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.

Episode 2 - Australian soccer and literature; Extended trophy discussion

Download and listen to episode 2 here,

Rudderless without George Donikian's guiding hand, Ian and Paul cast off into uncharted waters. The first ten minutes meander with attempts to put forward a manifesto, or at least some sort of method - only committed listeners will find out if any of these regular segments actually materialise.

The whole world then celebrates Paul's finally getting his thesis passed. The thesis was about the relationship between Australian soccer and literature, and soccer and Australian literature,

• the difficulty about talking sport and the arts at the same time in Australian culture.
• the paucity of academic and community awareness of Australian sporting literature.
• the Austlit database, which is accessible via university databases for those in the tertiary sector, and via state library websites.
• the many ways in which the literature differs in its discourses from the ways in which journalism and mainline histories discuss the experience of Australian soccer
• the ways in which the literature challenges monolithic understandings of Australian soccer in terms of ethnicity and gender readings.
• the idea that demographers, historians, sociologists etc have not taken literature seriously when looking at the Australian sporting experience.
• an extended discussion on The Earth Cries Out, Harold C. Wells' novel on mining in the Hunter, which includes occasional snippets on soccer.

After the break, the discussion moves to missing trophies, and particularly Victoria's Beaney Cup, and the George and George Cup, and the sage of their theft, pawning, and involvement in court cases. The discussion also touches on the virtual disappearance of soccer from Victoria during the 1890s and early 1900s.

Then onto the Gardiner Cup, New South Wales' long-running knockout cup, and a discussion of the nature (and material value) of trophies, and the cultural difference between trophies and pennants. Then a discussion on the FA Trophy, which was donated by the Football Association for interstate competition in Australia, which was assumed missing... but is it actually?

And then onto the very well-known story of the fate of the Australia Cup trophy... and how soccer cultures evolve in the things that they care (and don't care about), and the ways in which people in the game take care of historical artefacts - and what happens to a club's trophies if the club goes defunct? And who is responsible for maintaining those artefacts? Oh, and that dreaded museum debate...