Imagining a multicultural community in an everyday football carnival: Chants,identity and social resistance on Western Sydney terraces

Abstract

Football fans around the world chant together to generate a carnivalesque atmosphere as well as to proclaim their collective identity. This paper unveils the key social issues that are behind the chants of the most culturally diverse cohort of football fans in Australia, the Western Sydney Wanderers FC supporters. Using a theoretical approach based on the everyday to look at data gathered over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper reveals how the lyrics of the chants and the noisy carnival of the Wanderers fans express their multicultural identity and their hopes for a non-conflictive community. The findings also demonstrate how the chants challenge mainstream fandom culture in the country and in so doing, express fans’ resistance to the constraints of the current social order. Additionally, the results show how the carnivalesque quality brought to Western Sydney by the chants enters the fans’ daily routine. Closing notes suggest that the methodology used in this research should be employed in different Australian sports codes to examine how multiculturalism is currently enacted in these sites. The paper concludes by proposing that, more than singing for the club, this multicultural cohort is chanting for themselves.

Snapshot of a Western Sydney carnival

When I arrive at the pub, thousands of young people have already congregated behind a red and black ‘West Sydney’ banner, ready for the Red and Black Bloc (RBB) march. Police presence is extensive; the atmosphere, although joyful, is tense. I stand across the street, watching the crowd. Suddenly, a young, dark-bearded man, possibly of southern European background, raises both arms, punches clenched fists into the air, gives a shout and starts to chant. This signal is followed instantly by the trumpets of La Banda and the chanting of supporters:

We’re from the streets of Western Sydney

Home of the mighty RBB – RBB!

We will follow you forever

We will be by your side

C’mon Wanderers, c’mon Wanderers

C’mon c’mon c’mon Wanderers! ¹

The first four lines are sung as a warfare chant. Fans – arms outstretched, fists clenched – scream as loudly as possible and young men take up a physical stance that indicates ‘ready for war’. However, when it comes to the repeated phrase of the last two lines, everyone claps and dances. The same young men leap about, their bodies colliding in mid-air. The ‘fighting’ atmosphere dilutes into a festive one. As supporters make their way toward their team’s home ground (Parramatta Stadium) and bystanders cheer, the atmosphere is that of a carnival.

Introduction

Football chanting has drawn the attention of cultural researchers around the world. It has been variously understood as offering supporters ways to express their identity, demonstrate group cohesion and manifest a collective presence (Kytö, 2011). It has been discussed as allowing fans to express their love for their team and their community as well as claim themselves stronger than their opponents (Blackshaw, 2008). Long seen as an essential part of the game’s atmosphere (Giulianotti, 1995), the mayhem that results from the mix of supporters’ chanting voices, bodies and emotional energy, has the elements of a subversive Bakhtinian carnival (Hoy, 1994), where the prevailing social order is confronted via sarcasm, humour, anarchy or non-conformity. In this sense, the carnivalesque atmosphere created by football fans turns everyday existence upside down (Kath and Knijnik, 2015). Football chanting has also been seen as a vehicle for political protest – in the slogans chanted in demonstrations – and as a form of social contestation against the neoliberal powers that control the game (Numerato, 2015).

Alongside the significance of chants in actual games, chants play an important role in the everyday lives of fans (Schoonderwoerd, 2011). Fans spend many pre-game hours (Clark, 2006) producing banners and flags, preparing percussion and wind instrument shows, and creating and rehearsing easily-learned chants that can be accompanied by simple bodily gestures and sung in unity by thousands (Schoonderwoerd, 2011). Fans wake up singing their team’s chants (Knijnik, 2016) and chant while interacting with relatives, friends and other fans when they meet as they go about their daily business (Giulianotti, 1995), eagerly anticipating the next opportunity to dance and sing with fellow supporters (Clark, 2006).

Researchers have also found that supporters’ sound-making assumes different roles within diverse cultures. In Turkey noise levels are essential for the social empowerment of supporters (Kytö, 2011), whilst in the UK the mocking of rivals plays a key role in the social construction of an ‘us vs them’ atmosphere (Armstrong and Young, 1999). In contrast, chants in South America are central in the making of a heteronormative, violent masculinity amongst the local hinchadas ² (Salcedo and Ruiz, 2007).

Nevertheless, despite a well-developed research tradition in Australian football fandom (Danforth, 2001; Hallinan and Krotee, 1993; Hay, 2011; Hay and McDonald, 2007; Hughson, 1997), studies about chanting are rare. A single Australian study addresses football songs and fan identity among Sydney FC supporters, a largely monocultural group identified with the affluent English-speaking areas of Sydney’s inner city, northern and eastern beaches (Collinson, 2009). However, the majority of football cultures in Australia have been historically sustained by migrants who came to the country during the late 19th century and in larger numbers during the mid-20th century. These migrants, substantively from non-Anglo origins, brought with them their beloved game of football (Hallinan and Krotee, 1993), making the sport across Australia overall a highly multicultural one (Danforth, 2001).

Despite its current status as one of the most multicultural nations in the world, Australia has a history embedded with racism. During most of the past century a shameful ‘White Australia Policy’ has promoted discrimination against, incarceration of and violence towards non-Anglo minorities including the indigenous population (Poynting and Mason, 2007). This racist policy endured from the beginning of the 20th century to the late 1960s, when it was disbanded due to the large number of European migrants seeking refuge after the second world war (Poynting and Mason, 2007). Although multiculturalism became part of the country’s political and social landscape from the early 1970s (Colic-Peisker and Farquharson, 2011), xenophobia towards specific populations, for example Muslim communities, has increased at specific historical moments including post 9/11 and during the violent 2005 Cronulla riots (Poynting and Perry, 2007).

Nevertheless, many younger people have been found to have more progressive attitudes towards immigration and cultural diversity than older generations (Ang et al., 2006). Such attitudes are a clear reflection of the ways that multiculturalism has been constructed as an ideological narrative that aims to promote the positive aspects of cultural diversity (Colic-Peisker and Farquharson, 2011).

However, accounts of ethnic bias in the country are still present in the everyday experiences of communities from non-Anglo backgrounds (Ang et al., 2006). These narratives reflect the Anglo-white hegemony within the country (Tavan, 2005). This white-Anglo dominance can clearly be seen in Australian sports history. While sports such as cricket, which is identified with Anglo communities, helped to shape Australia’s international identity (Danforth, 2001) and football codes like Australian Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union have long been associated with the political ideals of White Australia (Adair, 2009), football (soccer) became ostracised as the game of the ethnic minorities (Danforth, 2001).

However, football survived in society’s margins as a site with an increasing number of multicultural narratives and histories (Danforth, 2001). Hence the performances that occur within football pubs, streets and football stadia allow fans to create new forms of multicultural conviviality and reshape their social identities (Clark, 2006). It is of interest, therefore, to examine the concrete and usually micro conditions where the displays and conflicts of a multicultural life in fact operate (Wise, 2009). Everyday multiculturalism (Colombo, 2010; Harris, 2013, 2014; Wise, 2009) offers an ideal lens for this examination because it highlights the significance of the ways that cultural difference is ‘produced in the messy interstices of daily life’ (Sherman, 2009: 176).

This paper explores the socio-cultural meanings that emerge from the boisterous chants of the Western Sydney Wanderers FC (hereafter ‘Wanderers’) fans and their hard-core support group known as Red and Black Bloc (hereafter ‘RBB’). I begin by describing the origins and importance of the Wanderers club and their fan group the RBB to the Western Sydney area, followed by a brief summary of the everyday multiculturalism theoretical framework employed in the paper. I continue by outlining the fieldwork and the research methodologies that support this study and then I discuss my data – a selection of the main chants of the RBB. This is followed by an analysis of the social impact of the lyrics as well as of the mix of bodies and emotional energy generated by fans to create the carnivalesque atmosphere. I use this discussion as an illustration of the main argument presented in this article: that the chanting by the RBB and Wanderers fans symbolises not only their multicultural identity but also their desire for social acknowledgement and, to some extent, their social resistance to the mainstream Anglo culture of the country.

Prejudice against football, the Wanderers and the RBB

Western Sydney is the ‘home of immigrants’ in Australia. Close to 60% of its residents came – or are descendants of migrants – from around the world (Gow, 2005). It is the most multicultural region of the country and one of the largest migration settlements in the world (Bireel and Healy, 2003). Located far from the high-priced real estate around the beaches of coastal Sydney and the millionaire views of Sydney Harbour, Western Sydney residents face adversities every day, not only due to a lack of public services, a high level of criminality and few employment options (Arthurson, 2004), but also because of mainstream media and hegemonic Anglo discrimination against its migrant populations (Bireel and Healy, 2003).

Histories of xenophobia in Australia towards immigrants have always walked together with narratives of prejudice against their ‘ethnic’ game, or the ‘round ball code’ (Danforth, 2001; Ricatti and Klugman, 2013). It is not surprising then that a sporting code that has survived in the cultural margins of the country has become strongly connected with the ethnic communities of Western Sydney (Skinner et al., 2008) from which the Wanderers fan group is drawn.

The Wanderers were created in 2012, making them the most recently formed team in the top Australian football league (A-League). Despite this, both the club and its active supporter group have assumed a great social importance for Western Sydney communities (Visontay, 2014). The team has made a major impact both on-field (winning the 2012–2013 minor Premiership and the 2014 Asian Champions League) and off-field, with their voluble support group, the RBB, active on the stands since the club’s inception.

The RBB has also presented Australia with a previously unknown type of fandom culture (see Knijnik, 2015, 2016). At Parramatta Stadium the RBB stands and sings throughout the whole match behind the goals, in the Northern area of the ground known as the ‘active area’ – as opposed to the ‘non-active’ Eastern, Western and Southern sectors of the stadium, where other Wanderers fans remain seated during most of the game. Unlike Sydney FC, the group’s cultural mix is evident in the carnivalesque crowd: Middle Eastern bodies dance together with Africans, Asians and Europeans; subgroups like ‘Latin America 21’ proudly display their cultural identity on banners and T-shirts; fans connect to their ethnic traditions while performing in a multicultural celebration of their current home, the ‘streets of Western Sydney’.

In the RBB, the multicultural youth of Western Sydney have created an innovative cultural hybridisation. The RBB musical troupe known as La Banda is made up of young, local, first or second generation South American and European migrants. These musicians play an original fusion of trumpets, tambours and drums that is a central part of the RBB’s football carnival. Through their songs and dances, RBB members express new forms of conviviality on the football terraces (Knijnik, 2016).

Everyday multiculturalism, chants and football carnival

Cultural identities do not occur as stable units, but rather as practices inherently characterised by ambiguities, uncertainties, modifications and mixing (Colombo, 2010). Cultural difference is a constant process of negotiation, change and conflict between several cultural practices (Colombo, 2010). This does not happen in a vacuum; rather, it is lived and modified in the everyday lives of those in diverse communities.

This process of cultural hybridisation asks for analytical and empirical perspectives that allow researchers to move further than confined dualistic points of view, which simply see the ‘black and white’ tones; the process demands a perspective that can investigate the intermediary, vague and struggling cultural spaces (Colombo, 2010). An everyday multiculturalism lens offers researchers both an empirical locus for an accurate observation of the urban cultural mix and an analytical angle that acknowledges culture as a social construct, and focuses on how cultural difference is uninterruptedly built (Wise, 2009).

Everyday multiculturalism is an approach which gives attention to the ordinary everyday places in which people of diverse social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds encounter each other, and to the ordinary everyday practices people create to manage these encounters (Harris, 2013). The mainstream multicultural agenda supports participation in mainstream culture, albeit through difference, and the lessening of disharmony through the creation of mutual ideals (Harris, 2013). Everyday multiculturalism, on the other hand, sees conflict as part of the social life of super-diverse cities and aims to understand how diversity is actually lived on the ground (Harris, 2013).

Everyday multiculturalism investigations therefore do not look for cultural homogeneity. Rather, they aim to provide sociological content to the idea of cultural difference, by looking at the employment of multiculturalism in social relations, at the performers of difference and their aims, and also at the social landscape where difference occurs (Colombo, 2010). The narratives of everyday multiculturalism intend to offer alternative and meaningful examples (Colombo, 2010) of the cultural dynamics of the daily lives of Australia’s multicultural population (Wise and Velayutham, 2009).

Analysis of everyday multiculturalism can take place in a variety of urban sites – educational settings, parks, markets and sports venues – where culturally mixed performances occur (Wise, 2009). The culturally hybrid chants of the Western Sydney football carnival discussed here are one of the most significant yet under-investigated spaces in which Australian fandom culture is not only being constructed but also contested. Employing an everyday multiculturalism perspective enables me to scrutinise this site where a cultural battle takes place in fandom performances.

Singing and dancing with the RBB: My research on the Western Sydney football carnival

As with many ethnographic works, the study discussed here started with a subjective response (Berry, 2011) to a call generated by the RBB chants – their lyrics and the carnivalesque atmosphere they create. As a migrant and football-lover myself, I was moved (see Knijnik, 2015) when I saw them on a TV sports show. My subsequent analysis of the RBB chants draws on the following:

1. Two years of methodical participant observation (Madden, 2010), accompanying fans in their everyday fandom activities on football terraces, in pubs and in the streets around Australian stadia where they celebrate their team. In my fieldwork all my senses were involved as I employed my ‘whole body as an organic recording device’ (Madden, 2010: 19). This extensive immersion (Berry, 2011) and the informal conversations with fans helped me to understand as well as unveil what was unseen in this particular fandom culture;

2. Twelve in-depth interviews (Hesse-Biber, 2007) with RBB members, giving me further insights into their fandom culture. Eleven of the 12 interviewees who participated in my fieldwork were first or second generation migrants, with three from South America (like myself), two from Southern Europe, two from Central Europe, one from the Middle-East, one from North Africa and two from South-East Asia. They were five women and seven men aged 21 to 29. They were all proud foundation members of the club and had been involved with football since childhood, both playing or watching matches with their families;

3. Information gathered from an RBB insider member who was actively engaged in the group’s song-making; and,

4. Data from fans’ online platforms, where, during the week, they remember and relive (Kytö, 2011) the match day atmosphere.

The fans’ opinions expressed on these social media channels as well as quotes from the interviews were collated and synthesised through a thematic analyses method (Berry, 2011) and compared and contrasted with the songs’ meanings and performances. I then categorised the chants into three themes (Berry, 2011): those that praise the fans’ home of Western Sydney and show the fans’ connection with global pop and football cultures; those whose lyrics talk about the hardship of being a working class immigrant from Western Sydney; and those where body movements have a central role in the construction of social meanings of unity. Despite being a comprehensive discussion, the word limits of this article do not allow me to address all RBB chants. Additionally and importantly, chant meanings are fluid and interpretation of the football carnivalesque – from ‘just fun’ to subversive action – is a contested terrain between fans; therefore, what I offer here is an open interpretation of the chants as they occurred during the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 A-League seasons.

The data analysed here were collected between 2013 and 2015 in a larger ethnographic project on football fandom in Western Sydney (Knijnik, 2015, 2016) which received approval from the University’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

The following section describes and discusses the main chants of the RBB. Where possible, I provide the origins of the chant lyrics and melody; I describe the associated body actions that accompany the performances because they are central to the carnivalesque atmosphere; and I discuss the meaning of both lyrics and actions.

The chants

Our place in the world

Central to many RBB chants is supporters’ praise of Western Sydney as their own place. The chant highlighted in the introductory vignette of this paper, ‘Streets of Western Sydney’, shows how the members of the RBB both embed themselves in their local community and draw on the world’s pop and football culture. While the chant – adapted from a song from supporters of the Argentinean club San Lorenzo – celebrates their home town, it is chanted to the melody of ‘Bad Moon Rising’ (by the Californian band Creedence Clearwater Revival).

The connections between the local community and the influences of international football cultures can also be seen in a second chant, ‘We are the Terrace’. This is sung to the melody of ‘Sos Cagon’ (‘You’re a chicken’), a song from the Argentinean club River Plate. Originally, ‘Sos Cagon’ was a sarcastic chant that positioned the opposition supporters as being afraid of everything, including police and fighting other fan groups. With the RBB, though, it has been transformed into another sign of ‘local identity-making’ (Harris, 2009: 195):

We are the terrace

Of the RBB

Supporting the famous

West Sydney

We love this city

We love this team

Shoulder to shoulder

Together we sing! (here the tune changes)

Wanderers Wanderers

Wanderers Wandererssssssssssssssss

Supporters sing a cappella up to the line, ‘Together we sing’, clapping between each line. Just before singing the team’s name, though, La Banda’s drums make a sudden, loud entrance and everybody starts to jump up and down together, waving their hands, scarves and flags.

The third chant, ‘This city we own’, praises the fans’ home and is one of the fans’ favourite chants. Usually other non-active Wanderers fan sectors of the stadium join the RBB with the clapping and the singing of this chant:

These colours unite us all

All the places we’re from

In this city we own

We call West Sydney home

Oh oh oh/oh oh oh oh

Once again, this chant demonstrates the links between the RBB’s place and international youth culture: ‘This city we own’ is sung to the tune of ‘Rivers of Babylon’, originally written and recorded in 1970 by a Jamaican reggae group, ‘The Melodians’. It became popular in Europe in the late 1970s in its Boney M version and the melody forms part of the chanting repertoire of the fans of the Greek football club, Panathinaikos.

The disposition of the RBB to celebrate their own place while relating to the powerful flows of cultural globalisation (Harris, 2009) is evident in this set of chants. This is similar to Harris’ (2013) finding, in a comprehensive study on the daily lives of multicultural youth in Australia, that the most progressive amongst them were those who have great flexibility to adjust to a changing and highly hybrid world. Harris (2013) argues that the youth’s vanguard are able to simultaneously live in their own local spaces while competently navigating the new media formats produced by the ‘global culture industries’ (Harris, 2013: 5).

These chants demonstrate that the RBB negotiate cultural boundaries across several cultures on a daily basis (Harris, 2009). The chants are cross-cultural constructions that show supporters’ attachment to their place whilst shifting cultural barriers in their daily lives.

Our lives in our place

Place is a recurring theme that appears in football chants across the world (Robson, 2000). By connecting to their particular social space, fans worldwide can express their emotions – sometimes in liturgical ways (Robson, 2000) – but also communicate, through lyrics and gestures, their social frustration. The following two chants use the imagery of suffering but also express the social resistance embedded in the fans’ everyday lives as Western Sydney residents.

The first chant ‘Glorious’ is regarded by fans as the unofficial anthem of the club. The RBB sings it every time the team walks on the field. As an anthem with a solemn tone, ‘Glorious’ calls for a pause in the carnivalesque atmosphere. It starts with the trumpets playing the melody while fans stand silent with their red and black scarves stretched horizontally above their heads. When the trumpets fall silent, the voices sing solemnly, a cappella:

For all the time we’ve been

They speak about the west

We know the lives we lead

The hearts upon our chest

and for West Sydney we

Will stand atop the crest

And sing for you again

More glorious than death

When the verse finishes, the drums and trumpets begin again, at greater speed; the fans display their scarves over their heads while vocalising the melody soulfully on the syllable ‘oh’.

The West Sydney social drama is highlighted in each verse of this song. The first two lines make a claim about ‘them’. ‘They’ are the upper-class of the city’s inner and Eastern suburbs as well as the power structures that protect them: the mainstream media, government authorities and police. The creation of binary oppositions, such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, is a common trait of football chants worldwide (Collinson, 2009; Robson, 2000). Here it also assumes another meaning: the critique of the stereotyping that ‘they’ apply to the ‘poor, unemployed and lazy’ people from Western Sydney. This discriminatory labelling that comes from ‘them’ is acknowledged by the interviewees, for example, when one says ‘Sydney FC fans call us dole bludgers, thugs, homeless…I am sick of this sort of insults’.

Alongside the football battle, the ‘us vs them’ in this chant is a social conflict acknowledged by the fans (Harris, 2013); as much as these young people have lived under a dominant ideology that seeks to promote a peaceful and non-conflictual multiculturalism (Colic-Peisker and Farquharson, 2011), they perceive conflict in their everyday lives (Harris, 2013). This is the first step for a growing social consciousness represented in the following lines: ‘We know the lives we lead, the hearts upon our chest’. They are conscious that they live difficult lives, and they proclaim themselves to be hard workers with extended workloads and little money or leisure time. The construction of an ‘us’ who share the space of the everyday football carnival helps fans express their sense of belonging to a different and undermined social group, the struggling working class (Kytö, 2011).

These claims become even stronger in the second chant, ‘Matador’ (a Spanish word for ‘killer’). Once again, South-American trumpets introduce the chant, with the opening first 30 seconds a blast of sound. Then the trumpets fall silent, a mix of loud Balkan drums demands everyone’s attention, and the voices start their claim:

We are the RBB, listen to our call

Together we are the blood of this city

Suits will come and go

But the BLOC will never fall

Now it’s time to lose yourself for West Sydney

Wanderers aaaoohhh

Wanderers aaaooohhhAAAooohhh

‘Matador’ is a chant where, once again, the RBB place themselves as the oppressed workers who keep this society functioning (‘the blood of this city’). Unlike the ‘suits’ – the CEOs, managers and the rich – who are there simply to explore their passion, the true fans of the RBB will resist united and never fall. The chant clearly expresses the social class battle that fans consider embedded in their lives. The chant’s expression of loyalty to place, combined with the social class theme, results in, on the one hand, an ode to social resistance and, on the other hand, an ode to an idealised Western Sydney as the place where ‘we’ can build a common identity that will overcome (or hide) all social conflicts (Schoonderwoerd, 2011).

Our bodies

In his in-depth analysis of Millwall fandom, Robson (2000) remarks that ‘sticking together’ is a central feature of that fan group, due in part to their small numbers. Fans were particularly keen for a unified experience and the inspirational and emotional power that these moments would bring them (Robson, 2000).

Embodied intimacy, likewise, plays a key role in the high-intensity emotional flow of the RBB football carnival. The next three chants to be discussed express a desire for togetherness in their football combats, and the RBB ensure that this aspiration for union is not only sung but also acted out in the body movements that accompany the chant. The collective construction of a multicultural conviviality (Wise, 2010) becomes highly embodied in these three chants.

The first, ‘Call to Arms’, is a chant sung to the melody of ‘The Logical Song’ (Supertramp):

When you were born you made my life so wonderful

I can’t say no

Oh the feeling was magical

You inked your name onto my heart right from the start

A Call to Arms

Stand together and fight as one

Terere Terere

The first part of this song refers to the relatively recent birth of the club and expresses the fans’ love for their ‘new-born’; hence, it is sung from a deeply emotional state. ‘Magical feelings’, ‘heart’, ‘a life that becomes wonderful’ are all evidence of this state. In the second part of the song, there is a sudden change of mood, calling everyone together to support their team to win in battle: ‘a call to arms’ to ‘fight as one’. To end the song, they show what their ‘battle’ is all about: they want to have fun, so they embrace whoever is nearby and jump together, side to side, following the La Banda trumpets, in a collective dance. At that moment, they form a single compacted body made up of thousands of different parts – the amalgamated supporters’ bodies ‘fighting as one’.

Similar lyrics and gestures are present in ‘We unite as one’, based on a melody from a supporter chant of a Polish club. This song also suggests that togetherness is the only way to achieve the club’s aims:

Ale ale aaooh

ale ale aaooh

anywhere you go

We will sure follow

ale ale aaooh

ale ale aaooh

Look how far we’ve come

We unite as one

A South-American-style trumpet solo starts this song, followed by loud drums, voices and hands clapping above heads. RBB leaders, arms outstretched and fists clenched, urge everyone to scream even louder and in unity. Their message is clear: fans can go far in this war if they are ‘united as one’. During this chant, fans climb on their seats, clap their hands and then squat on their seats, repeating the lyrics. The atmosphere is somehow brooding, and the chant rhythm slow. Suddenly, as fans finish the last line, La Banda speeds up the rhythm; fans stand, embrace each other and start jumping together. The brooding ‘warfare’ atmosphere is replaced by a carnivalesque one; everyone is jumping on their seats, clapping and waving flags and scarves.

The body contact required to perform these movements momentarily obliterates the supporters’ personal space, as they aim to build something bigger: a one-body crowd. In the spaces of the football carnival, the individual self (Wise, 2010) is replaced by a multicultural body that is ‘fighting as one’.

The last song I discuss confirms the fans’ wish to create a giant body that will fight for their team colours, under any conditions, and that will always be united:

Win or lose

we will always follow you

let it rain and pour,

we will sing forevermore

Our opponents know

we will fight them toe to toe

Forever red and black,

you can bet your life on that.

RBB! olé olé olé

RBB olé RBB olé olé

RBB! olé olé olé

The last chorus of this RBB anthem is sung while Wanderers fans from all active and non-active sectors in the stadium perform the Poznań celebration: everyone turns their back to the pitch, embraces whoever is beside them and starts jumping and shouting, ‘RBB, olé olé olé’. This internationally famous celebration started with the supporters of Polish football club, Lech Poznań, and spread to other European teams. The RBB urges all Wanderers fans to perform it at the 80th minute of every match. The Poznań is usually well-received as a moment of united celebration and as an opportunity to embrace fellow supporters from other ethnic groups. It is a carnivalesque moment that generates fun and a sense of unity.

Next, I examine this sentiment of unification as the ‘football gift’ brought to the region by the Wanderers and its fans.

The cultural gift of the everyday football carnival

In February 2014, as match day was approaching, an image was posted on a Wanderers’ supporters’ online site. It showed the club’s shield, surrounded by countless national flags of countries around the world. Written below the image was: ‘These colours unite us all’ (the first line of ‘This city we own’). Almost instantly, hundreds of fans started commenting on the post, cheering on their national symbols: Guatemala! Peru! Nigeria! Iraq! Japan! Bosnia! Poland! The country list was seemingly endless. A fan summarised the feelings of the online thread participants, stating: ‘This is the Wanderers’ gift to Western Sydney’. This concept of ‘gift’ – the feeling of union above all – brought to the region by the Wanderers and the RBB is regularly expressed by fans and is acknowledged by the media and other football stakeholders.

The empirical reflections of everyday multiculturalism acknowledge that cultural gifts are a central part of multicultural communities’ everyday lives; it is through these sorts of gifts that communities are formed and borders are overcome (Wise in Neal, 2015). The ‘gift’ presented by the Wanderers and their fans to Western Sydney communities is the bond of trust and gratitude (Neal, 2015) formed around the team’s fandomship. This cultural gift of unity over difference brought to these communities by the ritualistic exchanges incorporated in the fans’ daily carnival ‘can turn people outwards’ (Neal, 2015: 991). The RBB chants express these ideals of unity (‘the colours that unite us all’), which are informed by an integrationist agenda that encourages mutual beliefs and partaking in ordinary public life as vital to a collective sense of fitting in during periods of rapid change (Colic-Peisker and Farquharson, 2011; Harris, 2013).

This social cohesion agenda, however, by denying any cultural or social conflict, hides the contradictions that exist between everyday reality and the dreamed-of community (Harris, 2013). These ambiguities appear in the RBB chants and carnival. While the chants proclaim an idealised unity in their beloved city, the loud voices and non-conforming bodies of the RBB members construct difference and contest within mainstream Anglo cosmopolitan culture with their rebellious Bakhtinian carnival (Hoy, 1994; Wise and Velayutham, 2009). In the following section, I discuss these paradoxes between the integrationist agenda that aims to harmonise differences and the unruled bodies of the Western Sydney football carnival.

Un-Australian bodies and the ultimate multicultural dream

Harris (2009) argues that bodies are a key element in the (re)shaping of civic culture within multicultural communities. In studying the emotional impact of inter-cultural living on Australian migrants, Wise (2010) has observed profound differences in views of bodily behaviour in public spaces as held by different cultures. There is a multitude of ways that culturally diverse people perform touch, gesture, facial expression, proxemics (space between bodies) and body contact. In her research, Wise (2010) unveiled the discomfort that bodily space brings to multicultural encounters, which are per nature embodied.

By chanting about their love for their city and their club, RBB fans not only reinforce their ties with their place (‘we love this city’), but they also show how much their identity is intrinsically connected to their everyday multicultural embodied (‘shoulder to shoulder’) encounters (Robson, 2000). When the culturally diverse cohort of the RBB members occupy public spaces and shape new kinds of identities (Harris, 2009), they contest traditional Anglo ways to behave in public places.

These public expressions of embodied love for a team and a city have not been readily accepted by the gatekeepers of modern football – namely the state security authorities and mainstream media (Numerato, 2015). As new non-conventional sports supporters dance and sing on the streets and in the stadia and as new cultures openly display their identities, they ignite the ‘fear of the other’ agenda (Noble, 2005) in the police, mainstream media and general public. Mainstream media commentators have controversially compared Western Sydney fans with ‘terrorists’ (Hasset, 2015) and a national newspaper published a Sunday edition the cover of which portrayed the ‘Soccer shame files’ with photos of hundreds of banned A-League fans, most of whom were from the Western Sydney Wanderers (Wilson, 2015). ³ The police have been heavily monitoring each move of the RBB (Knijnik, 2016), justifying their actions by brandishing the ‘soccer hooligans’ stereotype that has consistently been used to stigmatise ethnic football communities in Australia (Hay, 2011). The police have tried to stop fans from clapping above their heads and jumping from side to side; they have blocked fans from standing on seats to do their body moves; and they have prohibited fans from their marches.

The authorities appear to be making a claim that they, not the fans, are in charge of the ‘streets of Western Sydney’. The authorities have failed, however, to recognise that the carnivalesque atmosphere is a customary way that particular cultures express themselves on football stands and that different communities have differing styles of fandom culture (Schoonderwoerd, 2011).

It appears that the RBB’s carnivalesque desire to ‘follow their team forever, shoulder to shoulder on the streets of Western Sydney’ does not fit the authorities’ ‘how to support a team’ textbook. There is a similarity here between the carnivalesque bodies of the RBB supporters and the body culture of the Filipino-Australian basketballers studied by Aquino (2015: 172); members of both groups lack the ‘rationalised and controlled’ body demanded by the gatekeepers of modern sport. Australian basketball representative and professional teams, it seems, do not admit Filipino-Australians for the same reason that the police try to restrict the movements of the RBB carnival on the streets of Western Sydney; their body culture does not conform to white middle class expectations of corporeal behaviour (Aquino, 2015) and they do not behave according to certain norms of ‘right’ Australian-ness, such as minimal noise-levels, limited body contact with other fans and limited movement on the stands (Wise, 2010). The unruly dancing bodies of the RBB challenge these norms; their bodily dispositions ‘cannot be fixed in “Australian values”’ (Harris, 2013: 144). In their everyday carnival, they constitute a new and ‘un-Australian’ Western Sydney.

It can be seen in the lyrics of their chants that the RBB youth invest intensely in Western Sydney as a place of belonging (Harris, 2014). This is confirmed by an interviewee who says ‘we sing and fight for our pride of Western Sydney being number one not only on the field and terraces but on the streets’. RBB members are proud of their cultural and social origins (‘we call this city home’), and often lack the resources to move out of the region, so it is within their local environment that they develop their social networks and leisure practices (Harris, 2014). These are the places where they live and, even if their chants show how conscious they are of the social discomfort and tensions that arise in their everyday encounters with the state security apparatus (Noble, 2005), the same chants idealise Western Sydney as an entity that can enable a desirable union over and above differences (Harris, 2014): a welcoming multicultural home, the place for which this homogeneous ‘we’ should live and die, as our sentiments are ‘more glorious than death’.

Overall, the RBB achieve their goal of togetherness and cultural inclusion through these chants. The everydayness of their football carnival would be incomplete without this dream of a region that can be united in difference (Colombo, 2010).

Final remarks

This research employed the perspective of everyday multiculturalism, which recognises the value of considering the physical places where groups from diverse backgrounds meet (Harris, 2009). As proper public channels of communication are commonly denied to new generations (Harris, 2009), I have turned my attention to one of the few public spaces where these young people exercise some kind of social agency, where they can contest the established powers that do not give them a voice and where they can perform their lived experience of diversity. The close attention to the most significant cultural products of this support group – their chants and their carnival – poses an inevitable question: can the RBB be considered a social movement that seeks social advancement?

Some scholars (Kaufman and Wolff, 2010) have questioned whether sports should be a site for growing social consciousness. These authors argue that the rise of the ‘athlete-activist’ profile is central to the expansion of social and political causes as athletes have a direct link to supporters and can employ this association to promote engagement with social change. Jarvie (2007) has pointed out a range of symbolic ways that athletes such as the runner Cathy Freeman (to stay within Australian borders) have used to promote social change. However, these are examples of public figures who have decided to engage in social issues. Would the anonymous fan be able to do the same? Numerato (2015) believes that, particularly in football, there is no better space to practice social protests than football stands. The author claims that the communal cultural learning embedded within fandom activities can be easily transferred to other collective forms of political demonstration.

The evidence I gathered during my fieldwork and the analysis of the Wanderers’ fans’ chants can provide an answer to the question of whether the RBB is a social movement looking for social advancement or not. Wanderers’ fans are proud of what they achieve with their chaotic multicultural carnival. By bringing their unique, embodied, carnivalesque culture to the public spaces of the streets and the sports stadia, they challenge the otherwise Anglo-conservative bodily norms that are the mainstream format for the behaviour of sports fans in Australia. In their football carnival, they fully breathe the ambiguities of resisting the social order, living the everyday cultural conflict or avoiding it in the name of social cohesion ideals. Their loud songs respond to a social cohesion agenda that has not paid attention to their thoughts, so they chant to have their voices heard. In this sense, they may be regarded as a loose social movement that symbolises some ongoing issues of the country’s multicultural agenda.

At the same time, fans’ identities become fluid during the football carnival; while supporting and chanting, fans leave other identities (subculture, gender, age and single ethnicity) to one side to join an idealised multicultural identity (Anderson, 1991) and through their chants and dancing bodies they proudly express the belief that they have a new culture that needs to be listened to and neither discriminated against nor repressed. The chants support the creation of an imaginary multicultural community (Stratton and Ang, 1994); in Anderson (1991)’s terms, they symbolically supress difference to produce a dreamed-of united community. Moreover, these RBB chants provide fans with the opportunity to cheer for that which each of them has accomplished as a resident of Western Sydney. As the chants and the carnivalesque atmosphere they catalyse overflow the sports arena and pervade the daily life of Western Sydney, they paradoxically create micro-everyday carnivals that subvert citizens’ routines, improving socialisation and camaraderie in the region.

The qualitative methodology employed in this data collection should now be taken to other sports codes such as Rugby, Cricket and Australian Football Rules (or AFL as its national League is known) in order to expand the research horizons and develop a thorough understanding of multiculturalism and sports fandom in Australia. It would be interesting, methodologically challenging and theoretically innovative to compare data from fans of the multicultural world game of football with evidence collected in ‘parochial’ Australian games which, if in the past were seen as pillars of White Australia, currently have been inundated by players and supporters from culturally diverse backgrounds. These comparisons could shed light on the everyday multicultural lives of current-day Australian sports fans and help policy makers to understand and manage – rather than police and ban – fans from a diverse range of social and cultural contexts.

Grand finale: ‘Who do we sing for?’

‘Who do we sing for’ is the RBB’s ‘call and response chant’ (Kytö, 2011: 86), when one side of the group shouts something at another, and then receives a reply. The RBB sector starts by raising their arms, waggling their fingers and vocalising in the direction of a non-active sector of Wanderers fans who respond in the same way. Then, the RBB leader, in synchrony with the drums, counts to three, and all RBB members shout, ‘Who do we sing for?’ The other sector replies, ‘We sing for the Wanderers!’. After a few repetitions, every Wanderers supporter in the stadium is screaming, clapping, dancing and making as much noise as possible. It is the RBB’s carnival’s apotheosis.

‘Who do we sing for?’ is also chanted by Wanderers players when, after winning a match, they chant along with supporters; it is performed on Western Sydney streets in everyday life, when one fan sees another with a Wanderers’ flag or sticker in their car and either greets them briefly or starts a longer football conversation.

During my two-year period of fieldwork I attended the Western Sydney football spaces and joined the fans in chanting for the Wanderers. By taking part in the daily practices of this multicultural cohort of football fans, in a socially underprivileged area, I was able to verify the centrality of the football carnival. Their chants express the difficulties and pleasures of their daily lives – some of which were hidden until the chants voiced them. Fans have incorporated the chants as part of their everyday business; these chants facilitate relationships during day-to-day life and can even emulate the cherished real football carnival atmosphere.

As a migrant I found a new voice in my new country while conducting this ethnography with football fans, and next time a fellow fan sees my Wanderers’ flag in my car and asks me, ‘Who do we sing for?’, my reply will undoubtedly be, ‘We sing for ourselves!’.