Episode 89 - minimum standards of national league venues, with Les Street.

Download and listen to this episode here.

Paul is joined in hosting duties by Les Street! The Be My Guest launch has been cancelled, but we were hoping to have on them the show next week. Then Paul discusses the rambling story of retired Scottish forward and current day pundit Gordon Dalziel, whose hazy recollection of playing against Ange Postecoglou in Australia was proven half right. Then Paul and Les segue into a discussion about Scottish football's commitment to accurate crowd numbers, as opposed to Australian soccer's reticence to ever tell the truth about its crowd numbers.

Garry McKenzie has a question about what happens to how records are counted for cancelled seasons - should matches and player records be counted in overall/all-time records? What practices have been used in the past in Australian soccer, like when teams failed to complete seasons - using the examples if Carlton and Eastern Pride in 2001, and Sydney City in 1987.

Then Les goes back to a question raised in episode 80, about where a certain round 1 NSL game was played - Olympic Park or Middle Park - and how Les found the answer. The search for an answer illuminates the nature of soccer reporting, deadlines, and schedules.

We finish the opening segment with a discussion about burnout and self-care. Mark Boric posted a notice of retirement from his blog which indicated a degree of battle fatigue. What are the risks of doing research as a hobby? Well burnout, disillusionment, and what is meant to be a hobby becoming a slog which consumes all your free time, all in pursuit of a "dragon" you can never catch. There'll always be more info and details to chase, spaces to fill, and the payoffs are often brief and fleeting in their ability to elicit pleasure. It's a reminder to take time off, and not let historical work take over - especially if you're not getting paid for it, and especially if it's not longer fun.

Our main segment this week is about the history of national venue standards - a discussion which was prompted by a Twitter discussion about fences at Australian soccer grounds. Les takes us through the history of various (and often) fleeting adherence to venue standards in the National Soccer League - starting with the perhaps surprising insight that the NSL began with the idea of playing at the best venues available to it, having a uniform, central kit supplier - which all sounds rather like the early A-League.

We talk about the way and the reasons for standards slipping - and fences, a discussion prompted in part by this online discussion which kicked off the 2016 Year of the Australian soccer fence. And we chat about the ways that the deterioration ground standards acted to dissuade families and the non-hardcore people from going to games - see the state of stadiums of English football. But also - other sports in Australia also had crowd problems, which prompted thinking from them about similar solutions to what were adopted in Australia. We also look at seating and cover, briefly mention broadcasting. For the A-League match day requirement spreadsheet mentioned in this segment, see this link; also, what happened to the NSL's match day requirements lists?

In 100 Years Ago Today, England vs Scoland match; a quick look at New Zealand debates about the suitability of football for women; correcting scurrilous rumours from Broken Hill that fundraising money for orphans has been squandered; Tasmania invites Victoria for an interstate match; soccer firms in Newcastle; and thorough match reports on New South Wales' tour of Queensland - against the home state, and an even more thorough report; a toast from the Mayor; and a match against West Moreton.

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 12 - Les Street; Dapto Dogs; Sydney Football Stadium

The recently demolished Sydney Football Stadium. 

Download and listen to episode 12.

Ian gets corrected about the historic location of Ball's Paddock in Bulli.

Mark Boric has been updating stuff he's received - finally - from Ian. Greg Stock has also been giving Mark stuff, but the real prize this week is Mark uploading 1980s Australian women's state championship videos provided by former Matilda, Deb Nichols. See Mark's YouTube Channel for these and other videos.

We also give props to Dimitri Peppas for working on South Australian stats.

NSW soccer historian Paul Nicholls sent us a small piece on soccer overreach in 1885.

Then 100 Years Ago Today rounds up news from Melbourne, Ipswich, Adelaide, Sydney, and Newcastle.

Classy banner from the 1993 Australia vs Argentina World Cup
qualifying match at the Sydney Football Stadium.

Then we catch up with Les Street (our first repeat guest) who is at the Dapto Showground - including greyhound racing sound effects - doing research on the few National Soccer League games played there. We also chat to Les about the recently demolished Sydney Football Stadium, and its predecessor stadium, the Sydney Sports Ground. Includes the sliding doors moment of Sydney FC choosing the Sydney Football Stadium, when apparently they were mulling selecting Parramatta Stadium.

(see here for a document which includes recollections of Bay 23 antics at the Sydney Football Stadium)

After getting upset at a VAR handball decision in the Women's World Cup, Ian takes a historical look at the handball rule.

Episode 4 - Les Street; Falcons Park; John Jaap; Woogaroo

Download and listen to episode 4 here.

We begin with a bit of housekeeping, including book launches, and some feedback to the soccer in schools discussion from the previous week. There's also some feedback from Mark Boric on our Prahran segment from the week before. There's also some feedback on Paul Nicholls on an old trophy, and Twitter's @jgrb on being surprised that Paul's voice was more manic than lugubrious.

After the break, Ian asks the question what was the first game of soccer in Australia, with Paul looking for a scapegoat for the NSW centrism inherent in the assumed answer of Parramatta 1880. Ian then gets into one of his favourite topics, the 1875 game of soccer at the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum under the guidance of John Jaap, the Asylum's director. The discussion expands into the idea of the "motivating individual" who establishes and promotes soccer in a region or community, and without whose contributions the initial urge to play soccer may either not occur, or merely become a spark that fails to ignite.

(For the Bertolt Brecht poem, see 'Questions From a Worker Who Reads'. For earlier articles by Ian on the Woogaroo game, see this and this).

The discussion moves on to two 1879 games of soccer in Tasmania and the influence Captain Edmond Meyer Tudor-Boddam, an intimidating personality who attempted to push the cause of soccer against competing options. We come to the conclusion that the importance of Parramatta 1880 is its role as the beginning of organised competitive or continuous soccer, something that a tradition can traced be back to.

Les Street spoke to us about one time national league ground Falcons Park.

We then cross to Les Street parked on the side of the road somewhere near Kongwak in South Gippsland. Les is Australia's leading expert on Australian soccer stadiums, with a particular interest in documenting the grounds used in Australian top-flight soccer. We mix a discussion of Falcons Park, the Morwell Falcons' ground, as well as including some gunzel chat.

We discuss Morwell, Gippsland in terms of economic terms, and the unusual factor that despite being a coal mining region, soccer doesn't seem to exist in the same way that it does in other coal mining areas like Newcastle. We also discuss Paul and Ian's guided tour of Morwell with Don Di Fabrizio from back in 2009. For those wondering about the fate of the Eastern Pride sign that Les mentions:

Was removed about five minutes after we were expelled from the NSL.

If only the council was so quick to help the club as it was to remove anything Falcons-related as part of an insane vendetta to wipe the sport out of the region in the early 2000s. They almost succeeded.

— Sebastian Hassett (@sebth) October 23, 2019

We move on to the complicated story of how Morwell actually got into the NSL, and the complicated, contrived, and comical nature of promotion and relegation in the National Soccer League at the time. We finally get into a discussion of Falcons Park - and Paul gets to do his stand up routine gag about Italian weddings in Morwell.

We wrap up the episode by foreshadowing a discussion on Trove, the National Library of Australia's archive of online and digital resources, including its magnificent newspaper database.