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 87 - National Youth League footage unearthed; remembering John Anderson and George Haniotis

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Ian isn't here this week. 

First up, Paul has George Cotsanis on the phone to discuss the unearthing of some rare footage, of the 1991/92 National Youth League finals series. Shared by South Melbourne youth team players Tim Schleiger and Mike Lilikakis, the footage consists of two films - a full length video of the Southern Division preliminary final, and a 20 minute highlight package of South's three finals matches from that season, against Heidelberg, Preston, and Sydney Croatia. Paul and Cotsy chat about the unearthing of the footage; its rarity; its insights into the culture of the South youth team at the time; the vision of players across several clubs, that came to be mainstays of Victorian soccer for the next 10-15 years; the archival incidental footage of Eddie Thomson and Ferenc Puskas; Olympic Park in its early 90s state; the cultural snapshot of the crowd.

We also look at what's next for Cotsy in terms of unearthing in even more rare footage... and there's some exciting possibilities! We also note the death of Michael Christodoulou, the last of Victorian soccer's nut sellers.

In our middle segment we have Greg Werner to discuss the recent passing of two Socceroos, John Anderson and George Haniotis. Greg notes that the well credentialed Anderson - who had played at Stoke in the English second division - was one of the many Scotsmen to come to Australia to play soccer in the 1960s. We discuss the reasons - lifestyle, wage caps, semi-professionalism, and limited employment opportunities outside soccer - why players like Anderson came to play soccer in Australia instead of staying in their home countries. We look at Anderson's Socceroo career, which included the 1965 World Cup qualifying campaign, as well as his successful stint in Victorian soccer, especially with South Melbourne. (credit also to Tony Persoglia for his excellent obituary).

George Haniotis' international career lasted four minutes. A steady and reliable defender in the NSL for several clubs, most notably Sydney Olympic, George was a much loved personality in Sydney soccer. But George was also a pioneer, being the first Australian to play in Hong Kong's league, reviving a soccer connection between Australia and Hong Kong that had largely lain dormant for decades.

Finally, Paul zips through 100 Years Ago Today, starting with a news item (see image on right) which mimics the Daily Mail's re-reporting methods of today; the referee abandoning the game as after a Preston player refuses to leave the field after being sent off; women's football gathering steam in New Zealand, with some favourable commentary on both the women's style of dress, but also an acknowledgement that the girls knew the game; more references to the pending women's game at Murray Bridge; two clubs for women being established in Toowoomba; more commentary, obsessed with the women's sense of dress, this time from Sydney, and with a writer rather bemused by the spectacle in the non-PC manner of the time - but which still brings to mind important questions about the inaccessibility of soccer equipment for women, as discussed with Marion Stell and Heather Reid in a previous episode; and finally, a fancy dress soccer match on skates, with insights into who popular celebrities were at the time (hint - silent film stars), as well as someone dressed as Lindsay Kemble, war veteran and female impersonator.

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 60 - Official and unofficial songs; the nature of soccer in 1880s Melbourne

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There's always new stuff on Trove, wouldn't you know? Then there's the clean-up, including the way that our little network helped a previous guest with finding out information about a little known league from Melbourne's far-eastern suburbs in the 1950s. 

We also have a ramshackle discussion about Australian club songs - not post-match victory songs, but rather official and unofficial club anthems - prompted by a discussion on Twitter on the Canberra Cosmos' supporters CD. We look at the existence of such as songs as:

• Newcastle KB
• Canberra City
• Sydney and/or Melbourne Croatia
• APIA Liechhardt
• Melbourne Victory's Terrace Punk Band
• and several others.

And the different motivations for creating official and unofficial songs depending on the era of Australian soccer.

We finish up the first segment by looking at a photo of people kicking a soccer ball at Gallipoli - what are they doing?

In 100 Years Ago Today, we take a lengthy look at a big fundraising soccer match in Mount Barker in South Australia, and the social events held thereafter, while also wondering why there's no match report for the men's vs women's match; and we head to Sydney where the season just seems to be dragging on interminably, and thus we discuss comparing the length of a typical soccer season in Sydney to its rugby league counterpart; then to Newcastle, where  the long-drawn-out soccer season has seen Adamstown's cricket team forfeit matches; then we run out of time to talk about everything else because of poor time management.

In the final segment, we revisit the 1880s in Victoria. A few episodes ago, Ian looked at new discoveries which pushed the supposed end date of the first phase of Melbourne soccer a little further than previously assumed; now to the 1880s, where Ian has found more games, and more kinds of fixtures (including north vs south of the Yarra games). We also start discussing the demographic make-up of 1880s Melbourne soccer, including people such as the future premier of Victoria, Thomas Bent, and the what the membership numbers mean in terms of how the soccer club operates within playing and social spheres. Oh, and speculation on the possible effect of the 1890s economic depression on the kinds of people involved with Melbourne soccer at the time, as well as how social class shaped early Melbourne soccer. There's also horse riders complain about soccer goalposts, and the public usage of the precinct known as Yarra Park.

Episode 58 - All about Arthur Prinsep, with special guest Garry Mackenzie.

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After trying to clamp down on Ian's banter, Paul loses the battle this week, and by some measure.

Mark Boric and Greg Stock have shared the financials from the 1967 tour of Australia by Manchester United, which leads to a quick discussion about the connection of the late Dean Jones to the 1999 tour of Australia by the same club. 

We look at Tony Persoglia's creation of a Wikipedia article on Victorian player and administrator Frank McIver - and some of the problems with creating Wikipedia pages in terms of 'notability' criteria, as well as the lack of reliable statistics in Australian soccer. This leads on to a social media discussion posted by Jason Goldsmith, asking who were the non-Australian and non-Socceroo goalscorers before the NSL -with Western Australia's Johnny McInroy being among the pick of the bunch.

We also revisit the gazette discussion from last week's show, where we look a little more deeply at what's included in that part of Trove (injuries, bankruptcy, winding up orders, soccer pools, anti-siphoning legislation), but also the disadvantages in terms of a lack of context - such as what exactly prompted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to seek the winding up of South Melbourne Hellas circa April 1998 - and of course a whole host of clubs at national, state, and regional levels. Oh, and Paul's gripe about 'soccer' being changed to 'football' continuing to cause problems.

For 100 Years Ago Today, we're joined by recurring guest Garry McKenzie where we begin in Queenslands with the Brisbane vs Ipswich game, and check in on the Corinthians social events; then down to Sydney for an update to the Australian Trustees Soccer Football Association competition, which we talked about at length back in episode 43; then to South Australia, for a charity match between  two Adelaide teams, and as a curtain-raiser a team of female soccer players and a male team (in skirts); and finally, resolution to Weston and their being forced to host their Gardiner Cup game in Sydney; and we finish off the segment with Ian finding out the nuanced truth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's thoughts on Australian Rules football and its merits compared to other football codes.

In this week's final segment, Garry takes us through his ongoing deep-dive into the colourful life of early Australian soccer identity Arthur Haversleigh Thoby Prinsep. In this lengthy segment Garry covers Prinsep's:

• Prinsep's comparatively brief connections to early Australian soccer (1880s), across several cities and states (Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Dunedin), which included playing, refereeing, and administration.
• Prinsep's position in the timeline of the sequence of early Australian soccer (in Melbourne and Sydney) moving from a middle-class game to a working class one.
• The exaggerated and often false claims about not just Prinsep's soccer pedigree, as well as countless details he claimed about his life and accomplishments.
• Prinsep's family connections, as well as his relatives own claims to greatness, as well as their proximity to famous artists of the 19th century.
• Prinsep's multiple pseudonyms and assumed identities
• Prinsep's multiple interactions with both civil and criminal courts
• His reputation as a bigamist, cad, bounder, and scoundrel
• Prinsep's literary and dramatic output.
• The value of studying Prinsep's life - especially the way his ongoing social notoriety makes him one of the easiest people in early Australian soccer to actually find out and trace throughout their life in and out of soccer.

Episode 28 - Bonita Mersiades; Fairfax Media photo collection; Soccer in the Communist press

Download and listen to episode 28 here.

We begin the show by noting Mark Boric and Greg Werner's efforts in getting 1980s editions of Australian Soccer Weekly uploaded on to Mark's site.

We then move to an expansion of the discussion from the previous week on record keeping, noting the failures of both clubs and governing bodies in taking basic record keeping seriously.

Paul discusses the overlooked (by everyone, including himself) 20th anniversary of South Melbourne's win in the inaugural Oceania Club Championships, which were held in Fiji. This segment includes some chat on the tournament itself, a classic Soccer Australia administrative error, but also a recently uploaded Greek language audio recording of the tournament final, as broadcast by Melbourne based Greek-Australian radio station 1422AM 3XY Radio Hellas.

Then Paul promised to get up a website for the show, with a lightly annotated episode guide, in about two weeks. Would he be able to follow through?

Then a brief chat about the 'Acraman game'. a game of some kind of football played in South Australia in 1854.

We chat to Bonita Mersiades, to discuss the acquisition that collective effort by a range of organisations and individuals has secured the purchase of Fairfax Media's photographic collection - including some 19,000 soccer photos. Bonita takes us through the process of becoming aware of the collection being up for sale; the history of the collection itself; the FBI indictment involved in an earlier change of ownership of the collection; the range of photos in the collection, and how much it does or does not crossover with photos in the Schwab and Shorrock collection at Deakin University; the copyright status of photos in the collection; and the eventual plan for housing and displaying photos from this collection.

The show concludes with a lengthy discussion on the coverage of soccer in Tribune, the official newspaper of the long defunct* Communist Party of Australia.

Among other things, we talk about Tribune's political motivations in covering Australian soccer; the familiarity of its writers with both the game of soccer, and Australian soccer's internal politics; Frank Hardy making comment on the game's prospects in Australia compared to the 'traditional' football codes, including digression into a discussion on cultural nationalism; the newspaper's interest in tours from teams from the Soviet bloc; the focus (in Melbourne) on singling out the Croatian community for purported links to the Ustashe movement; the newspaper's decline in covering soccer, alongside thew newspaper's own decline;

The discussion also covers the newspaper's extensive photographic collection, which like the rest of the relevant material exists outside of copyright (we speculate as to why, without touching on the proximity of the SEARCH Foundation, which is reputedly the trustee for the archives of the CPA and associated parties since the CPA's early 1990s dissolution). It should also be noted that the archived material from Tribune spans only from the 1930s to the 1970s, even though the newspaper existed both before and after those dates.

(*it should be noted that the organisational history of the Communist Party of Australia, especially claimant successor organisations, as well as the history of Tribune itself after the mid-1970s, is a very complicated affair - so if we muck up some of the history, we should be forgiven)

Episode 8 - Vanessa Lucchesi; Adelaide City archives; 100 year old clubs; AFRA

We received our first not-entirely solicited
 call-in during this episode.

Download and listen to episode 8 here.

This episode begins with cleanup and promotion of book launches, followed by discussion about the existence of extant 100-year-old clubs across the country, and the reasons why some areas are comparatively rich in centurion clubs compared to others.

Then we get our first ever unprompted call - from Vanessa Lucchesi - who has done an honours thesis on ethnic football clubs in post-war South Australia. Vanessa also looks after and researches the archives held by Adelaide City. The discussion expands to include segments on ethnicity; the history of Adelaide City; and the scale of the club's archives.

We then return to our discussion of 100-year-old clubs; the attempt to resuscitate the Dinmore Bushrats as a continuation of the tradition of the historical (but defunct) club; the messy attempts by South Melbourne to claim elements of its own history and the soccer history of the local area it has previously rejected; Moreland City's attempts to claim a cultural continuity back to 1916, through several splits and mergers; comparisons with the continuity at South Hobart; we ask the question why did pre-World War 2 clubs survive and thrive in some areas, despite the arrival of ethnic clubs; and that analysis which enables a dominant single narrative to emerge is impossible, because the experience and history of soccer varies significantly across Australia, and that even if there are administrative and financial centres, in cultural terms the application of a sense a hegemonic history is impossible to assert.

In the episode's very wide-ranging final segment, Ian brings up his idea of establishing the Association of Football Resources in Australia (AFRA), a proposed body which would oversee the protection and preservation of Australia's soccer resources and archives.

We run out of time during this episode to do a proper 100 Years Ago Today segment, but you can chase up what was meant to be on that week's segment here.