Episode 17 - Peter Kunz's Chronicles of Soccer in Australia; Dinmore Bushrats

Download and listen to episode 17 here.

We celebrate George Costanis getting brought into the inner-sanctum of Roma... withh noting erroneously that he'd been flown over by Roma to hand over precious film reels.

We move on to Mark Boric, who'd written a short piece on the history Dockerty Cup, the final of which was being played that week in Melbourne.

We note that the Australia Cup trophy, salvaged from oblivion, will be donated permanently to the Caroline Springs (formerly Sunshine) George Cross club.

Then Garry McKenzie has prompted Ian to dig through the archives and perhaps reevaluate assumptions about early South Melbourne soccer (with clarification of the difference between Emerald Hill and South Park). And was soccer the punk rock of 1880s Melbourne sport?

Then 100 Years Ago Today where we do our usual trawling through 1919 Victorian soccer results. Then up to Queensland and Musgrave Park and Pineapple Rovers. Then to Western Australia and the burgeoning florid rhetoric of the code wars - with a particular emphasis on the effects of nationalism on our sporting preferences and loyalties.

Following the break is a discussion with Scott Morrison and Garry McKenzie on the revival of the historic Ipswich club Dinmore Bushrats - an unusual discussion going back into the depths of time and dealing with very recent events, and dealing with the difficulties of maintaining historical memory over such a large span of time.

In the final segment, Garry Mckenzie sticks around to join Paul and Ian in a very thorough analysis of Peter Kunz's Chronicles of Soccer in Australia:The Foundation Years - 1859-1949, an important book defined by its sense of overwhelming ambition. We look at:

• The book being both unique in terms of its ambition, but also typical of Australian soccer historiography in that an author, going it alone, saw a gap in the existing knowledge, and tried to fill-in the sprawling void of knowledge.
• A rundown of the book - charting the status of soccer across the states through the decades.
• Women's soccer and international tours.
• Kunz revealing a sense of British identity, including one independent of blase notions of coal-miners; the effects of works teams in suburban areas; and the ways that British ideas of professionalism clash with Australian ideals of amateurism.
• The transient influence of visiting (merchant and military) ships to Australian soccer.
• The technological limitations of the project in terms of it being a book and not an easy-to-update online database, especially for its list of catalogue clubs.
• The catalogue of over 2000 clubs making up the final third of the book.
• Its drawbacks, including a lack of referencing, and a sense of overreach of being too eager to claim certain dates and games as being soccer instead of other football codes
• The problems of using the date '1859' as a starting point.
• Its errors and the way they've come about - perhaps due to a lack of a methodology chapter and literature review. 
• That in spite of drawbacks, it's an incredible book that should be treated first as a prime example of a labour love; the book is magnificent, but many of its assertions must be handled with care; and that triangulation of details remains an imperative.
• The book is a correction to the over-emphasis on post-1945 soccer.

Episode 16 - Footscray, Footscray, it's a hell of a town!; Preston Makedonia match programs

Download and listen to episode 16 here.

Albury kicks off at night, or so Paul has been told. (you can also hear Paul shuffling papers like he's channeling his inner Birchabald T. Barlow)

We get an answer from Mark Boric as to why Victorian clubs took so long to start their season in 1919.

Thanks to Travis Faulks, we finally get some Illawarra content, including historical nicknames!

(also we get promised an intern, a promise which fails to materialise)

Thanks to Garry McKenzie, we get an overview of Brisbane church soccer.

Then 100 Years Ago Today with Victorian scores, and no news... a West Australian team misses its train... then to Newcastle and code-harmony...  a Brisbane story tickles Ian's code-war and class-war yearnings... in Goobumgee, there's some games being played, where Ian takes on the legitimacy of "dance committees" to Paul's displeasure...

After the break, it's back to talking about Footscray, providing a historical overview of soccer in the area, including clubs and grounds across the decades. Footscray City, Footscray United (two kinds), Footscray Capri, Footscray JUST... more Footscray content than you can poke a stick at. Plus all the usual digressions into public space, suburbia, works teams, etc.

In the final segment, Paul looks at some old Preston Makedonia match day programs from the late 1980s - they're rather good, with a lot of interesting content spanning supporter etiquette, advertisements, politics, nationalism, overseas soccer, news, player profiles, battles with local councils, even some poetry,  - but most importantly about what the editorial style says about the balance the struggle to exist between two cultures.

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.