Listing the MFC

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.