Football’s First Free Kick: Demography and the Media – How and Why Australia Got a Game of Its Own.

There have been numerous attempts to explain why the precocious code of football that started as a game played under Melbourne Club rules devised in 1859 became the dominant form in Victoria and the most influential in Australia, while Association football (soccer) had little impact until the second half of the twentieth century. In this article, attention is directed at some demographic features that have not been addressed in the literature and on the journalists who helped shape public perceptions of this form of the game. For the first 20 years after the codification of this unique football there was virtually no inward migration into Victoria, so the domestic game had its first free kick with few foreigners with different ideas of how the game should be played to disturb its establishment. Furthermore, the journalists who shaped the ideas of the readership of the Victorian newspapers had little or no knowledge of the forms of football played in Victoria prior to 1855, and their unconscious or conscious imperialism helped secure the pre-eminence of the new code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

许多研究尝试解释基于1859年墨尔本俱乐部规则的早期的足球规则为何会在维多利亚州成为主导的规则，并且也成为这个时期整个澳洲最具影响力的足球赛规则，而英式足球在澳洲的影响却直到二十世纪下半叶仍然甚微？本文对以上问题的研究，选取了以往文献中未被涉及的人口学特征，以及助力塑造了公众足球意识的新闻媒介作为分析的视角。作者认为，在实行这种独特的足球规则的前二十年里，事实上，维多利亚州几乎没有外来移民，因此国内比赛一直实行着那种最初的自由式踢法，也很少有外来人员用其它规则干扰它的自生自长。然而，那些左右着维多利亚州报业读者们足球意识的媒介记者们，却对1855年之前维多利亚时代足球规则知之甚少甚至一无所知。也正是因为媒体人这种有意无意的舆论霸权助力，才最终使这种新规则占尽风头。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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