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‘Playing dead’ and killing off amateurism: bribery scandals, illegal player payments, rule expunging, and the Victorian football league’s authorization of professionalism in 1911

journal contribution
posted on 2018-12-01, 00:00 authored by Tony JoelTony Joel, Mathew TurnerMathew Turner, C Hutchinson
© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Australian football is an indigenous game codified in 1859. In Melbourne, the code’s birthplace, the game remained officially committed to the amateur ideal for over a half-century. Illegal player payments nonetheless became increasingly commonplace. Moreover, periodically rumours swirled of champion footballers taking bribes to ‘play dead’. By the early 1900s, the code’s leading competition, the Victorian Football League (VFL), was derided with the ‘shamateurism’ label. Following a sensational match-fixing investigation that resulted in two players receiving five-year bans, in 1911 the VFL expunged its rule prohibiting player payments. Was the timing merely coincidental or was the League’s historic switch to professionalism a deliberate countermeasure to redirect press attention, renew public confidence, and restore the game’s integrity? By consulting the League’s official records and contemporary press articles, this work examines the overlooked yet discernible linkages between rising match-fixing allegations and the VFL’s decision to eschew amateurism and embrace professionalism. It argues that Australian football offers an instructive historical perspective of a sporting body tackling mounting concerns over corruption, taking back the ascendency by amending its rules to better govern over dishonest players and duplicitous club officials, thereby growing its popularity and restoring public perception of its integrity in the process.

History

Journal

International journal of the history of sport

Volume

35

Issue

2-3

Pagination

173 - 195

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Location

Abingdon, Eng.

ISSN

0952-3367

eISSN

1743-9035

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2018, Informa UK Limited