Football Violence in Indonesia
Football Violence in Indonesia: A Case from Yogyakarta On Sunday 12th October, 2014, Muhammad Ikhwanuddin, was killed in a car park near Adi Sucipto airport, Yogyakarta. He had been dragged from the bus, beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed in the chest. The bus had been pursued by around 30 men and boys on […]
Drawing The Tiges
I have started a series of drawings specifically for Tiger Tiger Burning Bright – a website founded by Dugald Jellie and Chris Rees. The website focuses on footy stories written from the perspective of Richmond supporters. I contributed to the blog last year in a series of reports on ‘watching from Leiden’. This year, I […]
Running, Somewhere in Holland
A crowd of runners gathers beneath the roof of an apartment balcony near the start of the race. Slowly, the density increases. Some perform mild stretches; others talk and joke lightly with others – either their friends or strangers. With five minutes to go, the crowd dissipates and heads towards the start line, marked by […]
Watching Jong Ajax
Tom Boere, FC Eindhoven’s No.10, scored in the 86th minute to make it 1:2 to FC Eindhoven. There was a brief gasp from the Jong Ajax fans and jubilation amongst the travelling FC Eindhoven fans. They had scored their first goal at the start of the second half, Ajax had equalised and then without many […]
Watching FC Union Berlin
*This piece was originally published on Shoot Farken, here. Football is a practice of cultural production. Being a fan is intrinsic to issues of identity – nationalism, parochialism, ideology, gender. The football stadium is, most often, an overwhelmingly male space. Fans claim space within the city; filling up trains and dominating sidewalks. The traces of […]
Black and Proud
The Blackness of the Game: After Reading Klugman and Osmond’s, Black and Proud Sport is a social space in which racism can be both perpetuated and combated. Sport, as a part of mainstream society, is implicated in debates and discourses on racism at all of its levels. From the amateur level, to that of the […]
Sriwedari Stadium
Sriwedari Stadium Solo and Yogyakarta are two central Javanese cities separated only by some 60km. The fans of the two main teams, those of PSIM in Yogyakarta and Persis Solo in Solo, fight when they pass through each others cities. In the Divisi Utama season of 2013-14, arrangements were made so that the teams played […]
Retro Football and the Footscray Bulldogs
Retro Football and the formerly Footscray Bulldogs Footscray’s greatest player, Ted Whitten, is also the icon of Victorian football and the champion of interstate rivalry. And, the Western Bulldogs are one of the AFL’s least glamorous clubs. Along with Melbourne, North Melbourne, St.Kilda and Greater Western Sydney they have a low membership and low crowd-drawing […]
Playing Cities Making Sport
Andy Fuller, Playing Cities Making Sport, Yogyakarta: Tan Kinira Books, 2014 This book came out of an attempt to archive what I have written over the past two-to-three years. Initially, I wanted to collect all of my shorter writings and essays. They were to be grouped under the headings of: cities; literature; sport. After a […]
Lapangan Minggiran
An anthropology of Lapangan Minggiran, Yogyakarta In the mornings, I walk to Lapangan Minggiran: about one kilometer from my house. To get there, I walk through the small yard of a kampung, in which a few children play and where the elders burn rubbish. A middle-aged woman has a stall on the corner and she […]