On the eve of an AFLM grand final like no other, can the shadow of the pandemic make us strive for something better?
- Written by Matthew Klugman, Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, member of the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network, and Co-convenor of the Olympic Research Network, Victoria University
On the last Saturday of September every year many of the inhabitants of Melbourne, and indeed of the whole of Australia and even in foreign lands, are stricken with a strange infirmity.
So wrote the Australian historian Manning Clark in 1981. He was speaking of the Grand Final of the Victorian Football League (men’s) competition. Of the way...





