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 86 - the rise of women's football in Queensland and Sydney

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Paul is here. Ian is sort of here. And the banter is also here.

The big news this week is that Mark Boric has retired from his research, archiving, and preservation work on his blog. For the time being at least however, Mark has committed to keeping up his site.

Ian has an update on a segment from last week's episode, where he digs further into the Edwin Aldred story, and the complicated backstory therein: including a contested military history, changing heights and hair colours, and hard fought insurance claims - a saga lasting even posthumously. Ian also follows up on "Pearce" from last week, finding that it's a Samuel Pearce, where we dig into the socio-cultural environment of Weston during that time, including its soccer, musical, and sectarian qualities. 

After the break we go into 100 Years Ago Today, where we get distracted by the history of accountancy and trade. The nurses at Toowoomba are considering starting a football team; more news of women looking to start soccer teams, and a curious reference to women's soccer in Melbourne; could such a thing have actually happened at that time? And plenty of other coverage of the rise of women's football in Queensland and Sydney, and the different ways in which this manifested itself. And Paul is trying to understand how the idea fermented among these women. Who initiated the discussions? What were the differences in approach and appeal for women from Britain compared to those from Australia? How much did the war time experiences influence the push for women's football? And the question which persists in the early history of Australian soccer: why play soccer in this country? And there's even a poem! 

Then the end of the show gets squeezed, hard.

Episode 63 - Andy Harper, on resetting narratives and Australian soccer's issue of legitimacy

Download and listen to this episode here.

We begin the show by noting that, unfortunately, due to New South Wales opening its borders to Victoria on November 23rd, Ian and Paul will not be able to make an appearance at the Football Writers Festival.

Then we move onto a perfunctory clean up - Mark Boric, George Cotsanis, Tony Persoglia.

Then a discussion led by Ian about researching Australian women's soccer and other women's codes, especially with regards to an old search he conducted on Trove many years ago.

Our guest this week is Andy Harper, former professional footballer in the National Soccer League, and latterly a commentator and author. Harper joins Ian and Paul to discuss the problem with the search for grand and/or unifying narratives in Australian soccer. Our discussion is prompted by Andy's dissatisfaction with Principle II of FFA's XI Principles For the Future of Australian Football - especially with regards to its focus on the faulty assertion that Australian soccer has always been multicultural, as well the constant desire to reset the narrative of Australian soccer in search of 'fresh starts'.

In a lengthy discussion, Ian, Paul, and Andy also discuss these and other matters within the scope of Andy's recently completed doctoral thesis (completed via publication), which utilises Weber's theories on legitimacy to argue that soccer's problem of a lack of cultural and institutional legitimacy is ingrained into Australian culture. The chat takes in discussions about Britishness, Australianness, different forms of legitimacy and how are they gained and lost; and the self-interest, short-term thinking, and niche interests portrayed as being reflective of the greater good. It's all a bit highbrow!

But don't take Paul's mangled summary for it, listen to it yourself!

Unfortunately, 100 Years Ago Today did not go ahead this week - but we think the extended chat with Andy was worth the sacrifice. 

Episode 45 - Garry Mckenzie and Quilp, the first known Aboriginal soccer player

Download and listen to episode 45 here.

Partly because Ian is struggling with a pinched nerve, we're joined for the entire episode this week by returning guest Garry Mckenzie. We begin the episode by checking in with the Mark Boric Express, and as well George Cotsanis - where Paul makes an erroneous statement about what they will be uploading separately - it turns out Cotsy has sent Mark parts of a collection he has amassed, and Mark will scan those items. The conversation digresses into the lack of writing being done by local soccer historians, as opposed to a lot of collecting. So where are the narratives? Garry suggests that at the moment the urgency of preservation seems to be taking precedence over narratives.

Then on to the new user interface of Trove, and some of the quibbles members of our soccer history community have with the new layout. This includes the usual reshuffling of things that were once foregrounded to other areas - such as the page which shows new publications uploaded to the site. Other complaints are the fiddly nature of trying to look for specific dates, whereby several (unnecessary) steps have been added. There's also issues with having tags show up at all, and not having the chance to exclude tags from your search.

Photo: Les Street.

Following on from last week's discussion on the death of Walter Williams, Les Street visited the grave site and found that there was stonework with reference to the Victorian Amateur British Football Association (see right). We speculate that there is a headstone with similar references that has been removed - investigations into whether that headstone still exists are ongoing, but have been made more difficult because of the pandemic.

Ian then reads from a piece by Montague Grover about a women's international match between England and France in 1920, a lengthy article which is surprisingly favourable to soccer and to women's involvement in it. We tease out the links to this game (and the article) and the influence that it may have had on women's soccer in Australia at the time - as well as the story of English migrant women playing soccer in Australia at about the same time. We also look at the broken lineages of Australian women's soccer

After the break we jump into 100 Years Ago Today more follow up on the death of Walter Williams - where Miss Jean Thomas, a female friend of Williams, thanks the many people and members of the soccer community who wrote or sent letters and condolences. Then we have the results from Melbourne; then up to Glen Innes for their match against Armidale, and the prospect of soccer getting strong New England; a halftime update in the game between Wallsend and West Wallsend; and the continuing adventures of the HMS Renown.

Dinmore Bush Rats, 2nd Premiers, Ipswich, 1910.
Top row: W. Lucas, W. Pioch, G. Humphrey, D. Potts, N. Randolph.
 2nd row: C. H. Jones (Vice-president), J. Potts (Vice-president), G. Skellern,
 Quilp, A. Nunn, W. Dawes (Treasurer), J. Tedman (Vice-president).
3rd row: W. Jordan (Secretary), J. Burns, J. Staafford (Patron), E. Dawes
(Captain), G. Jones, M. Bailey (President), W. Thompson, A. Stewart
 (Vice-president).  Front row: M. Reichart,  W. Tait, H. Randolph,
 H. Hainsworth (Vice-president).

Then Garry takes up the matter of where his research is at with regards to Quilp, the earliest known Aboriginal soccer player, who was associated with the Dinmore Bushrats and soccer in Ipswich. This follows up on work first done by Ian seven years ago. We discuss the following:

• how we learned about the existence of Quilp.
• who Quilp was and where he came from - including his name, and his alias of Jacky Lynch.
• a look at Quilp's eventful life, most of which had little to do with soccer.
• sifting through what is and is not true about Quilp's life.
• The sensitivities and legal issues in accessing archival material related to Aboriginal people.
• The sensitivities around white settler family histories which may involve cruelty and atrocities committed against Aboriginal people.
• being careful that Quilp's story is not claimed as predominantly or even mostly a soccer story.
• that the main story to be revealed is the experience of Quilp as an Aboriginal man with comparatively strong connections to white society in a time of great change for Aboriginal people.