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

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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 88 - Germanton 1878, with Garry MacKenzie

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This week Paul is joined in hosting duties by Garry McKenzie via Zoom. Paul begins this week's show with a discussion about the difficulty of trying to sort through available match footage online of the National Soccer League, as usual through the prism of South Melbourne Hellas. To wit, the discussion focuses on Paul's attempt to try and find what extant Hellas footage exists on the net, and how to organise. His solution at least in terms of record keeping, is the creation and upkeep of an online inventory. Such a list highlights the nature of the extant footage, a history of national league broadcasting, and the near total lack of available footage from sides other than Newcastle KB from the first six seasons or so of the NSL. Might there be extant footage in Adelaide, Brisbane, or Canberra? Have Australian soccer foragers been too Sydney and Melbourne centric?

Garry then discusses going into the Football Queensland history projects archives. The website is getting an update, for starters. As for the archives themselves, there's so much material yet to be processed - programs, women's association archives, photographs - and what needs to be processed, catalogued, scanned, and uploaded, and in what order of priority. Also, Garry got to test the scanner, and it works! 

In our middle segment Paul and Garry discuss the latter's discovery of the earliest (yet) known game of soccer in New South Wales, in what is now Holbrook, in 1878. Among the issues we discuss:

• How Garry found the article, and the need to keep going back to Trove and reconducting old searches as new newspapers are uploaded.
• Who were the participants, and where did they come from - and where did they go.
• Why Germanton/Holbrook.
• The thoroughness of the match report, including its team lists, and the utter unambiguity about which code of football is being discussed.
• Who was the writer.
• What happened next, and is there any evidence of other games of soccer, or evidence that participants in this game played soccer afterward.
• What it means for the importance of the 1880 Wanderers game.

For a write up of the discovery, see the piece on the Shoot Farken website.

In 100 Years Ago Today, a Perth team travels to Bunbury, minus some of its starts who are playing in the UK vs Australia rep game - and thus we discuss native born vs overseas born players; in Albany, the local soccer writer evaluates the local's team performances, player by player; Norths vs Wests in Broken Hill, and another old boy; to Ipswich, and the controversy of Blackstone Rovers leaving the field in protest, and the unintended consequences and possible class connotations of the incident; the continuing momentum of ladies' soccer, and the public support they seem to be receiving; in Brisbane, why wasn't Mitchell passed the ball!; and throughout the whole segment, a discussion of writerly pseudonyms.

Episode 77 - Athas Zafiris on soccer-soldier Joseph Bilbie; Andrew Howe on NSL promotion and relegation

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Ian is back in the studio, and has an explanation for why he wasn't available the previous week. His reasons don't impress Paul. But there's a bit of Adelaide content here to make amends for failing to keep up South Australian quotas. Ian also reminisces about listening to Paul's hosting the previous week.

Then the clean up, with due acknowledgment of the wonderful archival work being done by Mark Boric and Greg Stock. Paul goes on with his fascination with the menus of Australian soccer gala dinners of days of yore. Then a digression into one time professional golfer and golf announcer Jack Newton, and the soccer content in Newton autobiography, including oppressive attitudes to soccer from some Sydney schoolmasters when Newton when was growing up.

We're also joined by Athas Zafiris of the Shoot Farken website, to discuss a piece he's written about Joseph Bilbie, early 20th Century soccer start in Minmi, and World War 1 soldier. We talk about the background to this research; Bilbie's story; the impact of Bilbie's death on the local community in both civic and soccer senses; and the wider stories and lessons which can be drawn from the involvement of soccer personnel in World War 1. We also look at the way in which we don't always acknowledge the way soccer was embedded in certain Australian communities at the time, being overwhelmed by the media presence and propaganda of other football codes.

In our second (and as it turns our, final segment for this week), we're joined by Australian soccer's statistician-in-chief Andrew Howe to talk about how promotion and relegation worked in the National Soccer League. Right away we clear up one of the biggest misconceptions (yes, there was pro-rel in the NSL) - but we also get into the nuances of how the NSL's promotion and relegation protocols worked; its similarities to the re-election process in England's Football League prior to 1986, which included evaluating teams coming in and out based on financial and other criteria; how the lack of nationwide second division made promotion and relegation that much more complicated, including the complicated playoff systems of the late 1980s; the teams which rejected the chance to move into the NSL; and the eventual reasons why the NSL abandoned promotion and relegation in any form.

Episode 74 - The epistolary scheming of Willem Siebenhaar; NSL video tranche

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We begin this episode by reminiscing about MySpace, but not for long, and read some fan-mail, and celebrate South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights being 1st and 2nd on the ladder.

Eventually Pauls gets to discussing a tranche he's been given of mostly South Melbourne Hellas related videos spanning 1983-1994 or thereabouts (which he's been uploading on his YouTube channel) - clips people may not have seen before, and clips from otherwise poor eras in South Melbourne's history. We talk about the reaction of then Brisbane City player Paul Schiavo to one of the early 1980s clips, and his further recollections on the differences between Brisbane and Melbourne crowds of that era, especially in regards to temperament. Paul also goes on to discuss what the videos as a collective reveal in the form of evidence - of game styles, of stadiums, supporters and the limited amenities, and the resemblances to a lower league English quality of the same time. And the effects on the class makeup of the crowd when amenities are improved.

After the break we look at the brief Australian soccer involvement of the eccentric Dutch anarchist Willem Siebenhaar, in particular Siebenhaar's attempts to get soccer going in Perth and Fremantle in the 1890s. Ian takes great delight in the epistolary scheming of Siebenhaar at trying to encourage discussion and debate about the merits of soccer. Paul wonders if this is more evidence of a cohort of eligible bachelors (and bounders), usually professionals belonging to the middle and upper-middle classes trying to promote soccer. For more on Siebenhaar's life and interests aside from soccer, see his ADB entry.

The last segment is 100 Years Ago Today, where we start with fire brigade soccer in Wagga and Sydney; then to Albury for more Corinthians and Thistles; in Brisbane, the Wynnum players miss the train for their match against Corinthians; then to Weston where there's a meeting for various presentation, and Ian marvels how well organised these meetings are; then down to the South Coast where they thank the ladies in their auxiliary role; and after a brief stop in Rockhampton (see also Joe Gorman's old article on soccer in Nerimbera); the exotic oriented story of the HMS Malaya playing against the Singapore Chinese Football Association; and the attempted revival of rugby union in Victoria.

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

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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