Australian rules football in popular culture
Set during the 1970s, the 1999 novel Saturday Afternoon Fever by comedian Matthew Hardy follows a boy on weekend trips to VFL games, specifically to see his hero, St Kilda's Trevor Barker.
[3] In 2012, Paul D. Carter won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for his debut novel Eleven Seasons, a coming-of-age story about a teenager and the role football plays in shaping his identity.
[7] In Bruce Dawe's popular poem "Life Cycle" (1967), the passion Victorians have for football is portrayed, in a gently humorous tone, as a form of religious worship.
[13] Since Australia had a reputation for athletic prowess, Helpmann decided to make a feature of it, choreographing a football sequence of stylised leaps, marks, bounces and handballs.
[15] Its hero is Achilles Jones ("Acky"), a simple farmhand from Manangatang with "the body of a Greek god" and the ability to kick a bag of wheat ten yards with his bare feet.
Lured down to Melbourne to play for an ailing VFL club, Acky is hailed as their greatest player, single-handedly winning matches when roused by made-up stories to make him "fighting mad".
[3] Comedian Damian Callinan's 2000 one man play Sportsman's Night was inspired by the real life events of a regional football club banned by their local league for on and off field violence.
It tells the story of Conigrave's love affair with John Caleo, a fellow student at Melbourne's Xavier College and captain of the school football team.
Other titles include "VFL Park in the Dark", "Deep in Our Hearts Everyone Barracks for Fitzroy", "Matty Lloyd Throws Grass in the Air", "Knee Reconstruction" and "Dermott Brereton is a Hood".
"The Back Upon Which Jezza Jumped", self-released in 1985, is about Collingwood ruckman Graeme "Jerker" Jenkin,[31] the "pathetic platform" from which Carlton's Alex Jesaulenko took the "Mark of the Century" in the 1970 VFL Grand Final.
It was reissued on Gentlemen, Start Your Egos (1991), featuring Ted Whitten on its cover, who is also credited with writing the liner notes to TISM's 1990 LP Hot Dogma.
[39] "The Swans Return" (1987) by folk rock band Weddings Parties Anything (WPA) expresses a South Melbourne fan's grief at the club's move to Sydney.
[44] In 1993, Indigenous singer-songwriter Archie Roach penned "Colour of Your Jumper" after witnessing Nicky Winmar famously raise his guernsey in response to racial taunts at Victoria Park.
[45] Hailing from Finley in the Riverina, punk band Spiderbait captured country football in both "Footy" and the music video for "Ol' Man Sam", released on their 1992 debut album Shashavaglava.
Football songs have been written and performed for The Marngrook Footy Show, including "Jesaulenko, You Beauty" by Tex Perkins,[48] "Tom Wills" by Shane Howard,[49] and "It's Round 9, and We're Already Tanking" by Dave Larkin.
[53] William Ellis Green ("WEG"), another cartoonist for The Herald, instigated a VFL/AFL Grand Final tradition in 1954 after drawing a full-page caricature of Footscray, the League premiers.
[58] Football remained uncommon in Australian art until the 1930s, when Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, students of George Bell, and other modernists engaged with the sport as an exercise in form and design.
His painting titled The Game That Made Australia was unveiled on the 150th anniversary of the origins of Australian rules football, and is on display in the foyer of AFL House at Docklands Stadium.
Football is also rendered in art deco style on a decorative panel inside the foyer of Melbourne's Manchester Unity Building, designed by Marcus Barlow and built in 1932.
[3] Lewis Miller is among the show's regular contributors,[86] and past judges include football identities Kevin Sheedy, Denis Pagan and Chris Connolly.
The colourful spectacle of a major football match was the subject of Ivan Durrant's 2007 Boundary Rider series, nominated in the inaugural 2008 Basil Sellers Art Prize.
[89] Melbourne artist Jon Campbell won the 2012 Basil Sellers Art Prize for his work Dream Team, a composite of 22 individual paintings, each depicting a famous football nickname, among them Buddy, God, Captain Blood and Flying Doormat.
[90] The earliest known surviving footage of an Australian football match is Spencer's Pictures' film of the 1909 VFL Grand Final in which South Melbourne won their first flag against reigning premiers Carlton.
[91] Megan Spencer's independent documentary Heathens (1991) studies the songs, chants and colourful profanity of a select group of St Kilda fans at Moorabbin Oval.
Included in the DVD's bonus material is the 1980 short documentary War Without Weapons, featuring Ron Barassi's motivational speeches and training sessions with North Melbourne throughout the 1979 VFL season.
[94] Goodes' treatment was also the main subject of the 2019 documentary The Australian Dream, focusing on his experiences with racism and hate as an Aboriginal man, and its prevalence within modern Australia as well as the part it played in history.
[96] Peter Weir's 1981 World War I epic Gallipoli features a football game (based on real events) between Victorian and Western Australian diggers near the Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt.
Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) captains the Western Australians, and Gallipoli screenwriter David Williamson stars in a cameo role as the Victorian side's imposing ruckman.
[98] John Jarratt makes his screen debut as MacArthy, a country footballer who is kidnapped by South Melbourne talent scouts under the orders of tyrannical club president Colonel Ball-Miller, played by Barry Humphries.
[99] Indigenous actor David Ngoombujarra won an AFI Award for his role as the gifted but feckless footballer "Pretty Boy" Floyd in the 1993 film Blackfellas, shot and set in Western Australia.
