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Some nice insights here into the power of sport to bring a city together, even if it might be a bit illusory (and sometimes exclusive).  The story was a little disorganised - if you can come up with a way to visually link your posts, it would read much better.  there are a couple of contributions that if placed at the beginning and tweaked a little would have made nice introductions.  Good work on doing some extra reading and tying in examples from other cities. Spencer and Joshua seemed to have gone missing this week? 

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Some nice insights here into the power of sport to bring a city together, even if it might be a bit illusory (and sometimes exclusive).  The story was a little disorganised - if you can come up with a way to visually link your posts, it would read much better.  there are a couple of contributions that if placed at the beginning and tweaked a little would have made nice introductions.  Good work on doing some extra reading and tying in examples from other cities. Spencer and Joshua seemed to have gone missing this week? 

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Sport as a foundation for urban communities are not always very  inclusive, and can even create a dangerous culture. Professional sports in Australia, and the world, are mostly male dominated realms, and what little opportunities exists for women in professional sports do not receive the same amount of attention. This has led sport to, historically, be a very masculine environment, arguably toxic too, and one that excludes women and the LGBT+ community. There has certainly been attempts in recent times to close this gap and make sport more inclusive, however, sports communities still suffer from homophobia, sexism and in some cases an increase in domestic violence.

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In Brisbane, not being a part of the Broncos community doesn't really isolate oneself. There are government initiatives that give members perks like cheaper public transport, however an individual wouldn't be ostracised for not being a part of this sport community, as one may in say Melbourne, in regard to the AFL culture.

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Sport is a very important aspect to culture in Australia, and so it is unsurprising that it is a significant part of the lives of individuals. Sport is often an avenue for community; as children are often part of social group sports, where parents of a particular suburb or urban community can meet up and bond over a common ground. These community orientated children sports teams can become significant parts of a community; building pride for a community and sometimes a means for capital with community fundraising events. Children and adolescent community sport teams do very well in fundraising events like Grill'd local matters.

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In conlusion: as a symbolic community, Broncos can be said to have some actual influence on Brisbanites, injecting meaning into their social lives as exactly people of Brisbane, home to the Broncos. On a more pessimistic note, though, it is hard to see how this influence could have a strong role in the tough world of social reality (Brent 2004:216)

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A critical assessment: Broncos community not as a place but rather a ritualistic, brief and symbolic community

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A critical assessment: Broncos community not as a place but rather a ritualistic, brief and symbolic community

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Brent 2004 takes up a discussion of ’community’ as an illusion, stating that confusion and paradoxes around the term makes it an insubstantiality built on incompletion, division and changeability (Brent 2004:220).  It is fair to consider of this example as a community illusion because of its very loose ties to an actual location in time and space and its rather vague level of ‘sharedness’ in terms of values and a socio-economic entity.

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“Communities, too, are divisive. They are about the constructing of boundaries between who is defined as inside and who outside. Being inside gives both position and status to the individual, cocooning them from the social diversity of the city, providing a means of support and a (territorial) base upon which to maintain individual and group identity. But boundaries are exclusionary, a means of othering those to be excluded, and though in a liberal democratic society people have a right to form exclusivist types of association, their almost natural tendency is to promote self-interest towards outsiders.”

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Sport is mostly a "mans" game, but over recent years the sports community has come together to recognise the diversity around the world. It has become a vision of hope for some, a leisure time for most, and most importantly can bring together people whom dont tend to come together.

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fans watch pre-game Gridiron highlights in New Orleans in a parking lot.

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Thinking of the events within and around the sport as interaction rituals that charge participants with EE and creating a strong sense of meaning and belonging, that may but briefly be attached to a very specific location in time and space (e.g. the city of Brisbane, Caxton St).  In this sense, there can be talk of a more abstract level of belonging that concerns Broncos and their symbolic status as a ‘figure of Brisbane’.

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Broncos fans and their symbols

If we consider this EE embedded into the symbolic figures of the club (e.g. the club logo), whenever a person who has participated in one of these rituals sees a City Cat (Photo #1) with a Broncos symbol on it, they may be reminded of their emotional belonging to that specific club, which also could entail a specific belonging to the city of Brisbane and certain areas like Caxton St. Through photo #2 and #3, we see examples of how the symbols take part in creating connectedness in a quite up-front and almost ritualistic way through clothing and even body paint.

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Broncos CityCat

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However, looking through the theoretical lens of Randall Collins’ concepts of interaction rituals and emotional energy (EE) we may still find a ‘place’ for a Broncos community that has an impact on people’s everyday lives. Just as Brent emphasizes, though community may be somewhat illusory, we should recognize how much it is a part of social life, and this post is brief effort at exactly that (Brent 2004:216).