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

A Shambolic History

Friday was just another day in a long line of shambolic episodes from those that have run the game in this state. It was the day the FFV had promised to make significant announcements about this year's NPLV, but yet again it came up with a website update two minutes before close of business which failed to deliver.

On Thursday various clubs hit the internet to announce they had been accepted, but come Friday the FFV were only able to deliver a list of 30 clubs offered licenses. No further structure of the competition was revealed, with speculation that the league may be divided into two divisions (either First and Second or North West and South East) or left as a massive single division in which teams played each other only once.

Maybe next week we will be a little more the wiser, but I'd advise against holding their breath.

There is a history of poor administration in the state, but the well meaning honorary officials of the past should be given some allowances when compared to well-staffed FFV of today. Still, 1927 was a particularly chaotic season.

It was the year of a major schism in Victorian football, as the old First Division became the District League, in a predecessor of the zonal top flight the FFV have been trying to implement recently. There ten team District League, and the six team Sub-District League below it, were run by the Melbourne Soccer Football Association. Dissenting clubs who did not like the changes formed the Melbourne and District Association League, which was divided into two equal divisions, Section A and Section B.

The District League was well covered in the newspapers, with results from the Melbourne and District Association League not always being published. Only players from the MFSA league were eligible to play for Victoria or Australia. 

Both competitions began in April, and it wasn't until the end of the season that things became ridiculous. The Dockerty Cup does not seem to have been planned with much notice (when are the NPLV fixtures coming out?) and it's commencement in late September ruined the Melbourne and District (M&D) Association League season. Naval Depot, you see, the reigning Cup holders, were playing in the M&D League, not the District League. In fact, they had wrapped up Section B and were due to play Section A champions Heidelberg in a Grand Final for the League Championship. 

In what seems to have been a bit of a suprise, the Naval Depot were included in the Dockerty Cup draw. Or was it an act of sabotage? The game clashed with the M&D League Grand Final, and when they chose to play the Dockerty Cup tie, the M&D League expunged their record from the it's competition. It got worse though, as Heidelberg refused to play the new Section B winners Melbourne Thistle, demanding a game with the Navy or nothing. Which seems to have been the outcome, as I've yet to find any indication there was a Grand Final played.

Prahran won the District League Championship, with Naval Depot beaten 5-2 in the Dockerty Cup Final by District League runner's-up Footscray Thistle after extra time. The next season Naval Depot joined the District League and claimed a League and Cup double. The feuding leagues came back together in 1929 with four divisions of eight teams competing under the one umbrella.

In Search of... 1909

Back when I first went to research Victorian football history at the Newspaper Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria (SLV), I was aiming to one day get at least the final table of the top division each year since league football began in 1909.

I was a little lazy in my approach to this task. I went through the microfilm reels looking for the easy answers which I soon realised were not there. Head to July/August/September to find the tables did not work when the final table wasn't always published. Sometimes, just the points tally was published. It was becoming apparent that in some years, it would require recording all the results, and compiling the table myself. Then, more sadly, it was clear that for many seasons finding a record of all the results would not be happening.

So for the 1909 season, won by Carlton United, things didn't pan out. Adding up the results I'd written down made for a ridiculous ladder. So it was put on the back-burner for a few years, hoping that John Punshon at OzFootball would put something up.

Recently I began re-checking the results on the online archives of The Age and The Argus. A discovery then clarified one problem, which was having teams having played more than the 10 game season a 6 team competition should produce. The season started on Saturday May 8, and any results before that were from friendlies. So that took away the teams over 10 games, but still there were a few short, so I set off for the SLV today looking to fill the gaps.

Now we need to understand the times were different then. For the result of a Saturday sporting contest, you would need Monday's newspaper, as there were no papers published on Sundays in that time (right up until the late 1960's or early 1970's I think). The Herald was an evening paper, and did have Saturday's results in it for footy and racing, but not always for the "British Association" or "Soccer". By Monday those results were old news and often not carried.

I made a breakthrough when I discovered the day for soccer news in The Herald was actually the Friday edition. The previous week's results were often found there, gradually growing in column inches with the author's nom-de-plume, "Jackaroo" even getting a byline late in the year. On July 23rd there was even a final table, of sorts. It's not a real final table because Goals For and Goals Against are not included. It also takes the format of Wins Losses Draws rather than the modern Wins Draws Losses. I guess this was due to perhaps following along with Aussie Rules lines. After finding a few more results, I'm only two matches short (and one blurry number) from compiling a proper final table.

CARLTON UNITED 10 9 1 0 32-4 19
The goal difference is still not final, missing the scores for their wins over Fitzroy
ST KILDA 10 7 0 3 40-17 14
This is complete
MELBOURNE UNITED 10 4 0 6 16-32 8
Goal difference not final, missing the score for their win over Prahran on June 12
WILLIAMSTOWN 10 3 1 6 22-32 7
This is complete
FITZROY 10 3 1 6 14-25 7
Goal difference not final, missing the scores for their defeats by Carlton
PRAHRAN 10 2 1 7 9-22 5
Goal difference not final, missing the score for their loss to Melbourne United on June 12

So just three issues remain. A hard to read score for Carlton against Fitzroy on July 17, which is either 5 or 9 to nil. And the June 12 game between those sides as well as Melbourne United v Prahran. The Herald did give a score of  Melbourne 7 Prahran 2 but the report stated it was played as a practise game for some reason the reporter did not agree with. Perhaps the result stood, but I have failed to find any mention of that. The Age and The Argus and The Leader all only have the St Kilda 10 Williamstown 0 scoreline from that day and nothing else.

All games in 1909 were played at grounds in Middle Park, except for Williamstown home games. I'm not sure if there were actual change-rooms at Middle Park, or if a room at the Middle Park Hotel was all that was used. Harry Dockerty, who donated the Cup which would eventually be named after him (called the Challenge Cup initially) was a back for runner's-up St Kilda. He also captained the Scotland side which lost 2-3 to England in the local "International" game, an annual fixture that would continue up until the 1938 contest set for July 23rd was abandoned due to lack of interest.

In Search Of....

This is not a post on the American tv show that ran from 1978 to 1982, but I will digress in that direction for a paragraph. If seen at the wrong age, many episodes would have well and truly freaked some kids out, like The Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle and the big one, The End of the World. It was what I knew Leonard Nimoy from, not Star Trek.

Last month I mentioned the passing of Alex Barr was noted in the minutes of the VSF Board of Management from April 24, 1990. Since then, I've been in search of more information on Alex Barr and here's some of what I've come up with. He was a Glaswegian, who came to Australia after WWII. In the course of his Victorian career, he would play in every outfield position for Brighton, featuring as an outside left at his peak, which came with a single appearance for Australia in 1949. It was against what was billed as "Yugoslavia", but was in fact touring club side Hajduk Split.

He played for Brighton between 1948 and 1954, apart from a small stint with Prahran at the start of 1953. In that time Brighton were Champions of Victoria in 1949, also winning the Dockerty Cup in 1952. Whilst still playing he was contributing items for Soccer News from 1951, and when he retired his media work grew as he became the soccer reporter for The Age in the 1960's. He also had spots on various radio programs as well as sports panel shows on GTV-9.

The history of the game in Victoria has, sadly, long been neglected. Even now there is no outright History section all on the FFV website. I have been to Gold Medal Nights run by the FFV which have featured people being inducted into the FFV Hall of Fame, yet the link to anything about a Hall of Fame on their website is well hidden. It deserves a more prominent link rather than being hidden in an About Us section. I wouldn't expect it to compare with:

http://www.afl.com.au/news/event-news/hall-of-fame

The FFV should do more than their once a year token effort and truly honour some great people with something more substantial.

So that is what I'm in search of, more of the hidden history of Victorian soccer. I have a book, Spurs: A Complete Record by Bob Goodwin. And a complete record it is, even having the line-ups of friendly matches played in the 1890's. Currently we do not even have the final ladder for every season of the Victorian First Division/State League/Premier League since it began in 1909, let alone the results of all the top flight games. The gaps are vast.

I'm in search of information on Lincoln Mills. The huge textile factory located on Gaffney Street, Coburg fielded a side in the Second Division in 1924 and 1925 before disbanding in 1926. They were probably around in 1923, but The Age only published Division One results that year. The Argus tells me there was a massive fire at the Mill in 1923, there were frequent break-ins and robbery attempts, and at least one unfortunate female worker got her hair caught in a knitting machine and met an untimely demise. Their ground was listed as being "Batman", the name of the nearest train station just off Sydney Road. The former factory site is now a retail block containing Bunnings and Harvey Norman stores, with one great big brick chimney still preserved for posterity.

In the next In Search Of... post, I will go back to 1909 and list what is needed to complete the final table for the inaugural season. Until then, if you want to search anything for yourself, try starting at these links:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper?q=

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=MDQ-9Oe3GGUC&dat=19231109&b_mode=2&hl=en