Lionel Messi: The man who fell to Earth in Hong Kong

When Lionel Messi failed to take the field in a pre-season exhibition football (soccer) match in Hong Kong, the furious reaction exposed the risks of staging celebrity-centred sports events without the main act.

Sport: Socially divided, spuriously unified?

Sport can still unite rather than divide us but must reinvent its structures and practices, rediscover its ethical mission, and reimagine who are ‘us’ to remain a positive and progressive force for social good.

What’s it all about, Gary? Politics and the sports presenter

Gary Lineker has enjoyed a wave of public and professional support after he was stood down by the BBC after tweeting his thoughts on the British government’s new asylum bill.

A World Cup of two halves

The soccer World Cup takes place in Qatar, that famous hotbed of football fervour, in November this year, when human rights will be in the spotlight as much as England’s inevitable elimination on penalties in the semi-final.

No regrets, coyote

Australian cricket lost two of its greats last Friday, swashbuckling wicket-keeper Rod Marsh and peerless leg-spinner Shane Warne. Neither were saints on or off the field, but both embodied the winning mentality and larrakin personality which Australians seek in the sporting heroes.

English football fans: Lamenting a lost world

The uniformly hostile reaction by fans across Europe to the breakaway European Super League humbled its participants and provoked a swift u-turn, but also shone a light on the changing nature of fandom itself.

Voyeurism and media sport violence

The fiery crash suffered and survived by French Formula 1 driver Roman Grosjean has reignited the debate about the immediate and more insidious long-term dangers sports stars face for our entertainment.

And the winner is…Television: spectacle and sport in a pandemic

In the historic contest between sport and media, the Covid-19 Trophy went to television. In extra time to a fake soundtrack.

Australasia will host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup: What’s not to like?

Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand have won the right to host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. In the middle of a global pandemic, sport in both countries surely has something to celebrate.

All sport is global: A hard lesson from the pandemic

It has taken the wicked problem of a hyper-contagious virus emerging in East Asia and passing rapidly around the world to demonstrate the vulnerability of sport’s global system of just-in-time, continuous production.

The game is changing, baby: Chris Gayle and sexism in cricket

West Indies cricketer Chris Gayle has been fined A$10,000 by his club for "inappropriate conduct" after he asked TV journalist Mel McLaughlin for a date in a live interview. Professor for Cultural Research David Rowe says there is still considerable resistance to the full integration of women into sport culture, and not least in the sports media.

A Nation of “Good Sports”‘? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia

The national government and its agencies tend uncritically to reproduce the mythology of universal Australian love of sport. David Rowe is head of a project in ethnically diverse Greater Western Sydney, exploring if it still can be assumed that sport plays a unifying role in this country.