distinct patterns, variously described as community-type networks, clustered networks and loose-knit networks. The community-type network, as recognised by Gillian Bottomley in her subsequent study of Greek Australians, holds particular appeal for immigrant groups as it offers ‘positive reinforcement … and self-respect based on familiar cultural under- standings’.11 The person living within a community-type network will experience a series of institutional connections with other community members through attendance of the church, the soccer match, the social club and the family gathering. Informal networks of association tend to connect formal institutions resulting in an ‘interwoven web of relationships’.12 The network model of community contact provides a useful means for considering the social interaction of the various communal groupings and ‘We are red, white and blue’ 59 the individuals within them that make up the Croatian community within and across Australian cities. The community-type network is likely to have relevance to a large majority of people with a Croatian background – indeed, all those who maintain some sense of attachment to the ‘Croatian community’. Some members will live within rather tight confines of the community-type network, experiencing only passing contact with Australians from a non-Croatian background. Their non-Croatian cultural experiences will occur mainly through mediated means, principally via tele- vision. Other Croatian Australians who have achieved social mobility through education and work

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