Episode 15 - Soccer club nicknames; Newcastle (looking for foundations); battle over public spaces

Download and listen to episode 15.

In this episode Ian falls down the wormhole of Sid Grant and Harry Hetherington's 17 volume History of Soccer in New South Wales on Mark Boric's site.

We also quickly covered the uploading by some pseudonymous character of footage from the 1982 Coppa Italia final in Melbourne - as broadcast on SBS, and commentated by Laurie Schwab - and the value of these items, and the difficulty in finding them and preserving them.

Ian notes that he and Roy Hay have each contributed a chapter to the scholarly text The Early Development of Football.

Then comes 100 Years Ago Today, which includes some discussion of the phrase "soccer rules".

After the break is a discussion of certain Australian soccer nicknames (especially in New South Wales), which followed on from a discussion a couple of weeks prior. Listener Graeme McGinty wrote in to explain why certain flowery names were chosen, and Ian read this letter out on air. McGinty's letter suggests the "pretty" names were chosen to disassociate themselves from either (Protestant/Catholic) sectarianism, or from the harshness of the industrial work many soccer players would have been involved with in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Ian segues into looking at the foundations of Newcastle soccer.

Then in the final segment we wade dangerously into contemporary issues by looking at Melbourne Victory's attempt to acquire a lease for land at Footscray Park, by trying to steer the conversation towards the historic difficulty that soccer has had in obtaining grounds at the margins of councils, or on the worst public land. Paul refers to in particular to Schintler Reserve chapter (in other words, the struggle for soccer to access land in Footscray) in John Kallinikios' Soccer Boom. 

But we also look at the concept of passive recreation; and then taking that further by looking at the comparable historic situation at Middle Park and Albert Park, using Jill Barnard and Jenny Keating's People's Playground as a guide for how people interested in this topic should broaden their ideas of us and them when it comes to public space in Melbourne.