In The Death and Life of Australian Soccer, journalist and historian Joe Gorman explores the rise and fall of Australia's first national football competition and shows how soccer came to practice and embody multiculturalism long before it became government policy. Drawing on archival research and interviews with players, supporters and club officials, he tells the incredible and oft-unknown stories of Australian soccer. The Death and Life of Australian Soccer is a fascinating and timely account of the first Australian sport to truly galvanize every ethnic, regional, metropolitan, gender and political group across the country. It examines the myths and legends of Australian sport and offers new ways of understanding the great changes that shaped the nation. This is more than a book about soccer – it is the riveting story of Australia's national identity.

Beach Soccer Histories is the first text to consider the sport as a historical, social and cultural phenomenon, to define its traditions, and present leading research on the development and significance of football played on sand. Following a period of expansive, rapid growth, beach soccer is an internationally governed professional sport, which has come a long way from its origins in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s. The sand-based variant is distinguished from football by a range of factors, including the dramatic impact of the playing surface. Yet, the game has undergone very little academic scrutiny. This research adopts and adapts qualitative methods related to oral history and football studies, including extensive archival research, semi-structured interviews, and textual and thematic analyses. As it looks beneath the game’s contemporary reach, it considers origins, organisations – including FIFA’s influence – and the beach cultures that underpin its sporting and historical development. This the most comprehensive exploration of beach soccer and a century of its existence. Beach Soccer Histories examines the game’s historical development, critical moments and movements in its progress, successes and contentions, and its contemporary state of play with a view to deepening and advancing our understanding of the game.

Writing the Australian Beach is the first book in fifteen years to explore creative and cultural representations of this iconic landscape, and how writers and scholars have attempted to understand and depict it. Although the content chiefly focuses on Australia, the beach as both a location and idea resonates deeply with readers around the world. This edited collection includes three sections. Forms of Beach Writing examines the history of beach writing in Australia and in a number of forms: screenwriting, social media writing, and food writing. In turn, Multiplicities of Australian Beach Writing examines how forms of writing—poetry, travel writing, horror film, and memoir—engage with some specific beaches in Australia. And, finally, Reading the Beach as a Text considers how the beach itself functions in cultural narratives: how we walk the beach; the revealing story of beach soccer; and the design and use of ocean baths. Given its scope, the collection offers a unique resource for scholars of Australian culture and creative writing, and for all those interested in Australian beaches.

A Fascinating account of a great sporting life and an insider's look at the byzantine world of soccer politics. The essential Australian story of the World Game - Bob Carr Johnny Warren received an MBE (1973), ASM (2000) Centenary Medal (2001), OAM (2003) and the FIFA Order of Merit (2004) Johnny Warren is a credit to Australia and the game that he loves. His is a great story which I heartily recommend to all sports fans - Martin Tyler From a nine-year-old who was initially rejected by his local under-12's team because he was "too small and needed to go home and eat more porridge" to leading the Socceroos from 1964 to 1974 through three World Cup campaigns as captain and vice-captain, Johnny Warren witnessed every stage of Australia's soccer journey for over fifty years. From the days you were called a "sheila", "wog" or "poofter" if you played soccer to today when players such as Harry Kewell are celebrated as our brightest sporting stars and prized by overseas clubs; from the curse placed on the Socceroos in 1969 by an African witch doctor through to more than thirty agonising years of trying to qualify for soccer's Holy Grail, the World Cup, Johnny Warren revealed the highs and lows of Australian soccer's past and present, and how its future success can be achieved. Including all the action from the 2002 World Cup - the Cup that caught the hearts and imaginations of Australians everywhere. In February 2003, then-NSW Premier Bob Carr set up a $1.5 million soccer training academy named the "Johnny Warren Soccer Academy" to develop players and increase Australia's chances of securing the 2014 World Cup.

What does the ‘Asian’ mean in Asian sport celebrity? With a collection of nine essays on Asian sport celebrities variously associated with Australia, Belgium, China, Japan, New Zealand, North Korea, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of the multi-faceted construction of what it means to be Asian from the perspectives of race, ethnicity and regionality. Sport celebrity, as a modern invention, is disseminated from the West to the rest of the globe including Asia, and so are its functions of symbolizing particular values, desires and personalities idolized and idealized within their respective societies. While Asian athletes were historically depicted as weak, fragile and biologically ‘unsuited’ to modern sport, the emergence of more than a few world-class Asian athletes in the twenty-first century demands an in-depth inquiry into the relationship between sport celebrity and the representation of Asia. This book is therefore essential for those interested in a range of socio-cultural issues—including globalization, transnationalism, migration, modernity, (post-)coloniality, gender politics, spectacle, citizenship, Orientalism, and nationalism—within and beyond Asia. It was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

This book presents the most comprehensive mapping and analysis of women’s football in Oceania and is the first to examine the game’s historical development alongside social, political, and cultural issues, weaving origin stories with players’ day-to-day challenges. Alongside presentation of the contemporary state of play and its overarching narrative of women’s game in the region, the book highlights key issues, discusses established and emergent themes, examines relevant contexts, investigates the status of the game at local and national levels, and lays foundations for further research. Its primary objective is to detail and illustrate the historical, social, and organisational development of the women’s game, including international tournaments, national competitions, and teams in an effort to amplify the efforts of the individuals that made or make a significant contribution to the game. It draws on extensive formal and informal discussion, realises insight, proposes the means and related fields of further investigation, and generates new knowledge alongside the uncovering of old. Women’s Football in Oceania covers key events, actors, and moments and fills a gap in research for scholars of sports history and women’s history.

This is the first book to examine football (soccer) through the lens of diaspora studies. Presenting case studies from across four continents, it considers how diasporic minorities develop a sense of belonging between their national and transnational ethnic communities through an active participation in football. Bringing together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars working in anthropology, communication, cultural studies, history, psychology, politics, sociology and sport, it unearths the connections between culture, identities, politics, nationalism, globalization, and how those manifest in the lived experience of diasporic peoples. Against a background of the continued internationalization of sport and pervasive global migration, it explores key themes in the social sciences including migration, acculturation, and assimilation; sport, identity, fandom, and representation; and nationhood, citizenship, and politics. As the book focuses on diverse ethnoreligious groups dispersed around the world, it covers a wide range of geographic locations, with cases addressing the Bolivian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Zimbabwean, Croatian, Irish, and Basque diasporas. It is fascinating reading for anybody working in sport studies, diaspora studies, political science, sociology, cultural studies, international history or social history.