Episode 61 - Tony Persoglia, History & Heritage Coordinator at Football Victoria

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Ian is unavailable this week, due to interference from construction related ambient noise at his lockdown locale, and thus Paul is joined in hosting duties by George Cotsanis.

During the clean-up we look at Mark Boric and friends sharing the document love as they are wont to do, with particular focus on this program for the 1967 match between Sydney Prague and Sparts Prague. Apart from looking at the program on its own merits, we also look at how many of these programs end up in the United Kingdom, when in Australia they seem to be thin on the ground. We then follow up with George and his recent interviews, as well as his role in unearthing lower league Victorian soccer photos and ephemera from the 1950s and 60s, particularly from the now long-defunct Heidelberg club (not the club now known as Heidelberg United).

Closing out the first segment of this week's episode, is a quick overview of the Australian Dictionary of Biography - what it is and how it works. We also traipse through the soccer content on the ADB site, including not only the limited biographies of 'genuine' soccer people (such as Sam Papasavas), but also at the many fleeting references to soccer in biographies of people who seem to otherwise have very little to do with the game. For the many English and Scottish born migrant subjects who were passionate or interested about the game in their home nation, but who seemingly lost touch with it once they settled in Australia, there is seemingly a theoretical thread to be drawn of some sort. Then again, as pointed out by listener Paul Hunt after the show, entries such as that on the Anglican bishop Robert Snowden Hay, while mentioning Hay's soccer prowess in England for the leading amateur club Bishop Auckland, fail to mention Snowden's significant involvement in Tasmanian soccer during the 1920s.

Our guest this week is occasional co-host and recurring guest Tony Persoglia, who has recently taken up the role of History and Heritage Coordinator at Football Victoria, a part-time paid role. We talk to Tony about:

• the long-path to get to this point - recommendations, surveys, and COVID
• the probable novelty of such a role being established at an Australian state soccer federation.
• whether the creation of this position will prompt other state federations to follow suit
• the kinds of things that Tony will look at, including hall of fame, life membership, scores and tables, 
• oh, and posting of regular history articles like this one on the New York Cosmos visit to Victoria
• and so much more, of course.

On 100 Years Ago Today, we find Geelong soccer games that Roy Hay wasn't aware of; go to Gnowangerup and Tambellup-Ongerup, in south-east Western Australia, for some sexist football banter; then across to Sydney for a match between two teams of referees; plans for a New South Wales tour of New Zealand; the Catholic papers looking across the sea at sectarian tensions in Ulster, and a football related riot that isn't this one;  and finally ground allocations in Brisbane and surrounds.