Not Playing the Game Sport and Australia's Great War

War remembrance and sport have become increasingly entwined in Australia, with AFL and NRL Anzac Day fixtures attracting larger crowds than dawn services. National representative teams travel halfway around the world to visit battle sites etched in military folklore. To validate their integration into this culturally sacred occasion, promoters point to the special role of sport in the development of the Anzac legend, and with it, the birth of the nation. The air of sombre reflection that surrounds each Anzac Day is accompanied by a celebratory nationalism that sport and war supposedly embody. But what exactly is being remembered, and indeed forgotten, in these official commemorations and tributes? In Not Playing the Game, Xavier Fowler reveals that the place of sport in the Great War was highly contested. Civilian patriots and public officials complained that spectator sport distracted young men from enlisting and wasted public finances better spent elsewhere. Sport's defenders argued it was a necessary escape for a population weary of the pressures of war.

Dr Xavier Fowler was born in Geelong and completed his Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at Deakin University in 2013. His Honors thesis studied the commemoration of Australian Bomber Command veterans. He was the recipient of the Australian War Memorials 2016 Summer Scholarship. Xavier completed his Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne in 2018, studying sport and social conflict during World War I. He has produced several academic articles from this research, including with the International Journal of the History of Sport and the 2020 publication Reflections on the Commemoration of World War I.