This thesis identifies, examines and probes the nature of women’s involvement in Australian Rules Football. Rather than have a single theoretical underpinning, an interdisciplinary approach, albeit with a feminist perspective, was applied because of the broad scope of the study. Australian Rules Football is an institution that can transcend class, race, and gender. It is also a multi-billion dollar industry. The game traces its origins back to 1858 and claims influences from rugby and an Aboriginal game called marn-grook. While it is played mainly by men, exclusively at league level, interest and involvement is not limited by gender. Academics and administrators have frequently written off women’s involvement with football. Even though scholarly interest in both sport and feminism has grown since the 1970s, little significant work has been undertaken to examine women’s interaction with Australian Rules Football. Leading Australian feminist Anne Summers rejected the notion that women could find anything of value in football apart from following players as devoted wives, mothers, girlfriends or ‘groupies.’ Through investigation of monographs and edited collections, I reveal that myriad scholars, feminists and historians have missed the point of sporting scholarship: many women enjoy involvement with football, they understand the game and its strategies and value being part of the football community in diverse and evolving capacities. The original contribution to knowledge in this doctorate is to demonstrate that while women have had a central role in the development and maintenance of Australian Rules Football since the game was founded in colonial times, their contribution has gone unacknowledged by historians and administrators. My thesis places on record those omissions. Particularly, I highlight the lack of acknowledgement and respect for the work of a woman who authored a comprehensive and seminal social history written on the game. This is the archetypal example of how women, in many roles – both professional and personal – have been marginalized, despite playing pivotal roles with Australian Rules Football. The original contribution contained in these pages tracks Australian gender relations through the social institution of Australian Rules Football. To create both space and strategies for the revaluation of women in football history, a new model of female fandom is offered. The testimony of the women included is weighty in numbers and pithy in content. The scale of interviews represents diversity in age, class, ethnicity, regionality and role or function with football. Superficially it may appear that women can be placed in taxonomy. Women’s involvement with Australian Rules Football is complex and their involvement enmeshes in the many facets and spheres of the game. The completion of this thesis follows the long overdue appointment of the A.F.L.’s first female commissioner, Samantha Mostyn, in June 2005. Without disrespecting Mostyn, this was a tokenistic cultural shift by adding a commissioner to the existing eight males with the goal of adding further business expertise, not a new insight or strategic cultural intervention. It also comes at a time when the Australian Football League’s has a new challenge to address, with the growing interest and participation in Association Football in Australia after the qualification for the 2006 World Cup. At this moment of change and contestation, Women’s Australian Rules competitions are impoverished through lack of structural and financial support while women’s Association Football, both in Australia and internationally, is flourishing.

Generic models of job stress, such as the Job Strain Model (JSM), have recently been criticised for focusing on a small number of general work characteristics while ignoring those that are occupation-specific (Sparks & Cooper, 1999). However this criticism is based on limited research that has not examined the relative influence of all three dimensions of the JSM - job demand, job control and social support - and job-specific stressors. The JSM is the most commonly used model underpinning large-scale occupational stress research (Fox, Dwyer, & Ganster, 1993) and is regarded as the most influential model in the research on the psycho-social work environment, stress and disease in recent times (Kristensen, 1995). This thesis addresses the lack of information on the relative influence of the JSM and job-specific stressors by assessing the capacity of an augmented JSM to predict the strain experienced by managers and professional Australian footballers. The augmented JSM consisted of job-specific stressors in addition to the generic components of the model. Managers and professional Australian footballers represent two very different occupational groups. While the day-today roles of a manager include planning, organising, monitoring and controlling (Carroll & Gillen, 1987), the working life of a professional Australian footballer revolves around preparing for and playing football (Shanahan, 1998). It was expected that the large differences in the work undertaken by managers and professional Australian footballers would maximise the opportunities for identifying job-specific stressors and measuring the extent that these vary from one group to the next. The large disparity between managers and professional footballers was also used to assess the cross-occupational versatility of the JSM when it had been augmented by job-specific stressors. This thesis consisted of three major studies. Study One involved a survey of Australian managers, while studies Two and Three focused on professional Australian footballers. The latter group was under-represented in the literature, and as a result of the lack of information on the stressors commonly experienced by this group, an in-depth qualitative study was undertaken in Study Two. The results from Study Two then informed the survey of professional footballers that was conducted in Study Three. Contrary to previous research examining the relative influence of generic and job-specific stressors, the results only provided moderate support for augmenting the JSM with job-specific stressors. Instead of supporting the versatility of the augmented JSM, the overall findings reinforced the broad relevance of the original JSM. Of the four health outcomes measured in Studies One and Three, there was only one - the psychological health of professional Australian footballers - where the proportion of total variance explained by job-specific stressors exceeded 13%. Despite the generally strong performance of the JSM across the two occupational groups, the importance of demand, control and support diminished when examining the less conventional occupation of professional football. The generic model was too narrow to capture the highly specific work characteristics that are important for this occupational group and, as a result, the job-specific stressors explained significantly more of the strain over and above that already provided by the generic model. These findings indicate that when investigating the stressors experienced by conventional occupational groups such as managers, the large amount resources required to identify job-specific stressors are unlikely to be cost-effective. In contrast, the influence of the more situation specific stressors is significantly greater in unconventional occupations and thus the benefits of identifying these non-generic stressors are more likely to outweigh the costs. Studies One and Three identified strong connections between job-specific stressors and important characteristics of the occupation being studied. These connections were consistent with previous research and suggest that before attempting to identify job-specific stressors, researchers need to first become familiar with the nature and context of the occupation. The final issue addressed in this thesis was the role of work and non-work support. The findings indicate that the support provided by supervisors and colleagues was a significant predictor of wellbeing for both managers and professional footballers. In contrast, the level of explained strain accounted for by non-work support was not significant. These results indicate that when developing strategies to protect and enhance employee well-being, particular attention should be given to monitoring and, where necessary, boosting the effectiveness of work-based support. The findings from this thesis have been fed back to the management and sporting communities via conference presentations and peer-reviewed journals (refer pp 220-221). All three studies have been presented at national and international conferences and, overall, were well received by participants. Similarly, the methods, results and major findings arising from Studies One and Two have been critiqued by anonymous reviewers from two international journals. These papers have been accepted for publication in 2001 and 2002 and feedback from the reviewers indicates that the findings represent a significant and unique contribution to the literature. The results of Study Three are currently under review by a sports psychology journal.

Sport events and attractions which encourage both participants and spectators are seen as significant contributors to the tourism economy (Delpy, 1998; Glyptis, 1991; Standeven & DeKnop, 1999). Further, Gratton and Taylor (2000) note that sport related travel accounts for 7% of total expenditure on sport. To date, the main focus of event sport tourism research has been on the economic impact of large-scale sport events (Burgan & Mules, 1992; Crompton, 1995; Mules & Faulkner, 1996; Walo, Bull, & Breen, 1996). However, Higham (1999) posits that smaller scale events such as regular season games may be of greater benefit to the host community as these events are hosted within existing infrastructure and therefore limit the need for public expenditure. However, fans who travel to regular season competition are a market segment that has been largely ignored by both sport and tourism marketers. Sport marketers have focused on home game attendance, media viewership and product purchases, while tourism marketers have focused on leveraging the destination. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fans who travel organise a substantial proportion of their discretionary time and income around this activity. Recent research by Gibson, Willming and Holdnak (2002, 2003) has begun to understand the behaviours of sport fans who travel to home games. This study seeks to understand the behaviours and experiences of those who travel to attend away games. In particular the study asks: What motivates fans to travel to follow professional sport teams, what experiences fans have and seek during the travel, and what place does travelling to follow a sport team have in the overall consumption behaviour of sport fans. This study examined the motives and experiences of six fan groups travelling interstate to follow their Australian Football League (AFL) team in the 2001 season. As the behaviours and experiences of those who travel to follow sport teams have not previously been explored, exploratory analysis using an iterative process of constant comparison between data colleted from the research setting and the existent literature. Using this method the researcher was able to describe the social world under investigation without preconceived hypotheses. The researcher travelled interstate with each fan group, and collected data via participant observation and interviews with key informants. Data were coded using standard protocols for analysis of qualitative data (Spradley, 1980). The researcher read through the transcripts and field notes and coded all phrases and opinions from the manuscript. Data were analysed through the process of data reduction, selective sampling of the literature, and selected sampling of the data (Stern, 1980). From the initial codes, data reduction identified core variables and emergent themes. Through this grounded theory methodology, a conceptual model was developed which illustrates the motives and experiences of those who travel to follow professional sport teams. Three distinct types of groups were identified, each garnering a distinctive sport tourism experience. The groups identified were: supporter groups, long-term travel groups, and temporary travel groups. While travel to follow the team is the stated rationale for all three groups, the game experience for each is substantially different, four major themes emerged which distinguished the groups and the experiences that they had. These were: (1) group structure, (2) trip characteristics, (3) socialisation, and (4) game experience and reaction to game outcome. Each type of group was found to have a distinct group structure, communication pattern, but differed in terms of the objects to which they identified. Findings suggest that sport fans do not necessarily identify with the team or related object, but can identify with a smaller social group, which has a shared interest in the team. These elements of group structure and point of identification were found to have a reciprocal relationship with various travel elements that were utilised by each group including the mode of transport, temporal elements, choice of destination, and activities at the destination. In particular, the travel elements were chosen so that each group type could best express and experience that which is core to each group. Further analysis suggested that the experience of each of the groups was influenced by the continual development of the group both before and during the travel experience. For the supporter groups and long-term travel groups, rituals, symbols, and folklore played a key role in the experience. These elements of performance were used to continually shape and interpret the travel experience. One would expect that the game would have elevated importance, as it is the activity that legitimates each group. However, the on-field game did not have prime importance. Instead the different points of identification of each group were used as a basis through which the game was experienced. Key implications for sport and tourism marketing suggest that the sport tourism experience is more than an experience of place or an experience of watching the sport. Identification with a small social group is sufficient to generate travel to follow a team. By providing a setting which immerses participants in a particular identity for a prolonged period of time, the act of travelling itself can create a social climate that encourages participants to undertake the trip week after week, and form deep connection to the team. Implications for practice and future research directions are also discussed.

Sports injury prevention has been the focus of a number of recent public health initiatives due to the acknowledgement that sports injuries are a significant public health problem in Australia Whilst Australian football is one of the most popular participation sports in the country, only very limited data is available about football injuries The majority of sports injury data available for this sport is from hospital emergency departments and elite-level injury surveillance Overall there is a paucity of data from treatment settings other than hospitals In particular, there is a lack of information about the injuries sustained by community-level, junior and recreational Australian football participants. One good potential source of football injury data is sports medicine clinics. Analysis of injury presentations to sports medicine clinics was undertaken to provide a detailed description of the epidemiology of Australian football injuries that present to this treatment setting and to determine the implications for injury prevention in this sport. In addition, the data from sports medicine clinics was compared with existing sources of Australian football injury data to determine how representative sports medicine clinic data is of other football injury data sources and to provide recommendations for future injury surveillance n Australian football. The results contained in this thesis show that Australian football is the sport most associated with injury presentation at sports medicine clinics. The majority of injured Australian football players presenting to sports medicine clinics are community-level or junior participants which suggests that sports medicine clinics are a good source of information on the injuries sustained by sub-elite football participants. Competition is the most common context in which Australian football players presenting to sports medicine clinics are injured. The major causes of injuries to Australian football players are being struck by another player, collisions and overuse. Injuries to Australian football players predominantly involve the lower limb. Adult players, players who stopped participating immediately after noticing their injury and players with overuse injuries are the most likely to sustain a more severe injury (i.e. more than four weeks before a full return to football participation and a moderate/significant amount of treatment expected). The least experienced players (five or less years of participation) are more likely to require a significant amount of treatment than the more experienced players. The prevention of lower limb injuries, injuries caused by body contact and injuries caused by overuse should be a priority for injury prevention research in Australian football due to the predominance of these injury types in the pattern of Australian football injuries Additionally, adult players, as a group, should be a focus of injury prevention activities in Australian football due to the association between age and injury severity. Overall, the pattern of Australian football injuries presenting to sports medicine clinics appears to be different than reported by club-based and hospital emergency department injury surveillance activities. However, detailed comparison of sports medicine clinic Australian football data with other sources of Australian football injury data is difficult due to the variable methods of collecting and reporting injury information used by hospital emergency department and club-based injury surveillance activities. The development of a standardised method for collecting and reporting injury data in Australian football is strongly recommended to overcome the existing limitations of data collection in this sport. In summary, sports medicine clinics provide a rich source of Australian football injury data, especially from the community and junior levels of participation. The inclusion of sports medicine clinic data provides a broader epidemiological picture of Australian football injuries. This broader understanding of the pattern of Australian football injuries provides a better basis for the development of injury prevention measures in this sport.