Thursday 1 October 2020

Episode 58 - All about Arthur Prinsep, with special guest Garry Mackenzie.

Download and listen to this episode here

After trying to clamp down on Ian's banter, Paul loses the battle this week, and by some measure.

Mark Boric and Greg Stock have shared the financials from the 1967 tour of Australia by Manchester United, which leads to a quick discussion about the connection of the late Dean Jones to the 1999 tour of Australia by the same club

We look at Tony Persoglia's creation of a Wikipedia article on Victorian player and administrator Frank McIver - and some of the problems with creating Wikipedia pages in terms of 'notability' criteria, as well as the lack of reliable statistics in Australian soccer. This leads on to a social media discussion posted by Jason Goldsmith, asking who were the non-Australian and non-Socceroo goalscorers before the NSL -with Western Australia's Johnny McInroy being among the pick of the bunch.

We also revisit the gazette discussion from last week's show, where we look a little more deeply at what's included in that part of Trove (injuries, bankruptcy, winding up orders, soccer pools, anti-siphoning legislation), but also the disadvantages in terms of a lack of context - such as what exactly prompted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to seek the winding up of South Melbourne Hellas circa April 1998 - and of course a whole host of clubs at national, state, and regional levels. Oh, and Paul's gripe about 'soccer' being changed to 'football' continuing to cause problems.

For 100 Years Ago Today, we're joined by recurring guest Garry McKenzie where we begin in Queenslands with the Brisbane vs Ipswich game, and check in on the Corinthians social events; then down to Sydney for an update to the Australian Trustees Soccer Football Association competition, which we talked about at length back in episode 43; then to South Australia, for a charity match between  two Adelaide teams, and as a curtain-raiser a team of female soccer players and a male team (in skirts); and finally, resolution to Weston and their being forced to host their Gardiner Cup game in Sydney; and we finish off the segment with Ian finding out the nuanced truth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's thoughts on Australian Rules football and its merits compared to other football codes.

In this week's final segment, Garry takes us through his ongoing deep-dive into the colourful life of early Australian soccer identity Arthur Haversleigh Thoby Prinsep. In this lengthy segment Garry covers Prinsep's:

  • Prinsep's comparatively brief connections to early Australian soccer (1880s), across several cities and states (Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Dunedin), which included playing, refereeing, and administration.
  • Prinsep's position in the timeline of the sequence of early Australian soccer (in Melbourne and Sydney) moving from a middle-class game to a working class one.
  • The exaggerated and often false claims about not just Prinsep's soccer pedigree, as well as countless details he claimed about his life and accomplishments.
  • Prinsep's family connections, as well as his relatives own claims to greatness, as well as their proximity to famous artists of the 19th century.
  • Prinsep's multiple pseudonyms and assumed identities
  • Prinsep's multiple interactions with both civil and criminal courts
  • His reputation as a bigamist, cad, bounder, and scoundrel
  • Prinsep's literary and dramatic output.
  • The value of studying Prinsep's life - especially the way his ongoing social notoriety makes him one of the easiest people in early Australian soccer to actually find out and trace throughout their life in and out of soccer.

1 comment:

  1. Regarding the South Melbourne Hellas vs ABC winding up order, according to one of my sources it was likely due to damaged broadcast equipment.

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