BA81 said:

In one of the threads from a while back about this topic, it was also posited that the relative prominence of Catholicism in Australia definitely helped w/the Italians' assimilation process(institutional Australia's then-continuous prejudices against Catholicism notwithstanding)

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Yeah Ive often believed that... There may have been some sort of anti-Catholic sentiment amongst some in the Anglosphere but they at least understood what Catholicism was...

grazorblade said:

Did i cross the line?
Unintentional if so and can delete it

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Hahahha not all buddy, at least not with me... Just shit stirring... hahahahahahahaha

grazorblade said:

Come to think of it we did learn greek salad in home economics in qld as well as a ton of greek mythology

I notice Drew Pavlou is an assimilationist and a Queenslander

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Besides that the Greek Lou Sticca is currently digging himself out of legal trouble....

BA81 said:

As has been pointed out in prior threads, it's why Flogari and Sticca are so hellbent on riding this "assimilation or bust" pale-horse re. in ; growing up effnik(Italian specifically in their case) in AFL-heartland, esp. back in the day..that's what it does to ya. And bc Italian culture is as prevalent as it is worldwide, it wasn't as dependent on football-fandom to keep alive as it was w/the other nashos(in particular the Cros)

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I actually think there’s some truth to this, Italian culture has been expressed prevalently in many ways, particularly food etc. where as with some cultures the football has been their only outlet

Glenardo said:

His story is a very good representation of Melbourne Italians. It’s not that they don’t like soccer, it’s just that this is the evolutionary path they’ve gone down

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This doesn’t apply as much as it used to but up until 20 or so years ago, the AFL-zombie ones that did dislike ️ could be quite vocal about it when the mood took them. But again, it’s bc their personal definition/experience of Italian-ness didn’t include calcio

BA81 said:

This doesn’t apply as much as it used to but up until 20 or so years ago, the AFL-zombie ones that did dislike ️ could be quite vocal about it when the mood took them. But again, it’s bc their personal definition/experience of Italian-ness didn’t include calcio

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Yes these people exist, I have some 2nd, 3rd cousins in Melb like that. Some were even born in Italy and their first language was Italian. But again, that’s very much a specificity of Melbourne. Im not saying everyone in Sydney loved soccer back in the day, but nrl was never considered a prerequisite of assimilation, it just wasn’t/isn’t important enough to the culture. Odd anecdote I know but I get the sense that if you asked primary school kids in Melbourne to list “Australian things” “footy” would be on the list in Melbourne 9 times of out of 10, not so much in Sydney. Whereas “beach” would be on the list in Sydney but not so much in Melbourne

Posted this in the npl thread but here’s some evidence that things played out slightly differently here. I think Sydney has always been more of a “battle ground” of codes, despite nrl being the biggest it’s less of a dominant code and more competing codes with their core demographics.