‘Thirty-six fools kicking a bag of wind around is not my idea of
a Saturday afternoon!’, scoffed one newcomer to Melbourne
and its peculiar code of football. But for many Australians their
attachment as spectators to a particular sport weighs on them
so unbearably as to justify a Milan Kundera novel. Their
conversations with both strangers and intimate others are
threaded with the shared memories of sporting personalities,
episodes and venues. How is this intangible heritage to be
recognised and safeguarded? What are the crucial elements
involved in assessing claims for cultural significance of sporting
heritage? Turning away from the commercialised images of
Australian Rules football that dominate the media, artworks
offer one valuable source in this process of cultural
assessment. Australian Rules football appears in the work of
several painters, sculptors and other artists. How do their
particular insights help us understand sporting heritage? What
are the sacred meanings in this secular ritual?