Episode 92 - 100th anniversary of the women's soccer match at the Gabba (with Peter Eedy)

Download and listen to this episode here.

Paul begins this show by noting that Ian is not back, yet. But also, what the hell happened to the last month's worth of scheduled episodes? Short answer: Paul had the lockdown sads. But also, here's a reference from 2004 to then South Melbourne president George Donikian proposing government investment in Bob Jane Stadium (today's Lakeside) to make it a multisport, multi-tenant venue...

Paul discusses some of what's been going on in the Australian soccer history scene over the past month, where he seems obsessed with the story of Parramatta Eagles getting thrown off a plane in 1994 because they were being very silly; and digging in to the history of the long gone national indoor soccer league. (see Roy Hay's interview here on the Geelong Region Soccer Show from 2020 for an in depth look at topic). All of this is summarised in a rambling treatise trying to pinpoint the loss of collective memory in Australian soccer - not just for the great games and goals, but also the little, strange, off-beat, colourful moments which add depth to the overrdiing experience. 

Our guest this week is Queensland soccer historian Peter Eedy. We first discuss Peter's history in soccer history. We discuss process and self-definition - the boundaries between professional an amateur historians, and the difference between historians and mere researchers. Oh, the familiar path of the accidental historian - Facebook groups, Wikipedia, Trove! The quest to find some niche of your own, not replicating what others have done. Peter discusses the intricacies of working on Wikipedia, including his tremendous work on documenting the history of soccer in Brisbane. He also discusses the plusses and minuses of covering the early years of soccer in Queensland and Australia, and the romantic appeal of formative years and origin stories.

In our final segment we cover the 100th anniversary of the women's soccer match at the Gabba, noting that it was not the first soccer match played by women or girls in Australia (see one example here from Harlaxton in 1917). We try to figure out the process by which this match was played - its impulse, its people, its obstacles, its proponents, and its opponents, and its aftermath. The conclusion? Like the men's 1880 match between Kings School and the Wanderers, it may not have been the first game of its kind, but as the first "public" game, it acts as a useful starting point for discussions about the history of organised, continuous women's soccer in Australia.

Episode 27 - Roberto Pennino; Superga air disaster; Record Keeping

Download and listen to episode 27 here.

In this episode we cover the deficiencies in record keeping in Football Victoria's state league leading goalscorers and its best and fairest tallies, and ask who's responsible for maintaining the game's records.

We also look at the based-on-an Aboriginal war-cry chant used by the Queensland state team in 1925, and the relationship of Aboriginal kitsch to Australian soccer.

Ian brings up his segment, which is called "Short Memory", on the eternal forgetting of the game - that is, the habit of soccer forgetting its history. Ian reads from his blog, which you can read here.

The main part of the episode is dedicated to a chat with visiting writer Roberto Pennino, who has written books (published in Dutch and Italian language editions) about the Superga air disaster, which in 1949 claimed almost the entirety of playing squad of the great Torino side of the 1940s. (Roberto has also written a book about Dutch footballers in Italy, in Dutch).

We also manage to get some chat about the research on Dutch-Australian soccer clubs which Roberto is helping Adam Muyt with. (Adam is also in the room off mic in the final segment).

Episode 3 - Missing trophies; Soccer in schools; Prahran

Download and listen to episode 3 here.

We begin with trying to figure out the current monetary value of the FA Trophy, donated to Australian soccer back in the day for interstate competition (and currently in the possession of Football Victoria). Back then it was valued at £250, a year's annual salary for a working man. As to the value of £250 in today's money, we got two estimates, one being  $40,000 (David Krunic) and the other estimate being as much as 60,000 (Andrew Howe).

Soccer historian and listener of the show, Peter Eedy, took the theme of missing trophies and ran with it, discussing a range of Queensland trophies. There was

• the 1961 Australia Charity Cup won by the now defunct Hellenic club of Brisbane
• The Hilton Shield played for from the 1920-1960s - also missing
• Late 1800s badges. 
• The Brisbane Charity Cup

We also noted Simon Smale's article about Brisbane City's missing NSL Cup trophy.

This week's main discussion focuses on soccer in schools, especially in the early 1900s. Moving across the different states, we look at how the growth in school soccer, and the responses it engendered from rival codes of football, is key to understanding the development not just of soccer, but also other football codes, and the rhetoric used against soccer in Australia to this day. Among the examples looked at are:

• Kogarah High School in Sydney, a new soccer area with a sudden growth of clubs
• Sydney's Marist Brothers high school, with a six teams in an internal competition; unusual in that it was a Catholic led soccer culture
• Perth, possibly the ground zero of a virulent strain of anti-soccer rhetoric which classed soccer an invader and a threat, and which set the ground for a code-wars view of soccer by Australian rules bodies, as opposed to one where soccer was seen a harmless novelty 
• Melbourne, where school soccer had the difficult task of trying to dislodge the already established take-up of Australian rules

Moving on from historic representations of school soccer to literary ones, we look at the the play and film versions of The Heartbreak Kid, and the centrality in both of teachers as ; we also look at the centrality in soccer literature of teachers as gatekeepers (for better and worse) for soccer; we also compare the effects that such 'motivating individuals' have on a local soccer culture in terms of creating a sense of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. These concepts are linked

(see also this from Paul's blog on the The Heartbreak Kid film and its connections to South Melbourne Hellas.)

We move on to a Sacred Sites segment, looking at the inner-Melbourne suburb of Prahran. Apart from featuring as a key soccer locality in Melbourne from the game's earliest days through until the late 1940s (and maintaining a club presence until the late 1980s), there are also these connections to school soccer. Prahran High School was the site of filming for The Heartbreak Kid; Ange Postecoglou was a student at Prahran High School, and where he set up teams in the absence of formal support; just a few years later Prahran High School (with future NSL player Ange Goutzioulis) were state champions.