This week the areas of my past and present university life have intersected. It has been proposed that the Melbourne Football Club be put on the National Trust Heritage register.
This is an interesting thing, because intangible heritage is still a new and contested area among heritage studies and practice, so much so that Australia is yet to become states party to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the National Trust are having a conference next week to discuss the issues surrounding intangible heritage.
I wont bore you with the details here. The intricacies of the world of national and international heritage legislation are interesting to only a very few. Find me in a pub after about 3 wines if you want to hear the full story.
Were the Melbourne Football Club to be listed, which incidentally I think there is a lot of merit in doing, it would not afford the club and protection whatsoever. And this is where the media always get it wrong. They don’t understand heritage and report everything to do with it badly - when they report it at all.
‘Club spokesman Leigh Newton rejected suggestions the push for heritage listing was a strategic move to stave off extinction or stymie attempts to forcibly relocate Victorian clubs interstate.’
No kidding. The reason it is not a strategic move, is because there is absolutely no strategic advantage to doing so. National Trust heritage listing is a plaque, a little recognition, advice on advocacy from the National Trust if it is threatened, and if the planets align correctly, a marginally more favourable attitude from Heritage Victoria – thought at present they have no capacity to recognise intangible heritage at all.
I think there is value in listing the football club, in recognition of its development of the game and as a founding club. But no one should be deluded into thinking such a listing could have any impact on the chances of the club's survival.
Update: Jake Niall gets its almost half right:
'Similarly, it would be wonderful to maintain the presence of the game's oldest club. But Stynes can't ensure the survival of the Melbourne Football Club via a heritage listing. It will live or die on the basis of its present-day relevance.'
Its still a really annoying article though.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The MFC, nightclubs and other things I dont know anything about
Radio silence over. Apologies for the slackness people, I discovered Friday Night Lights and a month of my life disappeared.
The last month has been an interesting one in the world of football. My football team has celebrated its 150 years of being in style (I gather - the tickets were so hugely expensive I didn’t go and I don’t know anyone who did). And the team now oscillates between half-arsed, bullshit, membership tearing losses, and impressive, really quite near to good, gallant losses. Its heady days! One day, sometime, we might actually get a W. But looking at the fixture and our “forward line”* I don’t think its going to be this year.
By the end of toady we will also have a new board. It all looks good to me, everyone seems pretty qualified and like all Melbourne supporters I think Jim Stynes is a dead-set champion who can do no wrong. I would, however, like to note the lack of women on his ticket. At the end of this rigmarole we will have only one woman on the board. This is not pleasing.
The topic of footballers and nightclubs has arisen a couple of times in the last month, and what I have to say is this:
I don’t actually know anyone who has been thrown out of a nightclub, and given the behaviour of some people still inside, I’m inclined to believe that it probably pretty difficult to get thrown out.
Can these footballers not keep their head down, have a beverage with their mates, take a few happy snaps on their mobile phones and bugger off home like the rest of us? Apparently they can't because they are harassed by people wanting autographs and blokes wanting to test their manhood by picking a fight. I believe them, and that doesn’t sound like very much fun to me. So my question is, why are footballers still going to nightclubs?
These guys are on enormous paychecks, they all have shiny houses they live in with their footballing mates, so I’ve got an idea, a quick post game trip to Dan's and they can enjoy themselves in the comfort of their own home free from harassment, bouncers and Herald Sun photographers. The only front window they will take a piss on is their own. Problem solved. Next…
Having said that, Buddy didn’t really do anything terrible, and it seems Richo didn’t do anything at all, so I think we should all just take a chill pill.
Round 12 here we come.
On reflection, its possible I might have read a little too much wwtdd today, so things are more acerbic than usual. I’ll aim for something more cerebral for the next installment.
*These quotation marks are on purpose. Something else entirely is going on with these.
The last month has been an interesting one in the world of football. My football team has celebrated its 150 years of being in style (I gather - the tickets were so hugely expensive I didn’t go and I don’t know anyone who did). And the team now oscillates between half-arsed, bullshit, membership tearing losses, and impressive, really quite near to good, gallant losses. Its heady days! One day, sometime, we might actually get a W. But looking at the fixture and our “forward line”* I don’t think its going to be this year.
By the end of toady we will also have a new board. It all looks good to me, everyone seems pretty qualified and like all Melbourne supporters I think Jim Stynes is a dead-set champion who can do no wrong. I would, however, like to note the lack of women on his ticket. At the end of this rigmarole we will have only one woman on the board. This is not pleasing.
The topic of footballers and nightclubs has arisen a couple of times in the last month, and what I have to say is this:
I don’t actually know anyone who has been thrown out of a nightclub, and given the behaviour of some people still inside, I’m inclined to believe that it probably pretty difficult to get thrown out.
Can these footballers not keep their head down, have a beverage with their mates, take a few happy snaps on their mobile phones and bugger off home like the rest of us? Apparently they can't because they are harassed by people wanting autographs and blokes wanting to test their manhood by picking a fight. I believe them, and that doesn’t sound like very much fun to me. So my question is, why are footballers still going to nightclubs?
These guys are on enormous paychecks, they all have shiny houses they live in with their footballing mates, so I’ve got an idea, a quick post game trip to Dan's and they can enjoy themselves in the comfort of their own home free from harassment, bouncers and Herald Sun photographers. The only front window they will take a piss on is their own. Problem solved. Next…
Having said that, Buddy didn’t really do anything terrible, and it seems Richo didn’t do anything at all, so I think we should all just take a chill pill.
Round 12 here we come.
On reflection, its possible I might have read a little too much wwtdd today, so things are more acerbic than usual. I’ll aim for something more cerebral for the next installment.
*These quotation marks are on purpose. Something else entirely is going on with these.
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