Episode 17 - Peter Kunz's Chronicles of Soccer in Australia; Dinmore Bushrats

Download and listen to episode 17 here.

We celebrate George Costanis getting brought into the inner-sanctum of Roma... withh noting erroneously that he'd been flown over by Roma to hand over precious film reels.

We move on to Mark Boric, who'd written a short piece on the history Dockerty Cup, the final of which was being played that week in Melbourne.

We note that the Australia Cup trophy, salvaged from oblivion, will be donated permanently to the Caroline Springs (formerly Sunshine) George Cross club.

Then Garry McKenzie has prompted Ian to dig through the archives and perhaps reevaluate assumptions about early South Melbourne soccer (with clarification of the difference between Emerald Hill and South Park). And was soccer the punk rock of 1880s Melbourne sport?

Then 100 Years Ago Today where we do our usual trawling through 1919 Victorian soccer results. Then up to Queensland and Musgrave Park and Pineapple Rovers. Then to Western Australia and the burgeoning florid rhetoric of the code wars - with a particular emphasis on the effects of nationalism on our sporting preferences and loyalties.

Following the break is a discussion with Scott Morrison and Garry McKenzie on the revival of the historic Ipswich club Dinmore Bushrats - an unusual discussion going back into the depths of time and dealing with very recent events, and dealing with the difficulties of maintaining historical memory over such a large span of time.

In the final segment, Garry Mckenzie sticks around to join Paul and Ian in a very thorough analysis of Peter Kunz's Chronicles of Soccer in Australia:The Foundation Years - 1859-1949, an important book defined by its sense of overwhelming ambition. We look at:

• The book being both unique in terms of its ambition, but also typical of Australian soccer historiography in that an author, going it alone, saw a gap in the existing knowledge, and tried to fill-in the sprawling void of knowledge.
• A rundown of the book - charting the status of soccer across the states through the decades.
• Women's soccer and international tours.
• Kunz revealing a sense of British identity, including one independent of blase notions of coal-miners; the effects of works teams in suburban areas; and the ways that British ideas of professionalism clash with Australian ideals of amateurism.
• The transient influence of visiting (merchant and military) ships to Australian soccer.
• The technological limitations of the project in terms of it being a book and not an easy-to-update online database, especially for its list of catalogue clubs.
• The catalogue of over 2000 clubs making up the final third of the book.
• Its drawbacks, including a lack of referencing, and a sense of overreach of being too eager to claim certain dates and games as being soccer instead of other football codes
• The problems of using the date '1859' as a starting point.
• Its errors and the way they've come about - perhaps due to a lack of a methodology chapter and literature review. 
• That in spite of drawbacks, it's an incredible book that should be treated first as a prime example of a labour love; the book is magnificent, but many of its assertions must be handled with care; and that triangulation of details remains an imperative.
• The book is a correction to the over-emphasis on post-1945 soccer.