Episode 49 - The name of the game is...

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Another week, another episode beset by technical problems. But we soldier on!

We note that Mark Boric's second-hand scanner has gone kaput, and that George Cotsanis is uploading the latest of his interview series to his My World Is Round social media pages.

We also note that Greg Stock has been updating the New South Wales and Tasmania sections of OzFootball.

Altona City senior squad, 1967.
Back row: Jim Mather, Billy Coles, Jim Balish, Bobby Milloy,
 Chris Kalamidis, Steve Herman, Craig Copley, Billy/Andy Rice.
Front row: Ian Roberts, Billy Wilkie, Mario Grego, Davie Cook,
Bernie McCluskey.
Source: Chrsitine Grego-Davis.

Paul begins the main part of this week's discussion by relating a convoluted story of artefact discovery, retrieval, recording, and identification - with a particular focus on nine photographs of the 1950s and 60s Victorian player Mario Grego. A fitter and turner by trade, was born in what is now Pula in Croatia (then Yugoslavia), before moving to Trieste and eventually to Australia. A defender, Grego's career included stints at Footscray Capri, Footscray JUST, an Altona City, representative duties with the Yugoslavia side in the Laidlaw Cup, with a possible temporary stint at an early version of Triestina (today's Essendon Royals. Paul looks at, among other things:

• The joys ad frustrations of accidental and serendipitous discoveries.
• The holders of such artefacts not realising the worth of said items, nor that there are people and communities interested in them.
• Problems with identification (and implied problems with copyright).
• The difficulty in translating passive social media "likes" into more serious engagement from both individuals and clubs.
• The tantalising (and yes, frustrating) prospect of more such material being out there in cupboards and boxes.

After the break, in the wake of a trademark tribunal ruling that included the assessment that Australian Rules is not the only type of football played in Australia, Ian and Paul revisit the matter of word "soccer", and the history of its usage in Australia. These are issues we also covered to varying degrees in episode 1 and episode 7. This time we look at several aspects of the issue, including:

• Briefly, what the trademark tribunal had to say on the matter.
• The contested origins of the term "soccer".
• The cultural importance of the term "football" in Australia, to demonstrate cultural centrality.
• The nature of the word's introduction to Australia, both in terms of timelines, but also where it was most heavily used - initially seemingly a Western Australian phenomenon
• The usage of the term in times and places where there was no organised soccer in Australia.
• Soccer being both a word/term that has been forced upon, but also chosen by Australian soccer to define and distinguish itself.
• The transition from being football clubs, to soccer clubs, and back again - as well as the politics and marketing considerations involved with those decisions.
• The "Socceroos" name, and Australian soccer fans who hate the term soccer.
• The word "soccer" becoming a verb in certain contexts, especially in Australian rules football
• The Heroes of Waterloo song "Soccer, Soccer"

Finally, we wrap up the show with 100 Years Ago Today, where we travel to Weston, where we begin to realise that teams protesting results in Newcastle and its surrounds seems to be exceptionally common; we check in on the boy scouts of Kogarah; look at the death of a racehorse; and note the 150th anniversary of the first game played by the Port Adelaide Football Club, by casting doubt on what kind of football they were actually playing.