Episode 82 - Remembering Joe O'Connor, Alan Garside, Bill Mahoney, with Greg Werner

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We're locked down again, so we're Zooming again. Also Paul got sacked from his job. And his soccer team's out of action. So everything's going great. It's so bad, that Paul's even getting into "the banter". And there's so much of it.

Greg Stock has started adding match program links to his NSL season files on OzFootball.

Ian tries to buy a signed NSL match program, without success, which leads to Paul musing about why people would be offloading their collections, and the nature of people moving on from any code and onto other activities.

Also, Ian's finding out more about Victorian school soccer... also Paul and Ian trying to figure out what the size of Melbourne's player numbers were. This conversation seems to be meandering more than usual. 

Thank goodness that we have Greg Werner on in the second segment to get things straightened up and focused. Greg's here to talk about the recently deceased Matildas' and women's soccer coach Joe O'Connor, and former Socceroos Alan Garside and Bill Mahoney. 

Irishman Joe O'Connor and his wife Pat were at the centre of women's soccer in New South Wales from the 1960s and 1980s, and thus also at the heart of the national team in the formative decade of the Matildas.

(for some other episodes dealing with Australian women's soccer during the 1970s, when O'Connor was coaching them, see episode 56 and episode 76)

Alan Garside was part of a multi-generational connection to the Granville soccer scene. Garside was a leading goal scorer of early 1950s Sydney soccer, with his record putting him on a par with Newcastle striker Reg Date. Garside represented Australia in 'A' and 'B' internationals in the 1950s.

Goalkeeper Bill Mahoney of Newcastle also played 'A' and 'B' internationals for Australia in the 1950s.

Ian asks the question about what the strategy is for recording and discussing the story of these players; Greg suggests that's it's not just the international representatives we need to worry about, but also the large amount of state representatives, from an era when state league and interstate football held a high degree of importance. There's also the question of Australia's many 'B' international games and tour matches, which featured starting lineups that were vastly different from lineups that would have played in full 'A' internationals.

In the final segment, we have 100 Years Ago Today, where we start off in Toowoomba (and Cawdor), where Ian tries to assure us that Queensland isn't just one cultural mass, but rather a state riven with regional feeling; then to Oakey Western Suburbs, and a strange idea of what a not one-sided game looks like, and encouraging the juniors to watch the senior game to be educated; after Paul gets off his soapbox, we visit Boodua who are playing Goombunjee, and a rainbow strip; then to Hobart; then to Adelaide; then to the Melbourne results.

Episode 72 - visiting the Footscray Historical Society

Download and listen to this episode here. 

Banter. You can skip that bit, it goes for about five minutes.

Then Ian gets annoyed about academic and academic adjacent books on Australian multiculturalism by sociologists, multicultural theorists, and historians, which ignore sport almost entirely. For shame.

We note the passing of Socceroo Alan Marnoch, and the low-level of record keeping and cultural memory within Australian, when it comes to paying proper dues in things like obituaries for notable persons involved within Australian soccer. And some words on former Melbourne Croatia/Knights coach Mirko Bazic, who also died during the week. And Mark Bosnich does a nice thing for one of Australian soccer's oldest living national team players, Alan Garside.

Then a little bit on Paul's favourite topic, sporting statues, and two new ones which have appeared in Melbourne recently. Paul has some concerns, and it's not necessarily what you might think. Or it might be, but you'd have to listen to find out. But basically, getting soccer statues up at Olympic Park might be more complicated culturally than people would want to admit.

After the break, Ian and Paul talk about their visit to the Footscray Historical Society, and the kinds of questions that visit threw up about how to use such organisations for soccer research. We talk about:

• The kinds of places these historical societies were originally set up for, and what they may have been expanded to include.
• The ideal of becoming a member if you plan to use the relevant society's resources on a semi-regular basis, to cut down costs.
• The particular mix of antique and modern databases used by historical societies, including for answers to questions they have answered before.
• The kinds of resources (newspapers, photographs, maps, etc) which would be easier to access at such a group, rather than at a location such as a state library or public records office.
• Likewise, the kinds of newspapers that are available in bound volumes, not available yet on Trove.
• The living local knowledge which exists in the form of the volunteers; but also the ingrained, hardwired biases of the volunteers (at least in Melbourne) which makes them not understand soccer at all.
• The inconvenient (for non-pensioners, the non-unemployed, etc) opening times.
• The likelihood that you won't find a lot of soccer information, at easily.
• And just look at some of the images of Footscray Thistle that Ian found in the Footscray Historical Society's database.

Then to 100 Years Ago Today, where we begin in Buderim and its surrounds; then to Newcastle and a meeting; down to Sydney, and a financial report from the Metropolitan Soccer Football Association; a Western Australian journalist watches a soccer match involving the Rubaul Malays, in New Britain.

And finally, a piece on soccer in Narrogin (in south-eastern Western Australia) by Stephen Bowes, and the ebbs and flows of the game's populairity in the region.