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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 sportVolume
35Pagination
173-195Location
Abingdon, Eng.Publisher DOI
ISSN
0952-3367eISSN
1743-9035Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2018, Informa UK LimitedIssue
2-3Publisher
Taylor & FrancisUsage metrics
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