ANZAC Day's Sporting Connections

“Sport is to war as pornography is to sex.” This (rather crass) statement belongs to Jonathan Haidt and although Haidt is a political psychologist in the US, you’d think for sure that he’d been in Australia for the lead up to ANZAC Day this year.

New TV ads featuring Australian netballers and footballers telling us to text our support to the troops is just the latest way that sports are being used to promote ANZAC Day. We already have the “traditional” ANZAC Day football clashes between Collingwood and Essendon in AFL and the St George Illawarra Dragons and the Sydney Roosters in NRL. Not to be out ANZACed, this year netball is promoting the Queensland Firebirds and West Coast Fever match as its contribution. Growing up I never understood how these were “traditional” ANZAC Day matches since none of the teams were from New Zealand or Turkey and it’s certainly not like those games have been played since 1915. (As it turns out all of these “traditions” are less than 20 years old). Very strange indeed.

Even though I studied the sociology of sport at university, no one ever explained that sport and war go together, well, like porn and sex. In many societies over the course of history sport has been used as preparation for war. The Aztecs, the Kingdom of Castile in Spain and the Native Americans are just a few of the recorded cases.

Set your time travelling machine back to today and it’s not difficult to see the connections between modern sport and war. Picture rugby league teams running at one another on a field and compare it with the image of opposing armies on a battlefield. We’re told that qualities like mateship, courage, teamwork, leadership, loyalty and physical prowess are required in our athletes and our soldiers. How many times have you heard Ray Warren speak of Darren Lockyer “marshalling his troops” or the State of Origin teams “going into battle” or Jonathan Thurston "putting up a bomb"? In addition, the skills and fitness acquired through playing sports is an asset to all armies during war. Sheffield Shield cricketer Frank Lugton was killed in the First World War but his Commanding Officer said that his cricketing skills made him a fine grenade thrower.

During World War I sportsmen were a particular target for recruiters. The army set up Sportsmen’s Battalions – special units manned entirely by sportsmen. One recruitment poster appealed for sportsmen to “Join together, train together, embark together, fight together. Enlist in the sportsmen’s thousand, show the enemy what Australian sporting men can do.” Other posters called on sportsmen to enlist in the “Greater Game”.

Don’t think that this means that between world wars ANZAC Day is a time for everyone to get out and compete in your local fixture though. In many states including Victoria there are Acts which prohibit any organised sport until after midday to encourage everyone to go to ANZAC marches. The Acts also force sporting bodies to hand over profits made by any sports events on this day to the various ANZAC Trusts. These trusts fund support for returned service men and women – a job that the government should already be doing.

ANZAC Day was first celebrated in 1916 at a time when the First World War was becoming an increasingly unpopular blood bath. Since its inception the day has played a large role as a recruitment and PR exercise for the military.

Today, the ANZAC Day message promoted by politicians, the media, culture and sport is not overtly about recruitment. You will hear speeches repeating the familiar mantra, “They died for us”. Never will you hear, “They killed for us”. Killing provokes distasteful images whereas dying is much more savoury. Who is this “us” they’re dying for anyway? The troops in Afghanistan certainly aren’t there for me or the 61% of Australians who are against the war.

And when Bec Bulley from the Australian Diamonds tells us to support our troops and “let them know you’re proud of what they’re doing”, despite the fact that most Australians are against the war, no one is going to send a message saying, “I think you’re carrying out an imperialist intervention in the Middle East which will only lead to death and destruction for Afghan people. Instead, I think you should be at home with your family and friends.” For some reason, supporting our troops always means sending them off to the perils of war and never means keeping them safe at home.

In some ancient societies sport was used to decide disagreements as a substitute for war. Of course, capitalism would never allow for that today. While we live in a system where a small minority at the top of society get to send others off to kill and be killed with no consequence to themselves wars will continue. However, if the majority of the population including the workers who are most likely to become front line soldiers got to vote about how to settle disagreements, it may be a different story. Let’s hope such a world exists one day.