Episode 56 - Samantha Lewis and researching Australian women's soccer history

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We begin this week's episode with Paul getting increasingly upset at Ian's relentless desire for "banter". Then onto the clean-up, with Greg Stock and Mark Boric uploading 1930s and 1940s New South Wales newspapers and news items. George Cotsanis has unearthed a colour photo of Port Melbourne Slavia, winners of the 1963 Australia Cup, and the 1964 Dockerty Cup. We reminisce about Ian's research on this team, which was one the key moments in Ian's career as a soccer historian. We also answer Peter Eedy's question about the fate of the trophies, including the story of the salvaging and refurbishment of the Australia Cup. 

Paul Nicholls alerted us to an article about soccer in Moss Vale in 1891, which feeds into a segment we brought up early in 2019 about the origins or starting point of soccer in the Macarthur catchment in south-west Sydney.

We also foreshadow a possible look at the state of Australian soccer articles on Wikipedia, via a quick look at two tweets (this one, and this one) which look at the benefits of even minor improvements to articles on Wikipedia. 

In the middle segment we're joined by this week's guest, journalist Samantha Lewis, for this week's edition of 100 Years Ago Today, where there's no Melbourne news! Instead, we begin by following up on last week Newcastle area politicking; head down to Hobart, where the north of the state decides against sending a team south for the return leg of the North vs South fixture; we go back up to Queensland, and Toowoomba, where the town of Harlaxton seems to have produced quite a few school representatives - with Garry McKenzie offering the snippet via social media of a girls' team from Harlaxton in 1917; trying to figure out what it could possibly mean when someone on a team wears their sash over a different shoulder to the rest of the team.

Then on to an article about women bullfighters in Mexico, which leads nicely into a piece about whether women should play football, including references to the Irish feminist Sarah Grand (and thank goodness Sam, who has a background in women's literature, was with us to help us here), which leads to discussion about comparative liberalism of different nations and a whole range of issues. Oh, and there's also the piece by one FAM Webster about whether women should play football. 

In the final segment, we begin with looking at Samantha's article on the Australian representative team which took part in the first Asian Women's Cup in 1975. In this and the previous segment, we have a lengthy and wide ranging discussion, we cover 

• The legitimacy of the 1975 team which represented Australia at the 1975 Asian Women's Cup.
• Commentary on feminism
• Women not being asked about what they think about playing football; commentary is almost exclusively from male points of view
• Ideas of grace and symmetry as they relate to female athletes
• Should women athletes try to replicate "male" sporting traits in attitude and culture.
• History as a cumulative process
• Women footballers as victims of violence for playing or following football.
• Women self-regulating their behaviour in order to preempt criticism.
• Learned vs natural behaviour around soccer.
• The processes of researching women's soccer history.
• The prevalence and dominance of oral histories when researching women's soccer.
• The recurring disappointment of the contextual place of news material about soccer.
• Lack of continuities in women's soccer, and the struggle in the search for deep cultural perspectives, because of the lack of documentary evidence of women's soccer.
• Cultural self-doubt and internalisation of the lack of importance of what women athletes do.