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 Week Archive Updated

The Soccer Week  Archive has been updated to now almost be fully complete.

Soccer Week was an independent paper which ran from mid-season in 1974 to just short of the end of the 1975 season. It filled the void after the demise of Soccer News, and was soon replaced with the superior Soccer Action.

Previously the Archive included only editions which had been scanned in full from the available newspapers sourced. George Cotsanis (of My World Is Round) had taken a vast amount of photos of the State Library Victoria's (SLV) bound volume which he has shared around over the years. Tony Persoglia made some PDF's from these images, but I was reluctant to add them to this archive for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the tight binding on the SLV volume meant some columns were hard to make out. Then there was the matter of not all pages being photographed, as I assume George skipped full page ads and possibly some of the Soccerpools full pages (which sometimes may have had interstate or overseas snippets). Thirdly, the fact that the paper regularly changed the number of pages it contained made it harder to figure out if/how many pages may be missing. Generally the off-season/pre-season issues contained 8, going up to 12 when the Metropolitan League kicked off, and extending to 16 on the odd occasion. Also in some cases the date of publication was also lost to the tight binding. There was also a period of time where the paper cutting alignment must have been off, leading to text at the bottom of pages disappearing.  

For these reasons I limited what I placed in the archive in the hope of finding access to unbound issues to scan properly. With this failing to eventuate, I decided to re-visit the SLV bound volume. I took additional photos, and made PDF's from them, whilst also adding the PDF's created by Tony from George's photos to the files. This gives a few pictures of each page, hopefully between them providing a decent enough image to work out what was going on. The correct publication dates of some issues were established. Which gives us now an almost complete record, with only July 23 of 1975 missing from the SLV collection.

 

Compiling Compilations

Now it is looking that through the work of Greg Stock and Greg Werner we may one day have the full set of Australian Soccer Weekly (later Australian & British Soccer Weekly) available in the archives one day, I've commenced work on making compilation files of various segments of the paper. Here's a little tutorial for anyone else that may be interested in doing the same.

Obviously a large collection like a full run of a newspaper contains a massive amount of data. The reason I'm making compilations is that some of this data related to specific competitions is not available elsewhere on the internet. The compilations may be later used to assist in addressing that. 

The compilations I'm working on are National Youth League pages, National Indoor Soccer League pages and pages on local Victorian soccer post the demise of Soccer Action. There are many other topics though, that some may want to make compilations of. Perhaps a fan of a particular NSL or state league club may want to compile a file with just the match reports of that club's matches. Or like I want to do, maybe people in other states would like a single document with the weekly page for their state or area on it. You may want to have all the women's football pages in one place etc etc.

The main website I use is https://www.ilovepdf.com/

To start, what you do is click on Split PDF then upload a issue of the paper you want to take pages from.

 

Once it is uploaded, you can select which pages you want to remove.

You can split multiple pages, so if the stuff you want is on pages 3, 4 and 5 you set that as your range and you will end up with a single file with those three pages on it. You can select multiple ranges from the one upload.

Once you have your pages split, you need to rejoin them. Simply select the Merge PDF option and upload all your split pages, line them up in the order you want them by dragging around the pages, then click on the big red Merge PDF button.

Once you have your new compilation, you may want to compress it a little and I Love PDF lets you do that as well. There is another website I do that with is well, and it's one that may be required prior to splitting some newspapers and magazines.

I Love PDF is free, but to a limit of files of a size of 100mb or less. https://tools.pdf24.org/ lets you compress files that are larger than that, which may be required for some of the newspapers in our archives. 

Select a file to upload, then wait for that to happen. It may take a while. Once the loading bar indicator is fully black, it will show you the file and it's existing size. Then you can click on the compress button.

The site compresses them a lot quicker than it takes to upload, but unlike I Love PDF does not download it's work automatically, so once the file has been compressed you will need to click on the download button.

Once that is done, you will have a compilation of pages in a manageable file size. 

As I've said, the options for making compilations are enormous. You may want to make one of player profiles only, one of a particular columnists' work (Johnny Warren, Tommy Anderson, Knut Werner), or one of national team match reports. If anyone makes a compilation which they'd like to share with others, get in touch and you can do that by having it added to the archives on this site.  

As always, click on images to enlarge.

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. 

  

 

The Last Big Scanning Piles

With the receipt of an A3 scanner from George Cotsanis, work on my last big scanning project is underway. In the photo above, the middle pile is my collection of Australian & British Soccer Weekly (augmented by Damien Smith giving me Kevin Christopher's collection) that has yet to be scanned. On the right is a folder of papers lent to me by Sam Barres, which contains mainly Soccer Week from 1974 (all now scanned and available here) plus the missing first issue of Soccer Action (only 5 missing to complete the set now). On the left is the Soccer World stack Greg Stock has provided me with.

I forgot about another 30 or so issues of late 90's, early 2000's newspaper Super Soccer when taking the photo, so they are in the queue as well.

Once these are done, my large scale scanning will some to an end, barring coming across a set of 1989-1990 Soccer Star newspapers. I will still be looking to fill in gaps in the existing collections of papers, programmes and yearbooks but I don't think I'll be faced with such large piles again.

Of course I'd only be too happy to work on a pile of (Victorian) Soccer News of the 1940's-1970's  twice as big as these, but I doubt I'll come across them. Their availability is sporadic and patchy. More can be found to enlarge the Soccer Week collection, and at some point the final five issues of Soccer Action will be found. The Victorian soccer paper timeline would be rounded out by Soccer Star, but it only lasted a couple of years and the piles would not be anything daunting.

After that it might be time to work on a few other things I have in mind.

Another Housekeeping Post

Once again the great Doug Butcher has supplied me with two new booklets to share, this time covering 1950-1959. One of course covers Australian representative teams, and the other overseas teams touring in Australia. They can be found on the History Documents page.

Some other recent additions to the archive can be found on the Yearbooks and Annuals page, namely three Albury Wodonga Soccer Association Yearbooks covering 1979-1981.

There is also a new Podcast archive on the History Documents page which features episodes of The Pumpkin Seed Eaters and FNR's The Pioneers.

The what was to have been the second annual State of the Blog post has been put back to December.

By that time I hope to have completed the Soccer Action archive.

Soccer Action fans might be interested in this:

https://www.futbolcult.shop/product-page/soccer-action-t-shirt

Soccer Action Update

Having come across the blog, and having read The United Appeal For The Missing Issues, a top bloke called Steve Delmenico has loaned me 40 old issues of Soccer Action. These have all now been copied and scanned, and over the next month I will be adding the 10 new links for these issues every Friday to the Soccer Action Archive.

This now leaves just 8 issues of Soccer Action to be found to complete the online archive.

Those issues are:

1976 -   February 4   March 31

1981 -   July 22 (only need pages 3,4,13 and 14 of this one)

1985 -   September 4

1986 -  April 9   May 14   July 16 (only need pages 1,2,15 and 16 of this one)   October 8

Hopefully there are some other legends out there and this mammoth project can soon be complete.

It may not have been his dream, but I'm sure Ratko would have liked to see this archive completed. I think he's still alive actually. Anyway, let's find those last 8 issues.

Another Project For The Backburner

A few years ago Pave Jusup asked if I'd kept any records on junior leagues. I said no, as given the obscurity of finding some senior and reserves final tables I figured I would be on a hiding to nothing attempting to compile that data.

Well, like the glutton for punishment that I am, I've decided to have a crack. This preliminary attempt is based of what could be found in VSF Yearbooks, FFV Annual Reports and the current FFV website. I've yet to go through the Soccer Action era to fill in more of the 1970's and 1980's but most of that should be covered. I will make notes in the comments section below on my success in that area.

As usual, there is a void in the years 2002-2003 where official record keeping did not keep up with changes in the digital age. If anyone can help, please contact me at markboric@bigpond.com
That goes for any other of the gaps throughout time. Once again, I will be using the comments section to provide updates.

Compiling this list emphasised the growth of the game over the years, most especially the recent boom in female football. The changes in junior boundaries can also be observed. Then there are the experiments like dividing the 1996 season into Autumn and Winter Competitions.

I will soon go through the Soccer Action collection to update those years, but this project is very much on the backburner, down the list of my other historical searches. Unless there is a flood of information supplied (I'm happy to do the typing) further updates may be some time coming. There are the usual issues of VSF Yearbooks neglecting junior details in many years.

Here is the link to the file:

Victorian Junior League Champions

Things have been a little quiet on the blogging side recently, as I'm going through old notes to double check and reorganise my records as I try and track down what is missing to complete the seasons from 1910-1949. I've made a few State Library visits for very little reward.

If anyone wants some clip art, here is my current collection:

Clip Art File

I've also got this Sportsworld magazine article on the 1974 Socceroos to add to the historical documents:

Sportsworld - 1974 Socceroos

In the next month I'll also be adding some great content on early Socceroos and representative games sent to me by Doug Butcher.

The United Appeal For The Missing Issues

The above clip is from one of the greatest sketch comedy movies of all, The Kentucky Fried Movie. Sadly Henry Gibson is no longer with us, and therefore unable to narrate a video for the latest appeal for missing issues of Soccer Action and Soccer News. There are just 48 issues needed to complete the Soccer Action set (they are listed below), and it would be great to get the archive filled this year. If anyone can lend me any of these missing editions so they can be copied, scanned and uploaded please contact me at markboric@bigpond.com

1976

February 4     March 31

1979

March 14     July 26     August 29

1980

March 29     May 28     June 4    June 25     September 10     October 15     October 22   
November 6     November 19

1981

March 25     April 1     July 1     July 22   

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     July 16     October 8


Until I have some papers to copy and scan, I'll just be watching more The Kentucky Fried Movie clips.

The impressive Big Jim Slade:

For when you've just sold your last case of incense:

A movie criminally denied an Academy Award:

I don't care:

The Goal! Weekly Archive

I'm not exactly sure when, but at some point recently the Goal! Weekly website added the vast bulk of their back catalogue to an archive on their website called The Collection. I've now added a link to this collection to the Newspapers page on the History Documents section of the blog. The modern successor to Soccer News and Soccer Action rounds out the history of post-WWII soccer in Victoria.

The archive covers the golden era of the mid-2000's VPL. There were full page match reports and some sensational photos. Full, poster-sized team photos are also of great interest, as well as the full page Football Focus photo and interviews of a player. There is also the foundation of the A-League, and in later years the magazine is a virtual Football Record for the national competition.

From a history perspective, the Blast From The Past page with Roy Hay is unmissable. He along with former Soccer Action journalist Craig MacKenzie were the paper's veterans writers, along with George Stogiannou and with John Punshon, Steve Gray and Anita Milas on the cameras. They were later joined by Walter Pless, Mike Salter and Nat Adamopoulos as the paper went national. A whole crop of young media talent later got in on the act, like Sacha Pisani, Matthew Galea, Donald Sutherland, Matthew Naqvi, Teo Pellizzeri, Con Stamocostas, David Manuca, Matthew McNamara, Daniel Quinn, Brandon Galgano, Katie Lambeski and Shaun Moran.

It's great to have the paper available online. All hail the King, Costa Koutropoulos!

Some Blog Housekeeping

In the absence of coming across the missing editions of Soccer Action to scan and complete the collection, I've updated a couple of old items I had lying around on the hard drive. There is now a brief index for Soccer Action and Soccer News, which may come in handy if you are looking for a feature/profile on a particular player or club. As well as being found below, there are links on the relevant archive pages.

Soccer Action Index

Soccer News Index

I've also added three new compilations, one of which is complete while the others will be works in progress to be added to annually. They are they Australian pages of World Soccer magazine. The 1990's compilation is complete, scanned from my own collection. As I don't have any in my collection from the 1960's and 1970's, these compilations are based on the issues found on the Soccer Nostalgia blog. As more come to hand, the pdf file will be added to and updated. There will also be a few new items added to the Magazine Article Archive, including World Soccer pieces on Mark Viduka, the Tim Cahill nationality issue and the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

World Soccer Australian Pages 1960's

World Soccer Australian Pages 1970's

World Soccer Australian Pages 1990's

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.

This Year's Draft of the Statistical History

Last week I uploaded a pdf version of the Statistical History of Victorian Football, which can be downloaded from here:

Statistical History of Victorian Football - Draft 8

I thought I'd explain the layout and content a little. All the final league tables, and scores of Grand Finals, Finals and any games relating to promotion and relegation are on the left of the page. In a column down the right there are details (date, venue, referee, score, scorers and line-ups with substitutions) of top flight Grand Finals and Dockerty Cup Finals. Next will come scores and scorers of any other Cup Finals that year. Finding details like for the Grand Finals and Dockerty Cup Finals for all these games would be impossible, I'd estimate there would be less than 10% of that information available, so I'm just running with score and scorers.

The next information I'm looking to record are the winners of the league best and fairest awards and top goalscorers for each division. Then comes a list of reserves league champions. In the years of the District Leagues I include a list of champions in that league above the list of reserves league champions. To include District League tables would add more pages to the document than is necessary, a line has to be drawn somewhere.

I've only used pictures to fill in gaps where there was no text. The use of pictures has been along these lines: Team shot of league champions or Cup winners. Player pic of best and fairest winners, top goalscorers or member of league championship or Cup winning team. I'm not looking at adding pictures where it would mean adding another page for that year.

At the end, a month or so ago, I've added a National Competitions section using the same format, tables on the left, details on the right. In this section the tables and details on the page may not necessarily be from the same year. In future I'll probably include details of NSL and A-League Grand Finals, though that information is widely available elsewhere.

Another section I'm looking at adding between the Victorian and National sections would be a couple of pages to list non-playing awards like VPL/NPL coach of the year. There I would also like to add a list of the various media awards for the VSL/VPL over the years as issued by Soccer News, Soccer Action, Soccer Star and Australian and British Soccer Weekly.

Since that last draft I've corrected the wrong table being cut and pasted into the box for the First Division in 1969 as well as the scores in the 1984 and 1989 State League Cup Finals.

From what I was seeking here I've found the referee of the 1991 Dockerty Cup Final and the reserves champions of Provisional League Division One South East 2002. The rest still remains unknown. Please share the document with anyone you know who may be able to assist in filling in the gaps. There must be players out there who recall playing in some of those 1980's Cup Finals where only the only record the VSF kept was the name of the winner inscribed on the trophy. There must be old team managers and club secretaries with a collection of VSF Yearbooks or memos from the VSF with final tables (mainly reserves missing now) or their own records of Cup finals. I'm really hoping that someone somewhere has a list of award winners, top scorers and reserves champions for 2002 seeing as the FFV can't open that year's Annual Report.

It would be nice to be able to work out which players have played in the most Dockerty Cup Finals, or had the most wins in it. Referees are people too, it would be nice to know which ones have had the honour of reffing the most Dockerty Cup Finals. Surely every senior and reserve team that won a championship deserves having that feat noted somewhere for posterity? Would anyone expect the AFL to have a gap in it's list of Brownlow Medal winners? Then where are the 2002 State and Provisional League best and fairest winners and top goalscorers?

If we can get most of what I listed in that blog post, I can just make up some of the pre-War stuff and we're finished. Well, I wouldn't do that but a few asterisks could tie things up.

Soccer Action is Here!

Or more precisely, here.

Soccer Action Volume 1 Number 2 - February 11, 1976.

Work has begun to put my entire Soccer Action collection online. It will not be a quick process, but at least one issue will be added each week. I've been inspired by the amazing Soccer Nostalgia blog and a recent interaction with the great Damian Smith.

The reason it will be a slow and steady process is quite simple, it is boring and time consuming. To get the papers down to a size that will work with my scanner, I go to Officeworks and use their copiers to reduce from A3 to A4. I then scan them into PDF's at home, before uploading to Google Drive. For items that I borrow from others and can copy into my collection, this process is more exciting. For the items I've had in my possession for years and gone through many times over, it is not exciting at all.

So we begin with the second issue, plus the four editions I already had in the History Documents section. I do not have the first edition, which contained a hot take piece by Billy Vojtek on ethnic names which set the agenda for debates which continue to rage. This second issue contains a response to that column by Fred Habbe.

Also inside are columns by Tom Anderson, Tony Boggi, Brian Green, Billy Vojtek, Peter McKenna (the VFL player) and Rale Rasic. As well as the unique musings of Knut Werner, which deserve a new audience. Rasic writes about future AFL Hall of Fame member Tony Charlton, a great broadcaster.

Early issues cover the formation of the NSL and all the political machinations that entailed. I will add new issues in chronological order, but should I feel like doing more than one a week, the second may be from later editions.

Read, save, share and enjoy.

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.

Who are you to doubt Ratko Crnic?

To me, that is the greatest wrestling promo (interview) of all time. The Rock, Chris Jericho and the various incarnations of Mick Foley were all better performers on the mic, but Bret Hart nailed this classic to perfection.

Maybe it's because I've always enjoyed the comedy of the absurd more than most. I always thought nominating Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex in every forum thread discussing the greatest song of all time far funnier that it probably really is. Building up the perpetual loser that El Dandy as a legitimate contender strikes a chord in that regard.

The Hitman's eye rolling can top any teenager's sarcasm. Mocking Booker T by using "aks" instead of ask is gold. Claiming Mean Gene Okerlund is trying to "tear these guys down" when calling Psicosis "Hypnosis" and following up with "whatever" when corrected is brilliant. Works on another level as well, considering it was obvious WCW was continually tearing the Mexican luchadores down. The "he's a high flyer of the highest magnitude" line reminds me of the Fistful of Yen sequence from The Kentucky Fried Movie, and that just doesn't happen often enough.

Even Bret's stutter in delivering the "who are you to, to doubt El Dandy" line works. Is he incredulous the superbly earnest Mean Gene is not buying it?

Now the only thing that packs so much gold into one package more than this are the ads placed in Soccer Action in the 1980's by prospective coaching superstar Ratko Crnic. And there's two packages! As well as a rare case of not being able to determine which is better, the original or the sequel, because they are both so damn good.

So who are you to doubt Ratko Crnic? He was born for football. The authorities wanting badges and credentials try to tear him down, but that's because he has the secret to success that they don't. And is there a more random line of genius anywhere ever than "My dream is to see England at the top in world soccer". Not in this universe.

The Victorian State Team

The following is a link to the file of what I have gathered on the history of the Victorian state soccer team:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/218055373/Victorian-State-Soccer-Team-History

Beginning in 1883 with a clash against New South Wales, the early games were in fact colonial representative teams. Federation in 1901 saw interstate football replace intercolonial football.

Matches missing full details are italicised. Random notes are in bold.

To start with, I looked at the list of results for interstate matches published in the VSF Yearbooks of the late 1990's. There is also a list of interstate matches contained in the book Jack Pollard's Soccer Records. So I'm pretty sure that in terms of games against other states, there is a solid framework of the history even if there are still plenty of details to be filled in.

For games against touring club and international teams, I've used what can be found on OzFootball and in the pages of the aforementioned Jack Pollard's Soccer Records. These are not complete, and additional information about fixtures has come from a search of the Trove online archives (great prior to the mid-1950's, not so good after that) as well as going through (incomplete) collections of Soccer News, Soccer Action, Soccer World and snippets in some VSF Yearbooks.

Having a look at interstate Federation websites, they have as little to offer as the FFV's. I believe there are books on the history of football in Tasmania and Western Australia, and perhaps these may have some information to add to the details of the fixtures and scores we already have.

If anyone has any information they can share, please get in touch. Share the link to the blog around, I'm sure a lot of the former Victorian players out there would love to have a tangible record of their efforts playing in the famous navy blue shirt it was an honour to wear.

Finally, a couple of videos which feature the 1995 home game against South Australia. Michael Zappone is featured in a rare commentary role, the venue being Box Hill's Wembley Park.

It's All Happening Here...

at the MCG, to quote the great Bill Lawry. An apt title on the day that ground was announced as the venue for cricket's 2015 World Cup Final and a week on from the memorable game between Liverpool and Melbourne Victory there.

Also apt because it really is all happening. Nearly all the VPL clubs have announced their lack of support for the FFV's proposed structure for the NPLV. It is, as they say in the classics, about to get real.

It may not look like it;s all been happening on the Melbourne Soccer blog front, but looks can be deceptive. I'm currently in the midst of my most intensive spell of research in the history of the local game ever. It began just over a month ago, when for three consecutive Sundays I hit the newspaper microfilm archives at the State Library of Victoria (SLV). That run came to a halt when Richmond played Melbourne Knights away on a Sunday, but in speaking matters historical with Pave Jusup he offered to let me go through his vast collection of old documents and newspapers.

For a while the SLV visits saw me more immersed in the soccer split of the late 1920's than the current dramas. After attending more than my usual quota of matches recently though, that soon passed as talk of the looming confrontation between the FFV and clubs intensified.

After sorting out through a huge bundle of copies of Soccer Action from the 1970's and 1980's, there is a lot to process, which has kept me from posting on the blog. I'm not a greedy man, so I wouldn't want any more than 10 cents for every time Tasmanian journalist Walter Pless has written the name Ken Morton since then. The 1970's was big on Cups, there was the Dockerty Cup, the Harry Armstrong Cup, the Ampol Cup, the Federation Cup, the Cumberland Cup, the Provisional League Cup, the District League Cup and the State League Cup. All we really get from the FFV today though is one fuck-up after another. That last gag will only really work if read out aloud.

I've found a few of my own items I'd forgotten about, and many of my notes from the SLV sessions are starting to come together. With Pave telling me there are more boxes to come, the blog posts may still remain infrequent for a while to come. If you are desperate for my random musings, check out my twitter account

 https://twitter.com/MarkBoric

Apart from my struggle to bring back the return of monkeys riding greyhounds in races(#monkeyjockeys) as a mainstream sport, most of the content is football related.