Dr Palmer and fellow researchers Ms Melissa Raven and Ms Kirrilly Thompson from the Department of Public Health at Flinders are in the early stages of a study that will examine the relationship between Aussie rules football and alcohol consumption.
The research project, which is funded by the Alcohol Rehabilitation Education Foundation, incorporates ethnographic methods that will see the researchers rubbing shoulders with the fans in a bid to understand the cultural meanings, language, attitudes and behaviours that are associated with alcohol and sport.
The study intends to focus on the fans of four SANFL clubs during the 2005 season.
As well as using one-on-one interviews and focus groups with volunteers, the researchers will attend games, clubrooms and club functions to collect observational data on the various roles that alcohol plays in the social and sporting lives of football fans.
The research will look at the numerous factors that may affect attitudes towards alcohol consumption among fans, including gender, socio-economic geography and, perhaps crucially, whether their team is winning or losing.
"Being a fan is quite a complex package - we're interested in trying to pull that apart and find out what it means to be a fan of a particular club, and where drinking fits in to that sporting identity," Dr Palmer said.
The association between footy, beer and pies is more than a cliche.
"Footy does tend to go hand in hand with having a beer - it even features in the SANFL's current marketing campaign," Dr Palmer said.
She said that while there are groups of hardcore drinkers associated with football, the study wants to cover the full range of alcohol consumption in context.
"We'll be mixing it up, and spending time in different sections of the crowd."
"There are some people who use football as an excuse to get blind, but we won't be focusing only on these extremes - we'll also be talking to the mums and dads, and the oldies who enjoy a shandy at club bingo nights."
The four clubs have been chosen from different locales around Adelaide to provide a good spread of socio-economic variables among the fans.
Dr Palmer said the final aims of the project are to examine the behaviours and attitudes within football clubs that may contribute to unsafe alcohol use in the community, and to gain an understanding of the reasons why interventions promoting responsible drinking are likely to succeed or fail.
The personal and social impacts of alcohol consumption (both positive and negative) will be documented.
"There is some evidence to suggest that the positive social benefits associated with drinking can outweigh the sometimes negative health impacts of alcohol," Dr Palmer said.
By gaining a sophisticated understanding of the social meanings and processes that underlie the culture of drinking in Australia, she said the researchers hope to develop a more informed response for promoting responsible drinking.
The findings of the project will be passed on to researchers, policy makers, health promotion practitioners and club officials.
While the research findings are expected to have major implications for future education campaigns, Dr Palmer stressed that the basic approach of the research is not driven by wowserism.
"It's not about telling people not to drink: we aren't taking the moral high ground in the project at all," she said.
"We are just interested in finding out more about the place of drinking in relation to being a fan of a football club.
"We're not there to judge."
