Soccer Star Archive Updated

Thanks to the efforts of Tony Persoglia and George Cotsanis, the Soccer Star Archive has been updated with over 50 new issues added.

Soccer Star was the Les Shorrock-produced successor to Soccer Action, and was published from 1988 until early 1990. It's Victorian State League and NSL coverage was very strong. 

The Industrial & Amateur League provided good coverage, whilst the lower Victorian and Provisional League coverage was left up to the clubs themselves and as a result was not widespread. It was covering these leagues in Soccer Week and Soccer Action that had previously been Les Shorrock's forte. Nunawading City, Diamond Valley United and South Dandenong were amongst the most reliable club contributors. 

There are still issues missing from the archive, so if anyone can assist in filling the gaps please get in touch. 

Soccer Star Archive

Soccer Action Archive: COMPLETE

The blog's Soccer Action Archive is now complete with every issue of the iconic Australian football publication of 1976 to 1987 included. 460 editions, from it's debut on February 4, 1976 until the sad demise and disappearance on April 9, 1987.

I was too young to have ever bought an issue of Soccer Action, perhaps only having bought a few issues of Shoot! before the end of the 1980's. The first Australian soccer newspaper I bought would have been Les Shorrock's successor to Soccer Action, Soccer Star, in 1989. It was in the early 1980's that I acquired my collection of Soccer Actions, given to me by the then Richmond physio John Morris (also a former Moorabbin City, Oakleigh Cannons and Victorian state team physio). 

The Soccer Action Archive was created in August 2016. Originally I planned uploading one scan a week from my own collection, which was probably only 50-60% complete at the time. I soon started uploading more issues per week than that, and as my own collection was nearly all scanned began looking at sourcing the issues I didn't have. The final few issues took a couple of years to sort out, but here we are today, every issue ever available to everyone as a free download.

Soccer Action was held in affection by a great many people, which brought about willing contributions towards completing this project. Damian Smith was the first to lend me some missing editions, and over time I can thank him, Steve Delmenico, Pave Jusup (and the Melbourne Knights/Frank Burin Collection), George Cotsanis (My World Is Round), Sam Barres, Paul Mavroudis (South of the Border), Andrew Howe, Tony Persoglia and Nick Hatzoglu for supplying the papers and scans to archive every issue published. Thanks to the latter pair, the final four issues (March 5, May 14, July 16 & October 8, 1986) have been added today to make the archive complete.

So now the works of Laurie Schwab, Les Shorrock, Craig MacKenzie, Knut Werner, Billy Vojtek, Rale Rasic, Johnnie Warren, Les Murray, Andrew Dettre, Peter Katholos, Brian Mossop, Ron Smith, Leif Jensen, John Cerubbi, Zika Nikolic, Peter Georgiou, Tommy Anderson, Bruce Waddell, Meno Toutsidis, Stephen Kalus, Alex Vesic, Kyle Patterson, John Taylor, Peter Scott, Frank Pangallo, Jim Cook, Manos Milios, Paul Moon, Oscar Perea, Walter Pless, Joe Lenzoni, Ted Smithies, Philip Micallef, Peter Desira, Ricky Rosso, Mike Lynn, Rocky Di Zio, Tim White, Peter Windsor, Allan Crisp, Stephen Dettre, Ken Kontra, Mike Mikolajczyk, Mick Mitten and John Mangan amongst numerous others will remain available to all, online.

All right here, or in the tab at the top of the page.

To download a folder with every issue in it all at once, try here. 

  

 

Completing The Set? VicSoccer '89

Earlier this year Paul Mavroudis of South of the Border scanned and shared my copy of VicSoccer '88. Now I'm able to share with you all the copy of VicSoccer '89 loaned to me by George Cotsanis of My World Is Round.

As noted back in May, VicSoccer was the annual/yearbook of Les Shorrock's Soccer Star newspaper. In a way it was a local successor to the Australian Soccer Annual's of Australian Soccer Weekly. While Soccer Star went on into 1990, I'm not sure there was a VicSoccer '90 as the paper didn't last beyond that year.

Personally I prefer the 1988 edition, finding squeezing multiple team photos onto the one page a bit of a let down. Though the records of the State League clubs is nice.

Anyway check it at the link below:

VicSoccer '89

Soccer Action Is Well And Truly Here!

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.

Vic Soccer '88

I've always maintained that Vic Soccer '88 is one of the greatest things ever published. When Soccer Action died, the great Les Shorrock started up Soccer Star, and Vic Soccer '88 can be considered the Soccer Star Annual of 1988.

Following the Great Computer Death of 2015, I gave a box of items to Paul Mavroudis of South of the Border to have a look at while I began to put my collection back into order. Thanks to his efforts in scanning and hosting, we can now share Vic Soccer '88 with a wider audience.

Personally nothing can hit the nostalgia sweet spot for me better than this publication. It's hard to turn a page without finding someone I know. On the cover is the great Josip Biskic hoisting the Dockerty Cup. Biskic was a proper footballer, and a gentleman as well. There are team photos of all the Victorian NSL clubs, all the clubs in the Victorian State League, all the Victorian boys junior state teams, the NYL-winning Sunshine George Cross youth team and touring Dinamo Zagreb side featuring the legendary Zvonimir Boban. Even the Industrial League champions and Cup winners get their pictures included.

Phil Stubbins, Andy O'Dell, Dean Hennessey, Roy Maclaren, Carl Gilder, Stan Webster, Steve Blair, Ange Goutzioulis, Jimmy McBride, Stuart Cannell, Nick Gourlias and Willie Raynes are all pictured, men who I served under as team manager in their senior, senior assistant or reserves coaching roles. It's a sign of my old age that some players pictured that I handed shirts to now have children who are NPL stars.

As a pictorial record, it is without peer. Carl Recchia even makes it into a picture as a club mascot. All the tables are there, which is a basic feature that the VSF came up short in with their late 1960's Yearbooks often lacking the final reserves tables. A slight fault could be lacking full details of Cup Finals (full line-ups, but that's probably being too picky). It was also clearly published before Croatia was stripped of that Dockerty Cup Final win for bringing on a substitute who had been suspended in a NYL game.

The only possible thing that could surpass it would be Vic Soccer '89, which I'm told by George Cotsanis of My World Is Round did come out. But for now, behold the beauty that is

Vic Soccer '88

Soccer Week 1974-1975

Last Sunday I visited the State Library of Victoria to examine their collection of Soccer Week newspapers from the 1970's. The collection, all bound into the one book, is available to SLV members (it's free) but you need to call and arrange for it to be brought from offsite storage to the Heritage Reading Room. The collection starts with the June 19, 1974 issue and ends at August 6, 1975.

Unlike Soccer News, Soccer Week was an independent production. Les Shrrock, who would go on to write for Soccer Action and publish Soccer Star, covered the Metropolitan League. The colourful State League keeper Mike O'Hara had a weekly column.

Covers usually featured a single photo, with some gems shown below:

(Click on images to enlarge)

Throughout the paper, there are plenty of great pictures. A photographer was sent to a Metropolitan League game each week, so it wasn't just the State League being covered. A few pages each week would feature these snaps.

Sadly, the facts and figures sections were a disappointment. I would consider listing the line-ups and scorers of all the State League games a bare minimum, and it's a minimum standard Soccer Week failed to meet. The Metropolitan and Industrial Amateur Leagues had all their results and tables published, though lacking goalscorers names. Some could be found in the few pages of match reports each week, which relied on the clubs to supply info which again often falls short of expectations. Some clubs had people on the ball, and for those clubs the coverage is excellent.

The paper did give a great insight into the Cumberland Cup, which began in 1975 and ceased in 1978. At the start it was referred to as the Twilight Cup. It was competed for by the Metropolitan League (Divisions One to Four) clubs in the pre-season. Games were played midweek, in an era where lights were not commonplace or at training only standard, so 6.00pm kick-offs during daylight savings were required. The Cumberland name came from the local newspaper group which sponsored it, and the inaugural winners were Preston Makedonia who defeated Mooroolbark United 1-0 in the Final with a goal from Vlade Kotevski.

June 1975 saw controversy flare up following a column by Prahran Slavia defender Frank Campbell. It had a subheading of "WILL THE WOGS COME BACK?" in relation to fans returning now Juventus had found form. This, of course sparked some outrage, with Vito Cilauro leading the charge. Cilauro was on the Juventus committee and would go on to hold several roles within the VSF. Here editor Jack Pacholli argues his case:

A few weeks later Pacholli followed that up with an editorial headed FOREIGN NAMES MUST BE DROPPED. The support he had can be gauged by the death of the paper within a couple of months, and the way in which the more inclusive Soccer Action would flourish in the following years.