Evaporating History

Back in 2001 Roy Hay put out this appeal for old issues of Soccer News to aid in football research. It took up about an eighth of a page in Australian and British Soccer Weekly. I think I ended up going to the Oakleigh Public Library to makes photocopies (Pre-Officeworks days) of two issues that I had that he didn't to send to him. His collection can now be found at the MCC Library. I don't think the State Library would microfilm a collection which was so far from being complete.

What staggers, and infuriates, me is eighteen years later no governing body of the game has made any sort of concerted effort to make a similar appeal to redress the vanishing history of our game in this country. In these years how many more old newspapers, programmes, photos and yearbooks have ended up in landfill, many lost forever. We have competition histories that are incomplete and the resources to try and remedy that continue to disappear.

It makes me think of Dr Ian Syson's The Game That Never Happened. We have history rotting away, and only have ourselves to blame. Six paragraphs in ABSW in 2001, in one issue. Today we have social media. The FFA twitter account has 150,000 followers, Football Victoria over 11,000. There is a far greater platform now to appeal for historical documents by these well-staffed organisations, yet there has been absolutely nothing done. If they truly loved the game, these people would be ashamed.

                                      (Click on image to enlarge)