Episode 90 - Overseas guest players in Australian soccer, with Jason Goldsmith and Lucas Gillard

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Paul is joined on the show this week by Jason Goldsmith and Lucas Gillard, the authors of Be My Guest: Football Superstars in Australia, their new book about overseas player guests stints in Australia. Together, we discuss the book's genesis; the research methods and obstacles (with a shoutout to the scanners and uploaders and historians among us); what the guest players themselves remembered of their time in Australia; the motivations of the clubs and players involved; the moving stories of those who unexpectedly played alongside some of world football greats; the dawn and dusk of the guest player stints in Australian soccer; and so much more, across the opening two segments of the show. 

Fair to say, Paul highly recommends this book!

Jason and Lucas stick around for 100 Years Ago Today, where we begin with the Melbourne scores; the footballers at Osbourne House are doing well; and finally, letter writer 'Enthusiast' has some pointed remarks for both the New South Wales state team, and the Queensland state selectors; an article from Adelaide looks at the merits of the various football codes, finding good in all; and Queensland's lady footballers are going to play their match as a curtain raiser to an Australian Rules match - why? Probably because of attitudes from soccer authorities like this.

Episode 84 - A look at the Football Belongs documentary (with Jason Goldsmith)

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We're back after a week's break... well, mostly. Ian's decided to take the rest of June off, so Paul is joined in hosting duties by Jason Goldsmith - and we get an update on his and Lucas Gillard's book Be My Guest. We also quickly look at Ange Postecoglou signing up as Celtic manager, and a missing section on Ange's Wikipedia page. We also get way out of the show's wheelhouse by discussing contemporary football broadcast arrangements.

We also look at Walter Pless' obituary for Tasmanian soccer great George “Chopper” Arnott. We give props to Greg Stock for his ongoing OzFootball work. We also note that Tony Wilson and Rob Heath, who are making the Ferenc Puskas in Australia documentary, are still looking for footage and photographs, as well as accepting tax deductible funding support via their Documentary Australia Foundation page.

Our main focus this week is the full length Football Belongs on Optus Sport. We look at the following topics:

• Who is this for? Who is this being addressed to – considering Ange’s comments about trying to force the game through to cultural centre stage, having it on Optus only, means its going to be seen by soccer football fans only - if "Football Belongs", where and how does it belong exactly? And will it reach the Eurosnobs within Optus' reach.
• The beginning and end with John Moriarty.
• The way the documentary resets the narrative of the past 15 years of Australian soccer and its immigrant/ethnic character.
• The breadth and limitations of its diversity - including the lack of almost any non-English language interviews. And no Jews!
• The general (and understandable) paucity of women in this documentary.
• The way the documentary demonstrates that the clubs within these communities are not just football clubs - they are community and social welfare organisations.
• The way that sometimes the use of non-football people (like Mario and Paul Fenech) detracted from the story.
• Craig Foster articulating the point that Australian soccer needs to utilise its demographic and cultural reach to change the very nature of Australian society.
• We also have some talkback callers throughout this segment! Very good point made by Paul Hunt calling in, asking when are going to start looking at stories like this from a football first, rather than ethnicity first perspective.
• The way in which the film ignores places and demographics in Australia where soccer has always belonged.

After the break we have another caller, asking about why the film shirks away from the matter of why communities have walked away from the ethnic soccer club milieu. Paul makes the point though, that the documentary is called "Football Belongs" not "Football Belongs?", and that the attrition of support for senior grade soccer in Australia goes across the entire country, in both recent and more established soccer strongholds.

And finally, 100 Years Ago Today, where there are a lot of articles discussing what sport is appropriate for women to play, but we’ll leave them until next week when we have Garry McKenzie on. We start off in Mackay, where a new local club is being formed; then head over to Bunbury, for an Australian Rules footballer with an unusual nickname; and then do a sort of deep dive into the Queensland state team's tour of New South Wales, where they fare poorly against against some of the local elevens, but do very well against the New South Wales state side; there's also a remembrance of the Victorian state team, and the hope that they would one day assemble a state squad once more, as they did prior to the war. We look at the different media perspectives of the tour, and some match reporting styles that could be deemed quite harsh on players by today's standards; we look at some of the curtain raiser matches played on that tour, and some sweeping changes to the committee overseeing soccer in the Kogarah district; and down south in the Illawarra, we have a no-show team, and a case of very poor hospitality by a host governing body.

Episode 62 - reviewing 100 Years Of Moreland City documentary, with Jason Gioldsmith

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A reminder that the Football Writers Festival is happening on the 21st and 22nd of November in Sydney.

Mark Boric Express continues, with copies of Brisbane's Soccer News. George Cotsanis is wondering why a video of Indonesia vs Australia from 1980 is ratcheting up the views.

Oh, and a quick follow up on Dr Snowden Hay from last week, thanks to Paul Hunt,

A look at the Rainford Cup, which is in the United Kingdom for some reason, after being in Sydney,, after being in the UK.

Then some more on soccer in Murray Bridge, with more on GR Handley, a soccer administrator with many hands in many pots. Media, mutual respect between codes, Britishness, social events, and the rise and fall of soccer and other sports in the region all get an airing, 

We're joined this week by returning guest (and occasional co-host) Jason Goldsmith, to discuss the 2016 documentary Moreland City -100 Years Strong, which was produced by George Donikian. We discuss:

• Mythologies, origins, and the problems with making judgements with exceedingly scarce information, and the "1916 problem".
• Not much information on pre-1945.
• The doco's seeming emphasis on Moreland ahead of Park Rangers and Coburg (and Brunswick and Hakoah)
• The lack of chat about the grounds the various clubs used other than Campbell Reserve
• British migration stories, and the involvement of Ten Pound Poms (and Scots) in Melbourne soccer (and the lack of insight into the lack of broader involvement in local soccer by that group).
• Moreland's 1950s success (trophy and player-wise) accelerating that club's decline into irrelevance at the hands of the ethnic clubs.
• The difficulty in making mergers work, especially with a local rival.
• The feelings of loss and only gradual feeling of a new club being equal (or close to) in your heart as your fist club.
• Missing out on the journey up the leagues, and whether parts of the club ethos have changed in their rise up the leagues - including professionalism.
• The good archival content, especially photographic and artefact content.

If you are interested in viewing this documentary, please contact the Moreland City club.

(Paul reviewed this film upon first viewing it back in 2016 - you need to scroll down a bit)

In 100 Years Ago Today we head to Newcastle; some pointed commentary about the "Irish" national team from an Adelaide newspaper; A Brisbane report about an upcoming women's football international between Britain and France; and Sydney reports about other international games.

Episode 31 - Les Street & Aussie rules grounds in Oz Soccer; Paul Connolly's 'The Mighty Bras'

Download and listen to episode 31 here. 

Tony Persoglia is still ill, so tonight Paul is joined in hosting duties by Jason Goldsmith, previously a guest on the show.

On the catch up we play our usual tribute to Mark Boric and his collaborators, and the great scanning and uploading work they're doing. We look at the apples and oranges comparisons made about Ange Postecoglou's J-League title success and the success of other coaches - and yes there are references to snake emojis. 

In 100 Years Ago Today, we critique the batting techniques and temperaments of Geraldton's soccer players... but does it even matter if their cricket match is going to be interrupted by a surprise soccer game; take a look at Eurosnob material in the Adelaide press; check out combination fundraiser and bragging rights matches still being played so late in the year in Newcastle; and finish up at Lithgow, where the local schoolboys are playing for what sound like some very nice trophies

After the break we chat with Les Street about the use of Australian rules football grounds for Australian top-flight soccer grounds, especially in the southern states. During the conversation we sweep across the country from Western Australia to Tasmania, covering grounds old, new and demolished, and grounds which were at least built to be nominally multi-sport venues. We also look at the reasons why some Aussie rules grounds were used by soccer - and why some were perhaps underused. We also cover issues such as pitch alignments, surface conditions, cricket wickets, spectator amenities and sight-lines - and we find that there's been so many "footy" grounds used for top-flight soccer, that we neglect to mention even obvious ones like Victoria Park!

In the final segment we take a look at a hidden gem of Australian soccer books, Paul Connolly's The Mighty Bras, Connolly's 2010 memoir about his first seven years coaching of the Brunswick Zebras senior women's team. This is the ultimate sweet-natured - but not saccharine - grassroots soccer story, about a bunch of women ranging in age from early 30s until early 50s, who suddenly find themselves playing organised soccer despite most of them having next to athletic background, let alone a soccer background. They are neither the pioneering women of yesteryear, who sought out soccer and made it their own (in the broader sense against men’s disapproval, and the disapproval of other women, establishing their own controlling body as well as clubs; neither are they (for the most part) part of the maturing of the girl footballers who had begun to swell junior numbers. 

The book focuses on the team's 2009 season, but also goes back to earlier games and season, covering the high, lows, and middles. When this team started, it was the only senior team for either gender at Brunswick Zebras – the senior men’s wing didn’t start until 2006, and perhaps unusually, the women's team has continued through to 2019. The book provides a snapshot of the kinds of opponents they faced, from across the city, and the conditions that these women played in, and under. The books also looks at the different motivations of the different teams (youth vs age, winning at all costs vs fun), and Paul’s motivations in being their coach. Perhaps most keenly observed, apart from the various characters in the book, are the difference between the expectations of men’s football (even “social” men’s football) and senior women’s football, as well as the culturally entrenched (though not unchangeable) psychological differences between men’s and women’s teams. 

Episode 21 - Jason Goldsmith and Surfing for England; Paul Nicholls; Mt Isa

Download and listen to episode 21 here.

Oh, nuffies and public libraries.

And we recount the famous soccer people we overlooked from the previous week's Spencer Gulf discussion.

Ian thanks Garry McKenzie for wrecking his life, having found soccer references and photos in Mimag, the official publication of Mount Isa Mines. What are the ramifications for how Ian (and the rest of us, I suppose) understand Mt Isa's soccer history? Listen also to the weary bitterness creep into Ian's voice as he talks about the overwhelming isolation of living in Mt Isa...

And then opines about his upcoming Newcastle trip, and what he hopes to achieve while touring the Hunter.

Then Ian reads out an extract from 'The Bonds of Empire: Sydney 1925', a creative non-fiction piece sent in by Paul Nicholls - an attempt to create a mythology for Australian soccer.

After the break, we talk to Jason Goldsmith, the author of Surfing for England a book about the best players never to have played for the Socceroos. We cover the following:

• Craig Johnston, the originator of the term 'surfing for England' - a term that's become infamous and unfairly so.
• Tony Dorigo, and why he didn't get the stick that Johnston did for not playing for Australia.
• Andrew Durante and interesting decisions about citizenship, where the convergence of career progression and other motivations meet.
• The different international football situation in the 1980s - no international breaks.
• The Serbs and the Croatians, and the questions about loyalty asked of some and not of others.
• The Tim Cahill story - and the story of how his eligibility became a cause celebre for Australian (and later worldwide) soccer.
• The irony of trying to exploit the existence of players with multiple eligibilities, whereas once we railed against it.
• The idea that Christian Vieri could've so easily become a concreter in Sydney's western suburbs.
• The incredible story of Sasa Ilic, and an ambush of Ian Syson.
• How many Western Australians should make the cut for the revised edition?

I don't know why, but Ian's microphone isn't working during early parts of the segment with Jason.

We finish the episode with 100 Years Ago Today - Victorian results; Toowoomba and the tensions of returned servicemen not wanting to play for services teams after the war; and finally to Newcastle.