Australian Football Final (soccer)

There is something seductively tribal about the way individuals pledge and display their allegiance to their team, with shirts, chants, flags, humour and a strong sense of mutuality. But it is interesting that everyone interprets their membership in different ways - no one size fits all here, despite the clearly binary memberships on display.

As we strive for a better and more 21st century sense of "us-ness" in our learning organisations maybe we can learn a little from the mix of personalisation and belonging on display here at Melbourne as the Victory go head to head with Sydney in their end of season final.

In this century I'm never quite clear what use we would have for uniform children, but children who can belong and work together as a team, bring individual strengths to that team, are scarce and valuable. The signification of colour, badge and more on offer here seems to offer a uniform that is not uniform... and that is very helpful.