A ball, a group of eager and united players and a goal, as a team, to win – sport has long been considered one of the great equalisers in Australian life and the bedrock of many communities.
But despite the widespread influence that sport has across society, it has also been a domain that can viciously turn on anyone who doesn’t fit a prescribed and narrow type – male, white, straight and blokey.
Sport has a long history of excluding LGBTI+, disabled people, Indigenous Australians, people of colour, migrants and refugees, plus of course women, from the exalted fields and ovals of Australian mateship and acceptance.
Some have been made to feel unwelcome; others have been made to feel unsafe.
Salomé Marivoet from the Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies, Portugal, states that sport is a “cultural phenomenon with huge potential in bringing people, cultures, and nations together” but that “intolerance and exclusion can also be expressed in sport, certainly even more so the bigger the social inequalities and the ethnic, religious, gender, disability, and sexual orientation prejudices are in society”.
When accessing mainstream sports clubs has not been an option, those who have been excluded but still want to play, have created a legion of their own clubs and teams. Across the country, there are rugby league teams for gay men, soccer teams for homeless people, cricket teams for Indigenous Australians, dedicated archery, lawn bowls and rowing squads for disabled people, a soccer team dedicated to refugees from Sierra Leone, and of course, hundreds if not thousands of clubs that have given a space for women to finally have access to sport.
Don Rose, president of Australia’s first dedicated rugby team for gay men, the Sydney Convicts, says if it weren’t for the club, many rugby players would have had no place to play the sport they love.
“The club fosters and encourages a welcoming and safe environment,” says Rose, “and we’ve seen time and time again people coming back to the sport, after maybe playing at school, coming out of the closet and then they come to us, and now they’re really enjoying that interest and doing so in a fun and safe environment.”
He believes everybody has the right to be involved in sport, adding that the value it can bring to people’s lives can be immeasurable.
“There are the health benefits but there are also cultural and social benefits to being part of a collective club – developing friendships and networks, plus the accomplishment that comes with having goals and competing and succeeding.
“In a country like Australia, that shouldn’t be restricted to just a certain part of society, everyone should have that opportunity.”
Play By the Rules, the national sports organisation that promotes fairness, tolerance and diversity in sports, reports that 62% of Australians regularly participate in sport but, for example, just 30% of Indigenous Australians and 23.7% of people with a disability do the same.
Dr Ruth Jeanes, who lectures in sports education at Monash University, says because sport is so valued by society, it isn’t as critiqued as an exclusionary space as it should be.
“People that are engaged in sport, they get so much out of it,” says Jeanes. “It’s a good thing to do for everyone, but they don’t necessarily think about that it’s not like that for everyone.
“Traditionally, sport is seen as a universal language – it gets this mythical appeal that it’s a good thing for everyone and everyone can get involved but the reality of that is not the case.”
Even though it is community clubs that have made spaces for marginalised groups, Jeanes believes professional clubs have made significant progress in recent years, which can have a “trickle-down” effect in the community.
“There’s been a lot of focus by sports administrators on creating policies to create inclusion, which are starting to filter down into grassroots level. Change is starting to happen at all levels,” Jeanes says, naming AFL, netball, soccer, cricket and basketball as the sports have have made the biggest impact so far.
Change it may be, but that change can be painfully slow for some sports and certain marginalised groups.
“There’s still a struggle for acceptance, particularly people with disabilities to engage in organised activity,” says Rose, “because they often need specialised equipment and access to facilities that requires engagement with more structured sports clubs; it can be much harder for them to self-organise.”
Rose says rugby has made good progress and he’s proud of the role the Sydney Convicts have played in that.
“We are welcomed and accepted and I feel we have become a part of the fabric of the rugby community in New South Wales.
“There’s always work to be done. I look back on what rugby has achieved and the progress that it’s made, and our club is really proud of the little role that we’ve played in that. There’s still some way to go but I feel that we are heading in that direction.”
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