I'm probably not the best person to talk about it, only being 25. And I may be wrong and you may be right - perhaps some of that affection began before gentrification, before the AFL, back when they were still playing at Punt Road Oval. But I would say that that would be a very small percentage compared to the success of the club. I mean there was affection for Hawthorn when they sucked in the late 90s and early 00s, and Hawthorn the suburb is probably the most affluent of the Melbourne-based club's suburbs. Affection for Melbourne, despite their name being our capital city and based in the middle of town. There's no extra affection for Collingwood given that suburb's socioeconomic background, the fondness for them has not changed with gentrification.
Point taken re: Hawthorn - now there's a good case of enormous success breeding hatred. I also recall a much greater neutral fondness for Geelong until the late 2000s than there is now.
Collingwood though is obviously going to be an exception to any ebb and flow of support and success, given their rep as the team everybody else loves to hate.
Personally I just think that the geographic thing has almost entirely ceased to be in the AFL. I don't think it's correct to say that the Doggies are the most popular team in the western suburbs; I don't have any evidence, aside from anecdotal: if I added up all the teams my western suburbs friends support, it would be a random, even split.
You'd have far more anecdotal evidence to draw on than me about the western suburbs, but certainly my feeling has been that if you want to find a Doggies fan, you don't have to look far in Footscray or Sunshine or wherever. Good fucking luck if you want to find more than a handful down in, say, Kooyong though.
I would've said before how strange I find the general erosion of geographic bases of support for Victorian AFL teams. The fact I could move to Brunswick and not be expected to support any particular team is weird to me. The fact other newcomers to the sport have had a variety of teams recommended to them is also weird. One of my colleagues basically got allocated North Melbourne; I can't think where else this would happen.
If you move to Wellington and are new to rugby, you fucking support Wellington. You don't get a say in the matter. Even in Auckland, which has three teams, the geographic split is firm. You don't go for North Harbour unless you live north of the bridge. Simple. Though the strange thing about some New Zealanders is the ready acceptance that if you move somewhere, you pick up the local team. I've even seen public figures asked with some surprise "you've lived in Auckland for a decade, why do you still go for Wellington?" I think in Australia if you moved from Melbourne to Perth and ditched whatever Victorian team you support for West Coast or Freo, other footy fans would lose respect for you.
I'd like the historical WWII suburbs stuff!!! I'd also love to read more on sport in 1900-1920 if you've got some links.
Yes, I wonder if that was a serious consideration of whether the VFL just said "bugger the rest of you". Any links? Books?
I'd like to know more myself about the VFL's nationwide expansion and if anybody gave any thought to a truly national league. I suspect it was always a non-starter though since the VFL was so much more powerful and wealthy than the other state leagues, and the enmity between the VFL, SANFL, and WAFL.
And I recently helped out with research for a forthcoming history of the City of Melbourne Bowls Club. It's really striking how heavily all the traditional inner city clubs suffer after WWII as there is a strong population drift from the inner suburbs to new suburbs out of the city. Hell, you could say it starts as early as the 1920s once the possibilities of electrified commuter rail are realised, or the 1930s as the motorcar makes it easier to live further out. But it's after the war years that you start to see the traditional clubs' results and membership figures really take a hit, while the number of new clubs in middle and outer suburbs explodes. I have detailed info for bowls but it's true for really any sport that is more participatory than spectator. The City club by the 1970s could field less than half the teams it could only a couple of decades previously, and those teams performed poorly, while the finalists in most years were relatively young middle/outer suburban teams.
Likewise, in the AFL the fanbase for all of these inner clubs moved out of the city. Because the sport was already dominant and spectator-driven, there was no need for the clubs themselves to shift with their fans, nor was there a possibility that new outer suburban clubs would usurp the traditional clubs (note this did happen to an extent in the VFA). They could still draw in young talent based on the zoning system that took in new suburban clubs. Of course, some clubs
did move their headquarters to be closer to some of their fans. But this is probably why the geographic bases of support has been so weakened. In 1930, most fans of a club would have lived within walking distance of the team's ground. In 1980, they were kids of people who had moved here, there, and everywhere throughout Melbourne.