Interesting thought experiment, kudos on the work that went into it.
Imo at the risk of being reductionist you’d probably have just ended up with what are todays afl/nrl clubs on either side of the barassi line being soccer clubs instead Inc those in the respective state leagues below the afl and nrl etc
Influence of migrant groups probably would been akin to what you see with Italians re Carlton or Collingwood in afl, to an extent with Arabs and Canterbury-Bankstown bulldogs in the nrl. Or maybe something more along the lines of what you see with Afro-Caribbean influence on football in London/the uk from the windrush era rather than manifesting in the ethnic clubs (day say they likely experienced discrimination over there which was atleast just as bad at the time)
As someone said the ethnic clubs might have existed but it’s unlikely they’d ever have become particularly big. The thing which party resulted in them becoming uniquely large in Australia vs other countries where similar clubs exist is that they represented the pinnacle of the game here for decades so accrued a level of support and resources which reflected that over time. In this alternate timeline they would be unlikely to ever be anything more than local clubs as they are in New York for example
Imo at the risk of being reductionist you’d probably have just ended up with what are todays afl/nrl clubs on either side of the barassi line being soccer clubs instead Inc those in the respective state leagues below the afl and nrl etc
Influence of migrant groups probably would been akin to what you see with Italians re Carlton or Collingwood in afl, to an extent with Arabs and Canterbury-Bankstown bulldogs in the nrl. Or maybe something more along the lines of what you see with Afro-Caribbean influence on football in London/the uk from the windrush era rather than manifesting in the ethnic clubs (day say they likely experienced discrimination over there which was atleast just as bad at the time)
As someone said the ethnic clubs might have existed but it’s unlikely they’d ever have become particularly big. The thing which party resulted in them becoming uniquely large in Australia vs other countries where similar clubs exist is that they represented the pinnacle of the game here for decades so accrued a level of support and resources which reflected that over time. In this alternate timeline they would be unlikely to ever be anything more than local clubs as they are in New York for example
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️ clubs in Melbourne and Sydney; of course it’s not to be taken for granted that Balgownie/Adamstown Rosebud etc. are still with us but bc most of those clubs are Newcastle/Wollongong-based, it explains why they’ve remained out of sight&mind to the rest of the country(even within the 
scene, never mind the ‘mainstream') for virtually all of their existence.
ethnic-club Footscray Thistle, but aren’t it in any case. Brighton and South Yarra have both been around since the 1920s, but the actual OG Melbourne clubs from the 1880s such as Carlton United and Melbourne United were driven to extinction by the then-VFA/VFL juggernaut among reasons of an economic nature.
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