Football history off the field: utilising archived accounting reports to challenge "myths" about the history of an Australian football club
- Authors: Halabi, Abdel , Frost, Lionel , Lightbody, Margaret
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting History Vol. 17, no. 1 (2012), p. 63-81
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Expanding social inclusion in community sports organizations: Evidence from rural Australian football clubs
- Authors: Frost, Lionel , Lightbody, Margaret , Halabi, Abdel
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal Of Sport Management Vol. 27, no. 6 (2013), p. 453-466
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Australian Football clubs have traditionally been seen as contributing social benefits to the rural communities in which they are embedded. Declining numbers of participants, both players and volunteers, suggest that this role may not be as strong today. Critical explorations of the extent to which football has driven social inclusion and exclusion in such environments emphasizes a historic masculine culture of drinking and violence that segregates and marginalizes women and children. Less is known about the contemporary strategic efforts of clubs to use social capital to support their activities, and whether the resources they generate have positive impacts on social inclusion in the wider community. We use evidence from the Parliament of Victoria's Inquiry into Country Football (2004) to explore the current focus of rural Australian Football clubs regarding social inclusion, in light of changes occurring in society and rural towns in the 21st century.
Ground sharing between cricket and football in Australia
- Authors: Frost, Lionel , Lightbody, Margaret , Halabi, Abdel , Carter, Amanda , Borrowman, Luc
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Sports Through the Lens of Economic History Chapter 6 p. 89-105
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Shared use of grounds allowed Australian cricket and football to subsidize each other, but cartel arrangements that determined the use of stadiums and the distribution of benefits and costs between sports may have been less than optimal. Estimation of deadweight losses from the use of stadiums is not possible in the absence of a counterfactual specifying the level of demand if the behaviour of cartel members had been coordinated more effectively. Archival, financial and attendance report data can be used to estimate increases in actual demand under alternative scenarios. In Melbourne and Adelaide, the controlling bodies of cricket and football uncured significant losses in welfare from joint use of their cities’ major stadium, due to the importance they attached to non-monetary aspects of utility.
Legitimizing amateur status using financial reports: Victorian Football League clubs, 1909-1912
- Authors: Halabi, Abdel , Lightbody, Margaret , Frost, Lionel , Carter, Amanda
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting History Vol. 21, no. 1 (2016), p. 25-47
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- Description: It is generally accepted by historians that in the early twentieth century clubs in Australian Football's Victorian Football League (VFL) made payments to "amateur" players prior to the legalization of professionalism and that such payments were not disclosed in club financial reports. Previously, financial reports have not been used to support or refute such claims. This article presents findings from a detailed examination of the financial reports and other records of six of the 10 VFL clubs for the years surrounding the legalization of professional football in 1911 (1909-1912). Prior to 1911, most clubs engaged in fraudulent financial reporting practices by misrepresenting player payments as other forms of permitted expenditures, thus concealing prohibited remunerative payments to players within their financial reports. Using isomorphic influences to explain the reasons for this misrepresentation, we conclude that the financial reports were used to legitimate the majority of clubs as amateur organizations. Competing isomorphic pressures, particularly conflicting coercive factors related to the VFL's prohibition on player payments and normative pressures associated with increasing professionalism amongst players, contributed to clubs engaging in fraudulent financial reporting. © The Author(s) 2015.
A cricket ground or a football stadium? The business of ground sharing at the Adelaide Oval before 1973
- Authors: Frost, Lionel , Lightbody, Margaret , Carter, Amanda , Halabi, Abdel
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Business History Vol. 58, no. 8 (2016), p. 1164-1182
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Before 1973, cricket and Australian Football used the Adelaide Oval for major games during their respective seasons. Football's popularity as a spectator sport prompted its organising body to seek to build an improved stadium, but cricket authorities controlled the asset and acted to maintain its specialised character as a cricket ground. A case study of how the gains from a shared capital good are negotiated when asset controllers and users have different objectives is provided. A series of counterfactual scenarios based on football remaining at the Oval is constructed from archival sources and their outcomes projected based on data in financial reports.