Australia’s Croatian Connection

People of Croatian ancestry make up less than one-half of one percent of the population. But the influence of this small Balkan country on soccer in the land of Oz has far exceeded their numbers. Of the 23 players on Australia’s 2006 World Cup squad, 7 had Croatian heritage. Croatia’s team had 3 Australian-born players.

Croatian-Australian Mark Viduka (photo: Getty Images/ABC)

The connections between Croatia and Australia began in the 1850s during the Australian Gold Rush. The number of Croatians moving to Australia was small (not getting over 1,000 until after the turn of the century). The first Croatian soccer team in Australia was founded in 1945 by Marin Alagich.

A wave of Croatians who had been displaced by World War II came to Australia shortly after the fighting concluded. These new immigrants filled the ranks of Croatian teams, which multiplied throughout Australia’s major cities. Roy Hay, in his article ‘Those Bloody Croatians’: Croatian Soccer Teams, Ethnicity and Violence in Australia, 1950-99 has written of one ambitious club official. “Joe Radojevic, secretary of Geelong’s Croatia club in the 1950s, visited incoming ships in the company of a Slovenian priest to recruit Croatian soccer players, bringing around 350 to the club in his own estimation” (79).

The clubs grew and became integral parts of the Croatian communities in Australia (Hay claims they were initially more important than the local churches). The clubs took on great importance to community, standing for the Croatian state that many hoped would eventually become independent of Yugoslavia. Australian academic Philip Mosley has written:

More than any other ethnic group in Australia the Croats used soccer for political means. It was not just that they expressed their own nationalism. Plenty of other groups did so as well. What differentiated them was how pointed was their expression of nationalism. Convinced of perceived injustice, the Croats gave voice to their antagonism to Tito’s Yugoslavia … (35).

There was occasionally violence associated with Croatian soccer clubs and their fans. In 1972, a Croatian team was expelled from the Victorian Soccer Federation after numerous incidents of violence surrounding their matches. Matches against other ethnic Serbian teams were particularly charged. During the wars in the Balkans during the 1990s, matches between such teams had to be played behind closed doors.

Wray Vamplew has claimed that the violence was to “some extent … a product of the media, particularly the Australian press, which has focussed on crowd disturbances seeing them as newsworthy in the light of the European experience” (1). Accurate or not, the perception of violence among ethnic teams was such that teams with ethnic names were at one point not permitted to play in Australia’s professional league.

But more lasting than any violence is large number of players from the Croatian community who have reached the highest levels of Australian and international soccer. Australia’s former professional National Soccer League had two teams – Melbourne Knights and Sydney United – with strong connections to the Croatian community (neither features in the new A-League but do play in regional leagues as well as the annual Australian Croatia Soccer Tournament). The following players on Australia’s 2006 World Cup team had Croatian ancestry:

• Jason Culina (his father, Branko, is a coach and the entire family is featured on the Austrlian Migration Heritage Centre’s website)
• Tony Popovic
• Josip Skoko
• Mark Viduka
• Ante Covic
• Zeljko Kalac
• Mark Bresciano (his last name comes his Italian father, but his mother is Croatian)

The Australian national team (photo: Xinhua)

At the 2006 World Cup, Australia and Croatia played each other, drawing 2-2 in a first round match. The game is best remembered for Graham Poll giving Josip Simunic 3 yellow cards before sending him off. The English referee’s mistake has since become infamous, but perhaps Poll was confused about which country Simunic was really representing. After all, the defender was one of three Croatian players (along with Joe Didulica and Anthony Seric) born in Australia.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Asia, Conflict, Ethnicity/Race, Europe, Immigration, Nationalism/Identity, Oceania, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.