Episode 43 - Paul Hunt and the Australian Trustees Soccer Football Association

An example of Mark Taylor's sketchbooks, this one
being from Stratford United vs Edge Hill from a Far
North Queensland competition in 1992.  

Download and listen to episode 43 here.

We begin this episode by recommending people go to the Australian Football Before the A-League Facebook page, where a poster named Mark Taylor has been uploading pages from his sketchbooks. These extracts document Mark's journeys to an assortment of Australian soccer matches up and down the eastern coast and Tasmania. The sketchbooks include details such as lineups, kits, results, and stadium layouts for games Mark saw while doing seasonal farm work along the eastern seaboard

We canvass the potential archival situation from the fallout from the seeming breakdown in relations between FFA and Fox Sports - namely, what happens to the 15 years worth of Australian soccer archives if the relationship between FFA and Fox Sports ends? We look at the likely outcomes based upon precedent - that is, that FFA would still be allowed to use archival footage for marketing, promotional, and special or limited purposes. But we also broaden the discussion - like who owns and who should own this broadcast product, which is also in effect a public cultural product?

We also look at the difficulty at currently being able to access Australian soccer archival footage from various broadcasters, even and especially when those broadcaster show little regard for its value - including commercial, cultural, and social value.  We look at the problem that even when an organisation becomes defunct, its copyright over cultural products remains present long aftet its demise.

After that, Ian quickly raises the matter of 1922 and the centenary of Australia's soccer first men's 'A' international against New Zealand, and nascent plans to visit such a game (should it be held) in Dunedin.

The Tasmanian soccer phrase 'slice of cheese'
 made  it into this global football glossary. 

After the break we talk with returning guest, Tasmanian soccer historian Paul Hunt, who has found evidence of what may be Australia's first interstate club soccer competition. But before that we discuss with him the fact that Tasmanian soccer has managed a degree of international notoriety by being included in Tom Williams' global football glossary Do You Speak Football, thanks to the phrase "slice of cheese" (for a yellow card) making Williams' list. "Slice of cheese"/ is joined in the Australian section of the book by "shoot farken", and Ned Zelic's trademark phrase "individual brilliance" - though surprisingly one of Australian soccer's best known items of football vernacular, "wogball", failed to get a jersey.

After the introductory formalities, we look at how Paul Hunt found what appeared to be interstate fixtures in Tasmania in 1920, played under the auspices of a body called the Australian Trustees Soccer Football Association. Ian, Paul, and Paul discuss how we watched the results of Paul Hunt's and Garry Mackenzie's Trove searches unfold in real time on social media, revealing the ATSFA not be a renegade soccer body, but rather a Sydney based organisation which facilitated something akin to a works competition for middle class employees in the banking and insurance industries. Sydney appears to have operated a six team competition - first under company names, later district names - from about 1917 to 1920.

We ask Paul who these players were, where did they come from, and where did they go one the league folded? Were they predominantly English and Scots? We discuss the nature of the Sydney competition, and the what its existence suggests about the strength of soccer as a sport in Sydney. We also look at the interstate competition held between various state trustee league champions, including teams from Adelaide and Ipswich - the latter interesting in light of it being a sign of middle class soccer amid a strong working class soccer culture. And we look at the interstate trustees competition final, played in Bathurst of all places so that the game would be held at an appropriately neutral venue.

In 100 Years Ago Today, we first visit Maitland for a Marist brothers game; Armidale playing against a team from Glen Innes; strange quasi-poetry from Fremantle; returning soldiers in Toowoomba coming back and reforming their clubs; and of course, the results of the previous week's games in Melbourne.

We finish off the show with a quick look by Paul at an FFA hosted webinar on Andrew Howe's work charting the origins of Socceroos and Matildas players, hosted by Ann Odong, and including Joe Gorman to add some colour. Howe's data rich work on this front - which has been presented in a number of formats and conferences in the past, and which has been the basis of both his Socceroos and Matildas (along with Greg Werner) encyclopaedias, is impressive. Paul discusses the nature of attempting to run a webinar on historical topics and how it played out here; the need for more time for audience questions and participation; and the need for the Australian soccer public to take the hard data of Howe's work and create meaning from it, drawing out stories, trends, narratives.