Victorian Soccer Season Files - 1932

1932 saw Footscray Thistle claim the Victorian championship for a fifth (and final) time. They did it in emphatic style as well, remaining unbeaten in claiming the league and Dockerty Cup double. They scored an impressive 80 goals in their 14 league games, Jock Lyons leading the league goalscoring charts with 34, 20 more than it took him to claim that honour the previous season when he was with Brunswick.

                                                 Click on images to enlarge


It would prove to be the high point of the club's history, a fifth state title going alongside a fifth Dockerty Cup win and a third time the club had completed the double. They would prove to be the club's last major triumphs, a gradual decline and the shrinking of the game during the Second World War seeing them play their last ever game in 1940.

The V.A.S.F.A. Metropolitan League comprised of 4 senior and 2 reserves divisions in 1932. The Fourth Division contained a few reserves sides of some Third Division clubs, and was reduced to just 6 teams when one of those, Glenroy A, and the Preston third team (playing as Preston B) withdrew in the early stages of the season.

Royal Caledonians A won the First Division Reserves League and Preston A won the Second Division Reserves League. The emerging Hakoah side won their way into the top flight.

The Carrick Cup, also known as the Inter-Association Cup, saw Wonthaggi defeat the Metropolis 2-0 in the replayed Final after an initial 3-3 draw.

Establishing all the league results was not without it's challenges. Some were missing, but able to be calculated by comparing league tables, which thankfully were published regularly in the papers. There were spanners in the works such as the major papers publishing a score of Nobels 4 Caulfield 3 when only the match report in the Sunshine Advocate revealed the scoreline was the wrong way around. There was also a Third Division game which must have been the subject of dispute and protest, as it was clearly replayed again later in the season. Finally, the tables published at the end of season contained errors when compared to the known results and earlier published tables. For instance the penultimate table in Division One showed Footscray Thistle on 71 goals for. The next week, in the same column as the scoreline of their 9-1 win over Brighton (and with goalscorers named to account for 9 goals) the table lists them as having scored 79 for the season.

So here it is:

1932 Victorian Season File  

Victorian Soccer Season Files - 1930

In 1930, there were enough senior clubs in Melbourne to field four divisions of eight teams. There First Division season would be marred by an issue between the Brunswick club and the VSFA which would see the club expelled, and has previously been covered here.

The expulsion of Brunswick paved the way for Footscray Thistle to complete a League and Cup double. With Jock Lyons banging in the goals, Thistle took league honours with a three point gap over Caledonians, who they would also beat 3-2 in the final of the Dockerty Cup. The quirks of the Cup draw and replays saw Thistle play games against the same opposition in successive weeks twice, and on one occasion three times in a row. Their record is below:

The biggest winning margin of the top flight season was St Kilda thrashing Prahran 8-0 in May, with eventual league top scorer Alec Forrest notching four. Footscray Thistle also managed eight in one game, smashing the hapless Prahran 8-1 on June 21 with Jock Lyons getting the most goals of any player in the one game that season with six. Forrest also managed to bag five on the same day as St Kilda defeated South Melbourne 6-1.

In the Second Division it was Collingwood who romped to the championship, five points clear of Brighton. The Third Division title was a closer affair, South Yarra edging Sunshine on goal difference. In the Fourth Division it was Middle Park who took the trophy.

There were many results not published in the Fourth Division, and with the league tables not appearing every week working them out was further complicated when it became apparent that a few games early in the season were replayed later on, presumably after a protest of some sort. In the end I stumbled upon getting the scores right for the missing games which would have accounted for all teams finishing with the correct W-D-L and goal difference as found in the final table published in the newspapers.

So here it is, the complete record of senior Melbourne soccer for 1930:

1930 Season File