Episode 92 - 100th anniversary of the women's soccer match at the Gabba (with Peter Eedy)

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Paul begins this show by noting that Ian is not back, yet. But also, what the hell happened to the last month's worth of scheduled episodes? Short answer: Paul had the lockdown sads. But also, here's a reference from 2004 to then South Melbourne president George Donikian proposing government investment in Bob Jane Stadium (today's Lakeside) to make it a multisport, multi-tenant venue...

Paul discusses some of what's been going on in the Australian soccer history scene over the past month, where he seems obsessed with the story of Parramatta Eagles getting thrown off a plane in 1994 because they were being very silly; and digging in to the history of the long gone national indoor soccer league. (see Roy Hay's interview here on the Geelong Region Soccer Show from 2020 for an in depth look at topic). All of this is summarised in a rambling treatise trying to pinpoint the loss of collective memory in Australian soccer - not just for the great games and goals, but also the little, strange, off-beat, colourful moments which add depth to the overrdiing experience. 

Our guest this week is Queensland soccer historian Peter Eedy. We first discuss Peter's history in soccer history. We discuss process and self-definition - the boundaries between professional an amateur historians, and the difference between historians and mere researchers. Oh, the familiar path of the accidental historian - Facebook groups, Wikipedia, Trove! The quest to find some niche of your own, not replicating what others have done. Peter discusses the intricacies of working on Wikipedia, including his tremendous work on documenting the history of soccer in Brisbane. He also discusses the plusses and minuses of covering the early years of soccer in Queensland and Australia, and the romantic appeal of formative years and origin stories.

In our final segment we cover the 100th anniversary of the women's soccer match at the Gabba, noting that it was not the first soccer match played by women or girls in Australia (see one example here from Harlaxton in 1917). We try to figure out the process by which this match was played - its impulse, its people, its obstacles, its proponents, and its opponents, and its aftermath. The conclusion? Like the men's 1880 match between Kings School and the Wanderers, it may not have been the first game of its kind, but as the first "public" game, it acts as a useful starting point for discussions about the history of organised, continuous women's soccer in Australia.

Episode 91 - Tony Persoglia, and recent acquisitions of Victorian soccer history archives

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Oh boy, lots of technical problems from Paul's end this week. 

Paul is joined in hosting duties this week by Football Victoria History & Heritage Coordinator, Tony Persoglia.

We begin the show by cleaning up some sundry details. Mark Boric retired, but keeps pumping out material! And while Greg Stock is updating OzFootball's National Soccer League archive, what are we going to do with the pages with match comments like the ones here? And we also look at the perils of updating pages and links that are used as references on Wikipedia, which may be the only reference to certain overseas players and their time in Australia. Also, a proposal to maybe get a professional librarian to do a little seminar on how to use Trove better. And finishing with an update on the state and tour game data set and archive update.

In our main segment (best watched maybe on the Facebook stream), Tony talks about the recent soft launch of Football Victoria's history page on Facebook, and the acquisition of photo archive, and hopefully of Victoria's Soccer News. Tony talks about a Hakoah Melbourne archive; a Spotswood (1910s and 20s) cache; the collection of the late Luciano Fioravanti, whose collection spans much of the history of post-war Italian-Australian soccer in Melbourne;, and finally, the archive of Dino DeMarchi, the Juventus (Melbourne) legend of the 1960s.

In our final segment we have 100 Years Ago Today, where Paul's laptop with Windows 10 is just about to keel over and die, and thus we are obliged to rush through Tasmania playing against Victoria a hundred years ago.

Episode 90 - Overseas guest players in Australian soccer, with Jason Goldsmith and Lucas Gillard

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Paul is joined on the show this week by Jason Goldsmith and Lucas Gillard, the authors of Be My Guest: Football Superstars in Australia, their new book about overseas player guests stints in Australia. Together, we discuss the book's genesis; the research methods and obstacles (with a shoutout to the scanners and uploaders and historians among us); what the guest players themselves remembered of their time in Australia; the motivations of the clubs and players involved; the moving stories of those who unexpectedly played alongside some of world football greats; the dawn and dusk of the guest player stints in Australian soccer; and so much more, across the opening two segments of the show. 

Fair to say, Paul highly recommends this book!

Jason and Lucas stick around for 100 Years Ago Today, where we begin with the Melbourne scores; the footballers at Osbourne House are doing well; and finally, letter writer 'Enthusiast' has some pointed remarks for both the New South Wales state team, and the Queensland state selectors; an article from Adelaide looks at the merits of the various football codes, finding good in all; and Queensland's lady footballers are going to play their match as a curtain raiser to an Australian Rules match - why? Probably because of attitudes from soccer authorities like this.

Episode 89 - minimum standards of national league venues, with Les Street.

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Paul is joined in hosting duties by Les Street! The Be My Guest launch has been cancelled, but we were hoping to have on them the show next week. Then Paul discusses the rambling story of retired Scottish forward and current day pundit Gordon Dalziel, whose hazy recollection of playing against Ange Postecoglou in Australia was proven half right. Then Paul and Les segue into a discussion about Scottish football's commitment to accurate crowd numbers, as opposed to Australian soccer's reticence to ever tell the truth about its crowd numbers.

Garry McKenzie has a question about what happens to how records are counted for cancelled seasons - should matches and player records be counted in overall/all-time records? What practices have been used in the past in Australian soccer, like when teams failed to complete seasons - using the examples if Carlton and Eastern Pride in 2001, and Sydney City in 1987.

Then Les goes back to a question raised in episode 80, about where a certain round 1 NSL game was played - Olympic Park or Middle Park - and how Les found the answer. The search for an answer illuminates the nature of soccer reporting, deadlines, and schedules.

We finish the opening segment with a discussion about burnout and self-care. Mark Boric posted a notice of retirement from his blog which indicated a degree of battle fatigue. What are the risks of doing research as a hobby? Well burnout, disillusionment, and what is meant to be a hobby becoming a slog which consumes all your free time, all in pursuit of a "dragon" you can never catch. There'll always be more info and details to chase, spaces to fill, and the payoffs are often brief and fleeting in their ability to elicit pleasure. It's a reminder to take time off, and not let historical work take over - especially if you're not getting paid for it, and especially if it's not longer fun.

Our main segment this week is about the history of national venue standards - a discussion which was prompted by a Twitter discussion about fences at Australian soccer grounds. Les takes us through the history of various (and often) fleeting adherence to venue standards in the National Soccer League - starting with the perhaps surprising insight that the NSL began with the idea of playing at the best venues available to it, having a uniform, central kit supplier - which all sounds rather like the early A-League.

We talk about the way and the reasons for standards slipping - and fences, a discussion prompted in part by this online discussion which kicked off the 2016 Year of the Australian soccer fence. And we chat about the ways that the deterioration ground standards acted to dissuade families and the non-hardcore people from going to games - see the state of stadiums of English football. But also - other sports in Australia also had crowd problems, which prompted thinking from them about similar solutions to what were adopted in Australia. We also look at seating and cover, briefly mention broadcasting. For the A-League match day requirement spreadsheet mentioned in this segment, see this link; also, what happened to the NSL's match day requirements lists?

In 100 Years Ago Today, England vs Scoland match; a quick look at New Zealand debates about the suitability of football for women; correcting scurrilous rumours from Broken Hill that fundraising money for orphans has been squandered; Tasmania invites Victoria for an interstate match; soccer firms in Newcastle; and thorough match reports on New South Wales' tour of Queensland - against the home state, and an even more thorough report; a toast from the Mayor; and a match against West Moreton.

Episode 88 - Germanton 1878, with Garry MacKenzie

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This week Paul is joined in hosting duties by Garry McKenzie via Zoom. Paul begins this week's show with a discussion about the difficulty of trying to sort through available match footage online of the National Soccer League, as usual through the prism of South Melbourne Hellas. To wit, the discussion focuses on Paul's attempt to try and find what extant Hellas footage exists on the net, and how to organise. His solution at least in terms of record keeping, is the creation and upkeep of an online inventory. Such a list highlights the nature of the extant footage, a history of national league broadcasting, and the near total lack of available footage from sides other than Newcastle KB from the first six seasons or so of the NSL. Might there be extant footage in Adelaide, Brisbane, or Canberra? Have Australian soccer foragers been too Sydney and Melbourne centric?

Garry then discusses going into the Football Queensland history projects archives. The website is getting an update, for starters. As for the archives themselves, there's so much material yet to be processed - programs, women's association archives, photographs - and what needs to be processed, catalogued, scanned, and uploaded, and in what order of priority. Also, Garry got to test the scanner, and it works! 

In our middle segment Paul and Garry discuss the latter's discovery of the earliest (yet) known game of soccer in New South Wales, in what is now Holbrook, in 1878. Among the issues we discuss:

• How Garry found the article, and the need to keep going back to Trove and reconducting old searches as new newspapers are uploaded.
• Who were the participants, and where did they come from - and where did they go.
• Why Germanton/Holbrook.
• The thoroughness of the match report, including its team lists, and the utter unambiguity about which code of football is being discussed.
• Who was the writer.
• What happened next, and is there any evidence of other games of soccer, or evidence that participants in this game played soccer afterward.
• What it means for the importance of the 1880 Wanderers game.

For a write up of the discovery, see the piece on the Shoot Farken website.

In 100 Years Ago Today, a Perth team travels to Bunbury, minus some of its starts who are playing in the UK vs Australia rep game - and thus we discuss native born vs overseas born players; in Albany, the local soccer writer evaluates the local's team performances, player by player; Norths vs Wests in Broken Hill, and another old boy; to Ipswich, and the controversy of Blackstone Rovers leaving the field in protest, and the unintended consequences and possible class connotations of the incident; the continuing momentum of ladies' soccer, and the public support they seem to be receiving; in Brisbane, why wasn't Mitchell passed the ball!; and throughout the whole segment, a discussion of writerly pseudonyms.

Episode 87 - National Youth League footage unearthed; remembering John Anderson and George Haniotis

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Ian isn't here this week. 

First up, Paul has George Cotsanis on the phone to discuss the unearthing of some rare footage, of the 1991/92 National Youth League finals series. Shared by South Melbourne youth team players Tim Schleiger and Mike Lilikakis, the footage consists of two films - a full length video of the Southern Division preliminary final, and a 20 minute highlight package of South's three finals matches from that season, against Heidelberg, Preston, and Sydney Croatia. Paul and Cotsy chat about the unearthing of the footage; its rarity; its insights into the culture of the South youth team at the time; the vision of players across several clubs, that came to be mainstays of Victorian soccer for the next 10-15 years; the archival incidental footage of Eddie Thomson and Ferenc Puskas; Olympic Park in its early 90s state; the cultural snapshot of the crowd.

We also look at what's next for Cotsy in terms of unearthing in even more rare footage... and there's some exciting possibilities! We also note the death of Michael Christodoulou, the last of Victorian soccer's nut sellers.

In our middle segment we have Greg Werner to discuss the recent passing of two Socceroos, John Anderson and George Haniotis. Greg notes that the well credentialed Anderson - who had played at Stoke in the English second division - was one of the many Scotsmen to come to Australia to play soccer in the 1960s. We discuss the reasons - lifestyle, wage caps, semi-professionalism, and limited employment opportunities outside soccer - why players like Anderson came to play soccer in Australia instead of staying in their home countries. We look at Anderson's Socceroo career, which included the 1965 World Cup qualifying campaign, as well as his successful stint in Victorian soccer, especially with South Melbourne. (credit also to Tony Persoglia for his excellent obituary).

George Haniotis' international career lasted four minutes. A steady and reliable defender in the NSL for several clubs, most notably Sydney Olympic, George was a much loved personality in Sydney soccer. But George was also a pioneer, being the first Australian to play in Hong Kong's league, reviving a soccer connection between Australia and Hong Kong that had largely lain dormant for decades.

Finally, Paul zips through 100 Years Ago Today, starting with a news item (see image on right) which mimics the Daily Mail's re-reporting methods of today; the referee abandoning the game as after a Preston player refuses to leave the field after being sent off; women's football gathering steam in New Zealand, with some favourable commentary on both the women's style of dress, but also an acknowledgement that the girls knew the game; more references to the pending women's game at Murray Bridge; two clubs for women being established in Toowoomba; more commentary, obsessed with the women's sense of dress, this time from Sydney, and with a writer rather bemused by the spectacle in the non-PC manner of the time - but which still brings to mind important questions about the inaccessibility of soccer equipment for women, as discussed with Marion Stell and Heather Reid in a previous episode; and finally, a fancy dress soccer match on skates, with insights into who popular celebrities were at the time (hint - silent film stars), as well as someone dressed as Lindsay Kemble, war veteran and female impersonator.

Episode 86 - the rise of women's football in Queensland and Sydney

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Paul is here. Ian is sort of here. And the banter is also here.

The big news this week is that Mark Boric has retired from his research, archiving, and preservation work on his blog. For the time being at least however, Mark has committed to keeping up his site.

Ian has an update on a segment from last week's episode, where he digs further into the Edwin Aldred story, and the complicated backstory therein: including a contested military history, changing heights and hair colours, and hard fought insurance claims - a saga lasting even posthumously. Ian also follows up on "Pearce" from last week, finding that it's a Samuel Pearce, where we dig into the socio-cultural environment of Weston during that time, including its soccer, musical, and sectarian qualities. 

After the break we go into 100 Years Ago Today, where we get distracted by the history of accountancy and trade. The nurses at Toowoomba are considering starting a football team; more news of women looking to start soccer teams, and a curious reference to women's soccer in Melbourne; could such a thing have actually happened at that time? And plenty of other coverage of the rise of women's football in Queensland and Sydney, and the different ways in which this manifested itself. And Paul is trying to understand how the idea fermented among these women. Who initiated the discussions? What were the differences in approach and appeal for women from Britain compared to those from Australia? How much did the war time experiences influence the push for women's football? And the question which persists in the early history of Australian soccer: why play soccer in this country? And there's even a poem! 

Then the end of the show gets squeezed, hard.