Episode 46 - Rale Rasic; Copyright; Match programs

With apologies for Paul's apparent lagging in this episode which causes some distortion at times.

Download and listen to episode 46 here.

On this week's episode there's some interminable waffling at the start about pandemic restrictions being ramped up in Victoria.

Then to the Mark Boric Express. where this week Mark has been uploading match programs sent to him by George Cotsanis. It includes 1970s programs from Victorian club Croydon City, 1990s/2000s programs from fellow Victorian club Altona City, and National Soccer League programs from clubs like St George and Sydney City. This bit includes discussion on what the differences between these programs tell us about the clubs that produced them - ranging from Croydon's informative product, Altona's more homespun, humorous production, and the internal decline evident within Sydney City's mid-1980s single-sheet programs.

We also note Paul's uploading (finally) of St George's silver jubilee booklet from 1982.

We also look at two related matters which were raised separately on social media over the previous two weeks or so. The first related to a query made on the Australian Football Before the A-League page on Facebook, where one of that group's member asked how to get access to Mike Cockerill's early National Soccer League writing. Paul's answer to that question was as follows:

• If you are a member of a tertiary institution (or know someone who would be willing share their access), you can get access to Australian news databases - unfortunately, while these databases are usually excellent for material post-2000, before that date they steadily become less useful. 
• A subscription to newspapers.com (which is a part of the Ancestry group), which will set you back about $75 for six months for the subscription package which includes the site's two Australian newspapers - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
• A subscription to something like the Sydney Morning Herald's archive service, which covers 1955-1995 - but which is very expensive, with a variety of plans ranging from $15 for 24 hours access, to $395 for a year's access. (a similar service exists for material after 2006 onward, with similarly a high cost)
• For the eras in which Cockerill was writing, the only free option is visiting your local State Library.

Linked to that question is why can't the public freely access archival news material after 1954? The answer lies in US legislation from the early 1990s which extended copyright terms. When Australia and the US signed a free-trade agreement in 2005, this effected copyright law in Australia, and effectively set the line at 1954 for material that was effectively protected by a grandfathering process; and that does not necessarily that once we hit the year 2026, that materials from 1955 will become copyright free en masse.

We finish off by reading from the sole known extant copy of a pre-World War 2 edition of Victoria's Soccer News, as examined and uploaded by Mark Boric. Released during the 1924 season, we focus in particular on the testy relationship between the editor of Soccer News, and a club press representative, arguing over who's responsible for the apparently parlous state of the Victorian soccer press.

After the break Paul reviews The Rale Rasic Story (as told to Ray Gatt). We look at the way the book (which was published in 2005) covers:

• Rasic's experience growing up in an orphanage in Yugoslavia, during and after World War 2.
• The progression and eventual stalling of his professional playing career.
• Rasic's arrival in Australia, and his transition to coaching, including his place in the world as just one of many expatriate coaches from Yugoslavia who end coaching in far-flung corners of the world.
• The ongoing subpar state of Australian soccer in terms of playing, training, and administrative qualities
• The intricacies of Australian soccer politics, including within the Australian Soccer Federation, between the various state federations, and among other interest groups.
• The book's emphasis on Rasic's psychological approach to coaching - in terms of player management, motivation, and preparation - as opposed to the tactical approaches he used.
• We also look at what the book skims over or leaves out entirely - which for Paul, unfortunately includes only brief mentions of the club scene in Australia (especially after Rasic loses the Socceroos job), as well as complete stonewalling on what happened during Rale's Canberra Cosmos tenure.

In this week's final segment we go to 100 Years Ago Today, where in Toowoomba there's a "town vs country" match involving places just three miles out of the aforementioned town; in Ipswich we marvel at the depth of the coverage; while in South Australia, we're surprised that there's any coverage at all, and why has it just seemingly appeared out of the blue? And we finish off the episode with the weekend Melbourne scores.

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.