Last August I started putting my Soccer Action collection online, and in under a year the task is now complete. Which is a bit ahead of schedule as I initially anticipated uploading just one or two a week and thought it would be something that would be completed in five or six years. The device of posting links to the new uploads on Twitter every Friday brought about the hastened completion of digitising the collection, making sure I did a few week then pushing me to do a few more than the week before.
It went from being happy with four uploads a week to trying to hit ten every Friday. I'd like to thank John Morris for giving me my original collection, and Damian Smith for the inspiration in putting them online. Thanks to Pave Jusup for allowing me to add to that collection by letting me copy from his own. Thanks also to Shahan Petrossian of Soccer Nostalgia, Miles McClagan and his amazing flickr scans, Paul Mavroudis of South of the Border and George Cotsanis of My World Is Round for further inspiration in making sure the collection was shared for all to enjoy.
Thanks also the the great statistician and historian Andrew Howe for providing me with a few missing pages and moral support. Thanks also to everyone who provided encouragement via the comments section of the blog or on Twitter, knowing people wanted to share the memories contained in the papers is what it was all about. The great Gary Cole falls into this lot, as well as the final group I need to thank, those that provided us with Soccer Action in the first place - Laurie Schwab, Les Shorrock and Craig MacKenzie.
Of course the the job is not quite finished, as my collection is not complete and after a break I will look towards finding and scanning the missing issues. The starting point to that, of course, is listing them here.
There are a few editions I have that are incomplete. They are:
1980
March 19 (pages 13 and 14 missing)
1981
March 25 (pages 13 and 14 missing)
July 1 (pages 5, 6, 7. 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 missing)
July 22 (pages 3, 4, 13 and 14 missing)
1986
July 16 (pages 1, 2, 15 and 16 missing)
And the editions I am missing completely are:
1976
February 4
March 31
1979
March 14
July 25
August 29
1980
May 28
June 4
June 25
September 10
October 15
October 22
November 5
November 19
1981
April 1
1982
January 27
February 10
March 3
March 10
March 17
March 24
April 14
May 19
June 30
July 14
August 11
September 22
October 20
1983
February 16
March 16
March 23
April 6
June 8
July 20
August 10
August 17
October 19
October 26
1984
April 4
September 12
1985
September 4
1986
April 9
May 14
October 8
So it's 387 down, 71 to go. Currently the file full of scans comes in at 5.96GB, so it may be that one day you can carry a complete set of Soccer Action's with you on an 8GB USB. The wonders of modern technology.
Well I for one certainly appreciate your efforts in getting these all up. I call in to the site occasionally and never fail to have a wander through the Soccer Action archive and it always stirs great memories of a totally different era.
ReplyDeleteWhen I began to follow soccer - back in the 70's - coverage of the beautiful game in the Australian media was basically non-existent and Soccer Action was the one reliable source of news and results.
I even find the advertisements carried in the paper fascinating. They are a great illustration of commercial life in the pre-internet days.
Thanks - once again - for establishing this great archive Mark.
Edited to take the 9 issues added to the archive today off the list
ReplyDeleteEdited to remove the recent additions to the archive.
ReplyDelete