Download and listen to episode 37 here.
Ian's out of the studio again, so Paul is joined by Mark Boric, of the scanning and uploading of Australian soccer documents fame.
After summing up - in person! - what's he's been up to, we segue into 100 Years Ago Today, where preparations for the 1920 season are getting underway in Sydney, Brisbane, Ipswich, Boolaroo, Killingworth (complete with chocolate waltz), North Adelaide, while Geraldton prepares to play another visiting ship, and Pelaw-Main reports problems with cabling.
Against the background of previous discussions on the show about soccer ceasing or dying in certain areas, the threat of the COVID-19 virus to sport, and last week's discussion on the demise of Footscray JUST, we then move into an attempt to discuss the various ways in which soccer clubs have perished in Australia. We also try something a bit different - attempting to solicit calls from our audience to discuss the ways in which they experienced the demise of a club.
It's not an entirely successful affair - we get just one caller - but we're called by Robert, a former St George Budapest supporter who discusses what it was like to watch the decline of one Australia's great clubs firsthand - from the club's glory days of the 1960s, through to declining crowds (and attempts to go mainstream) in the 1970s, even as the club had half the national team which went to the World Cup; the occasionally successful NSL years, with still diminishing crowds, and then ignominious exit from the NSL in 1991.
We discussed how in a way, St George is the archetypal example of the decline (and for some, demise) of an ethnic soccer club - a strong, but short-lived migrant push, successful teams, and a conflicted but still more than half-hearted attempt to go mainstream which ultimately. We also noted that St George's story has been told several times - by Johnny Warren in Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters, by Les Murray in By the Balls, and to a certain extent by Joe Gorman in The Death and Life of Australian Soccer.
But through our discussion with Robert, we also touch on one contentious fact - St George isn't dead. And yet, for most of its one time supporters, culturally the club is dead, despite a legal entity still persisting in the upper tiers of NSW soccer. We therefore pose the question - when does a club actually die? It can't be merely a legal criteria, but one also tied to names, personnel, culture, colours and a sense of feeling.
And thus we do a bit of a rushed inventory of Australian top-tier clubs which have perished and how; mergers and takeovers; broke during the NSL and because of it; broke shortly after leaving the NSL; reformed and thus still alive for those who wish it so; tenuous legal arguments which won't convince anyone of their veracity; variations where some claim the club died, others claim there is legitimate continuity, and where they both may be right; and the dying and revival of successor clubs to represent the regions.
We don't have enough time to get too deep into other examples of clubs dying - due to war; expulsion; loss of ground; hostile takeover or uneven merger; works teams with no works; women's team which never properly belong to any club; regional and representative teams; kick about teams which got serious and organised for a short time, but which ended up folding as their first generation fell away.
The final segment is taken up with Mark Boric relating the strange demise of Moorabbin City in the 1990s, and the effect it had on him living through that demise. Mark had hinted at this story before, but here it is now in the open - the strange confluence of an old-fashioned "player-run" Melbourne soccer club, the fading English power club trying to get ahead of the curve, and decades-old personality clashes that scuppered not just Villa's attempt to set up an academy in Australia, but also contributed to the club that it was partner closing its doors. The players and committee were scattered far and wide, some lost to the game, and what little memorabilia was left mostly saved by Mark, and uploaded onto his blog and YouTube.
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