‘More Than a Game’: The Footy Show, Fandom and the Construction of Football Celebrities.1

This article investigates the blurring of national, social and identificatory boundaries that the persona of Sam Newman engenders in the Australian television show about Australian Rules football, The Footy Show. The process of feminisation and the incorporation of masculinity in The Footy Show is explored in order to demonstrate how the bricolage of genres and refusal to accept closure attracts and maintains a distinct audience for both the lead characters and the show. Football becomes secondary and even periphery to the primary objective of entertainment and the capturing of fans both old (football) and new (non-football). The narrative trajectories of the show suggests a new means of presenting the pleasure of masculine spectacle that includes female textual forms establishing a new multi-media text and fan base creating the illusion of sport and a new participatory culture. More previews of the weekend’s games followed... and the week’s show was over, destined to be remembered for everything but its football (Graubard, 1999)