Episode 73 - Paul Nicholls' 20 matches for the 20th century

Download and listen to this episode here.

This begins with banter encompassing Paul being sick the week before, a scam that Ian and Paul during their time working at uni, and Ian's look at Patrick Skene's new book n rugby league player Olsen Filipaina. Oh, and a comment by Skene that the soccer community is not supportive of people taking the plunge writing important soccer books. That's followed by a promotion for Dylan Arvela's new book about Woonona's 2021 championship success. 

Then more on Footscray Thistle, including updates on a previous post by Ian, including information sent to him by descendants of some of the players in the photo, including leading Victorian player of the 1920s and 30s George Macauley. Some chat also about "lost 'insert suburb/locality/town'" pages on Facebook, which inevitably have little soccer content.

Then Footscray Park bingo and shenanigans with 'footy' posts. And some chat about a heinously mythmaking plaque in Ararat honouring the 'founder' of Australian Rules football, Tom Wills. Paul lets the audience know about how a recently established club in Port Fairy was educated about the history of soccer in the region by a former player from the 1950s Port Fairy.

After the break it's time for 100 Years Ago Today, beginning in Melbourne, and musings about Caledonian society involvement in the game; then across to Albany, with more Thistles and Corinthians... is there something in the existence of clubs named Thistle and Corinthians across the country? Then into a James George Beaney digression, with nothing to do with the segment. 

Back to the segment - in Brisbane, there's a huge increase in numbers and Brisbane and Ipswich, leading to the formation of a second division, and the barest hints of an unnamed professionalism and its effects on recruitment. 

Finally, we get to this week's guest is Paul Nicholls, who wrote an article for Fairplay's Play On magazine's December edition, picking 20 games for the 20th Century. To avoid contemporary biases, Paul limited himself to two games per decade, and this we scamper through his list to look for how he came up with his list. We look at:

• trying to look at the history of the game in Australia as an outsider
• important pre-NSL games, and the importance of pre-NSL era as a whole
• women's games
• the obsession with England
• district vs club debates
• novelty matches like Western Australia vs England cricketers
• Iran '97
• Paul Mavroudis' quibbles with certain selections
• the problems with trying to sort out any list from the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of soccer matches played during the 20th century in Australia.
• Trying to look forward and back at the same time.
• the lack of obvious legacies for many of the selections
• balancing the obvious with the obscure

Episode 13 - Adamstown Rosebud's 130th anniversary; Leopold Baumgartner

Download and listen to episode 13 here.

Apologies for another week missed. But we're back for another episode with a lot to clean up.

We start with little bit about the soccer exhibition at Deakin University in Geelong, highlighting what's available in the Schwab and Shorrock collections at Deakin.

Then Ian and Paul wonder about Mark Boric's collection and the long-term security of the database, and whether it would be better if someone with money and clout came into secure the future of the collection. But remember what the Meat Puppets said? "Who needs action when you've got words".

Ian talks about progress on his 'First Kicks' project. Oh, the complications of delineating between suburbs, cities, towns, villages, and the passage of time that changes them.

And the rivalry between the George and George Cup and the Beaney Cup for importance in 1880s Melbourne.

Then 100 Years Ago Today. The Spanish flu is on the wane. The code is regenerating. And first to Broken Hill, where the local soccer folk are trying to get the game going again. At the centre of things are working people and trade unionism, and an interesting fellow named Reg Rapley. Then to Melbourne, where league competition is finally getting underway... almost. That's followed by a soccer/rugby league double header in Newcastle... and how things have changed since then.

After the break we speak with John Connors from Adamstown Rosebud, on the club's 130th anniversary. We delve into the club's early days and the social context the club existed in - covering class, religion, and other clubs of the same vintage - before moving on to discuss the club's war dead.

The discussion is capped off with a look at Adamstown's short-lived tenure in the National Soccer Leagye in the 1980s - an era which brought surprise glory, in the form of an NSL Cup win (and another missing trophy); but also disaster, with the club's then significant wealth squandered on just three NSL seasons.

In the final segment, Paul looks at The Little Professor of Soccer by Leopold Baumgartner, a classic of Australian soccer publishing.

The book covers Baumgartner's life from his early days in Austria, until the near the end of his playing career. It's a bit of a let down that the book doesn't go beyond that, as Baumgartner remained engaged in soccer in various guises for the rest of his life, especially coaching junior soccer.

The first half or so of the book centres on Baumgartner's youth and pathway to professional soccer in Austria - which was still a semi-professional pursuit. Baumgartner talks about his trips with the Austrian national youth team, and club trips touring South America, where the somewhat naive sounding narrator marvels at the cross-national bonhomie of European youth football but also note the grinding poverty he encounters in Latin America

These overseas tours eventually lead to Baumgartner and players of his ilk, migrating to Australia to play for clubs like Sydney's Prague and Hakoah clubs. Of course this leads to the mess of Australia being kicked out of FIFA for not paying transfers to the European clubs. But the imports at least bring advanced tactics, preparation and skill to Australia, as well as boosting crowds.

Baumgartner plays for a variety of clubs and undertakes a variety of roles, but if there's one thing which irks him it's football politics. The pettiness of internal club politics, and the incompetence of federation officials really get up Baumgartner's goat.

The lasting impact of this book is a strange one - the collective memory of the culture that this book talks about is gone. Many of the clubs are dead; the rest, even the strongest, a mere shadow of what they were. A book that begins so full of naivety and hope ends with the sobering warning that Australian soccer in the late 1960s is already on the decline, and that something must be done to arrest that downward turn.

The book is long out of print, but you can download a sneaky scanned copy here.