AustLit

'There is no doubt that soccer began to be associated with European ethnic groups in Australia after the Chifley government’s intake of ‘New Australians’ from non-Anglo-Irish European countries. This began the erosion of the White Australia Policy after 1947 and, essentially overnight, converted the sport’s base from its traditional British constitution. So much so that the epithet ‘wogball’ was enshrined as a colloquialism in the Macquarie Dictionary. Yet, the inception of Jewish and Yugoslavian teams in Western Australia before 1947 shows that the institutionalisation of ethnic teams in soccer was a process that began between the wars.'  (Publication abstract)