Not as in Old Soccer/New Football. And not as in news updates that are out of date. Instead, let's look at some old copies of Soccer News, the Official Organ of the Victorian Amateur Soccer Football Association back in the day.
There's been a small sample available on-line for a few years at the magnificent Australian Online Football Museum site, specifically at this link.
I've uploaded a few issues myself, like this one:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187739131/Soccer-News-1952-October-4
The Dockerty Cup Final edition of 1952. A beauty with several team shots of the League winners for the season, as well as the Cup finalists and pen portraits of the players in the Final.
Then there is:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187738398/Soccer-News-1951-August-25
In the editorial V.J.M.Dixon looks at the problem of the lack of enclosed grounds, whilst club jottings include news from Brighton, Frankston, Polonia and Fifers.
I've also got three issues from the end of the 1949 season:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187735817/...9-September-10
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187736434/...9-September-17
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187736988/...9-September-24
An exciting time leading up to the Dockerty Cup Final, and a must read for those at the FFV who slowly seem to be coming around to embracing the Dockerty name once again. You can see what it once meant, and hopefully a revival can regain some of the former prestige.
Thursday, 28 November 2013
Thursday, 21 November 2013
It Just Ain't Right
Progress on the Statistical History of Victorian Football remains slow but steady. I found a few more Best and Fairest winners and Top Goalscorers lists in the Annual Reports archive on the FFV website, but a gap still remains between the end of the VSF Yearbook era and the start of the current FFV's results system a couple of years ago.
In adding all the new tables to the project, the 2013 ladders for the various State League Division Fives had me shaking my head and mumbling the title of this blog post over and over again.
State League Division Five North had 14 teams competing. Division Five West had 16. Division Five South had 14 and Division Five East comprised of 15 teams. I will now digress for a moment.
The above is a picture of the classic Commodore 64 game, International Soccer. It came not on a CD, or a disc, or even a cassette tape, but on a cartridge inserted into a slot in the primitive early "home computer". Graphics were chunky, and the screen did not allow for a full team of eleven, but it was football.
Unlike modern games, the options were limited. You could play a game against the computer or a human opponent and that was about it. It did not run a league for you, which is where I start to bring this back around to the point.
When I was a young 'un, I ran my own International Soccer league. We all had two teams each to make an eight team league, the clubs named after ourselves (Markham Hotspur took the title). I typed up a results and ladder sheet on an olde fashioned typewriter, which had a ribbon of ink. To do the fixtures I took a blank piece of paper, and wrote 1v2, 3v4, 5v6 and 7v8 on it. I then rotated the numbers for each round, and then reversed the fixtures. Assigned a team name to each of the numbers and that was that. It was not rocket science, even for a Year 7.
Now in an eight team league, if everyone plays each other once home and away, it gives you a fourteen game season. If you have twelves teams in your League, it's a 22 game season. So when I looked at the number of games played in the State League Division Fives this season, only 22, I knew it just ain't right.
In football/soccer a league season involves every team playing each other once both home and away. Anything else just ain't right.
To be the Champion, you are the team that sits atop the table AFTER every team has played each other twice. If some teams didn't play each other twice, it just ain't right. Promotion and relegation is unfair should every team not play each other twice, because it just ain't right.
The VPL season of 2007 wasn't right either.That was because the introduction of the AIS and an administrative error from the FFV leaving it prone to legal action from whomever it relegated out of Sunshine Georgies or Essendon Royals left the competition with an extra number of teams in a time of drought which hindered the ability to start the season earlier. It still was not right.
The FFV does the game and clubs a disservice by restricting competitions with 14, 15 and 16 teams to a 22 game league season. A league competition is not fair unless each team players the others twice. It goes against the Integrity section of their stated Core Values, which reads:
Integrity - The affairs of the FFV will be unconditionally embedded in honesty and fairness.
In an effort to make their competition more fair, the clubs of State League Division Five East Reserves opted to play each other just once. I hope they got a discount in their affiliation fees for their rather short 14 games season, as that would only be fair.
Surely the FFV could start the season for these league earlier, or extend them to allow for the extra two, three or four rounds to make the competitions fair? Everyone knows the AFL game has a compromised draw, but there is no need for the FFV to copy them in limiting leagues to a 22 game season. Our football is a game where plenty of clubs around the world can play two games a week for periods of time, unlike the AFL which is restricted to a 22 game regular season by their Player's Association.
There is plenty of time for the FFV to sort out this situation for next season, hopefully they will make it right and make the competition fair for everyone.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
The Statistical History
Again another long gap between blog posts. You may remember last time I mentioned the historical record document I had started a few years ago.
Here's the link again to the MS Publisher file for what was then the grandly titled "Victorian Football Statistical History 1909-1979". I'm trying to get all the final tables for the senior men's leagues for each year since regular league competitions began in Melbourne in 1909. The wider column on the left has the tables, the narrow one to the right the results of Cup Finals (line-ups if possible for the major Cup of the day) and then Leading Scorers, Best and Fairest Award Winners and Reserves League Champions as they were introduced.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx2j0mqd5mn1zmd/VictorianFootballStatisticalHistory.2.pub
Since the last post, I have decided to remove the 1979 conclusion and bring it up to the current day. I already had most of the tables typed up in the template I have for them up until 2006, so some typing was involved. As time consuming as this was, it paled into insignificance compared to the time spent ascertaining the information for the right hand column.
Despite being in the Internet Age, on the information super highway the FFV is pulled over, broken down in the emergency stopping lane. Searching for some of these details is no easier than it is for stuff from 1909, when football was "British Association" and a clear poor relation to the other codes.
The FFV has changed website providers and results systems a few times, and archiving has not been a priority. With the final VSF Yearbook having been published in 2000, that is where the recorded lineage of a lot of this information ends.
From the old VSF Yearbooks we know that Maurice Payne of South Yarra won the first Medal for best player in the First Division in 1954. Back then it was The Argus Medal, later the Rothman's Medal and various other sponsored names before simply becoming the Gold Medal. It remained the premier award as the First Division became the State League and then the Premier League. In 1970, Jim Dale of Heidelberg won the first Metropolitan League Best and Fairest Award, repeating the dose in 1971. When Les Gooney of Eltham took the honour in 1972, it was the last time that award was determined by one winner from all four divisions. In 1973 each Metropolitan League division had it's own Best and Fairest. The history of the Provisional League Best and Fairest Award starts in 1983 according to the records in the VSF Yearbooks.
So who were the Best and Fairest winners in the State and Provisional Leagues in 2007 or 2008? Great question, don't have the answer. It's hardly ancient history, but it may as well be. It's a damning indictment on the FFV that it's archives are restricted to the last two seasons though league tables and results going back to 2006 can still be found on a link to the old ResultsVault system.
Compare
http://www.efl.org.au/index.php?id=307
to
http://www.footballfedvic.com.au/index.php?id=history
and ask yourself could the FFV do better?
Here's the link again to the MS Publisher file for what was then the grandly titled "Victorian Football Statistical History 1909-1979". I'm trying to get all the final tables for the senior men's leagues for each year since regular league competitions began in Melbourne in 1909. The wider column on the left has the tables, the narrow one to the right the results of Cup Finals (line-ups if possible for the major Cup of the day) and then Leading Scorers, Best and Fairest Award Winners and Reserves League Champions as they were introduced.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx2j0mqd5mn1zmd/VictorianFootballStatisticalHistory.2.pub
Since the last post, I have decided to remove the 1979 conclusion and bring it up to the current day. I already had most of the tables typed up in the template I have for them up until 2006, so some typing was involved. As time consuming as this was, it paled into insignificance compared to the time spent ascertaining the information for the right hand column.
Despite being in the Internet Age, on the information super highway the FFV is pulled over, broken down in the emergency stopping lane. Searching for some of these details is no easier than it is for stuff from 1909, when football was "British Association" and a clear poor relation to the other codes.
The FFV has changed website providers and results systems a few times, and archiving has not been a priority. With the final VSF Yearbook having been published in 2000, that is where the recorded lineage of a lot of this information ends.
From the old VSF Yearbooks we know that Maurice Payne of South Yarra won the first Medal for best player in the First Division in 1954. Back then it was The Argus Medal, later the Rothman's Medal and various other sponsored names before simply becoming the Gold Medal. It remained the premier award as the First Division became the State League and then the Premier League. In 1970, Jim Dale of Heidelberg won the first Metropolitan League Best and Fairest Award, repeating the dose in 1971. When Les Gooney of Eltham took the honour in 1972, it was the last time that award was determined by one winner from all four divisions. In 1973 each Metropolitan League division had it's own Best and Fairest. The history of the Provisional League Best and Fairest Award starts in 1983 according to the records in the VSF Yearbooks.
So who were the Best and Fairest winners in the State and Provisional Leagues in 2007 or 2008? Great question, don't have the answer. It's hardly ancient history, but it may as well be. It's a damning indictment on the FFV that it's archives are restricted to the last two seasons though league tables and results going back to 2006 can still be found on a link to the old ResultsVault system.
Compare
http://www.efl.org.au/index.php?id=307
to
http://www.footballfedvic.com.au/index.php?id=history
and ask yourself could the FFV do better?
Thursday, 17 October 2013
Long Time, No Blog
Been busy, and too many topics to choose from that I didn't know how to get back into the swing of things.
http://video.news.ninemsn.com.au/?uuid=2682493707001
When I say busy, things at work became more chaotic when the warehouse I delivered from went up in flames. Some may recognise former NSL Championship-winning South Melbourne goalkeeper Bruce Maclaren in the video link above.
Spent some time at Officeworks on the self-serve photocopiers, copying and reducing pages from the Sydney Soccer World newspaper from A3 to A4 so that I could scan them at home. This produced the following documents:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5iqoyzuv75jzf9/SoccerWorld1969.pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3w4wmagu9zbx4fs/SoccerWorld1970.pdf
They are the NSW First and Second Division match reports and results pages, as well as the interstate results pages from Soccer World in 1969 and 1970. The NSW First Division all-in-one results, line-ups and match summary pages are brilliant, and I don't think those years are fully covered on OzFootball yet. Some great names to be found. For local content, the Cook's Tour of Melbourne column is also among the scans taken.
Scanning the full papers is a task too big for me, and I mainly focus on results because I want to complete the gaps in this document I started a few years ago:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx2j0mqd5mn1zmd/VictorianFootballStatisticalHistory.2.pub
There was more than a bit happening on the current football front. The Socceroos reached a bit of a low, and Holger Osieck got the chop. Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne drew nearly 5,000 people to their clash in the VPL Finals, a figure unlikely to be reached when Bentleigh Greens and Northcote City meet in the Grand Final at AAMI Park at the ridiculous kick-off time of 1.00 pm this Saturday.
On the NPLV front, the injunction sought by the 60-odd co-signatory clubs will go before the Supreme Court. It's hard to see the FFV's vision up and running next year if this drags on any longer.
The A-League is back up and running, with the Melbourne Derby drawing a big crowd that witnessed a game that didn't live up to the hype. This also means Goal! Weekly is back in print, so get to a newsagent and read something better than this blog.
http://video.news.ninemsn.com.au/?uuid=2682493707001
When I say busy, things at work became more chaotic when the warehouse I delivered from went up in flames. Some may recognise former NSL Championship-winning South Melbourne goalkeeper Bruce Maclaren in the video link above.
Spent some time at Officeworks on the self-serve photocopiers, copying and reducing pages from the Sydney Soccer World newspaper from A3 to A4 so that I could scan them at home. This produced the following documents:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5iqoyzuv75jzf9/SoccerWorld1969.pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3w4wmagu9zbx4fs/SoccerWorld1970.pdf
They are the NSW First and Second Division match reports and results pages, as well as the interstate results pages from Soccer World in 1969 and 1970. The NSW First Division all-in-one results, line-ups and match summary pages are brilliant, and I don't think those years are fully covered on OzFootball yet. Some great names to be found. For local content, the Cook's Tour of Melbourne column is also among the scans taken.
Scanning the full papers is a task too big for me, and I mainly focus on results because I want to complete the gaps in this document I started a few years ago:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx2j0mqd5mn1zmd/VictorianFootballStatisticalHistory.2.pub
There was more than a bit happening on the current football front. The Socceroos reached a bit of a low, and Holger Osieck got the chop. Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne drew nearly 5,000 people to their clash in the VPL Finals, a figure unlikely to be reached when Bentleigh Greens and Northcote City meet in the Grand Final at AAMI Park at the ridiculous kick-off time of 1.00 pm this Saturday.
On the NPLV front, the injunction sought by the 60-odd co-signatory clubs will go before the Supreme Court. It's hard to see the FFV's vision up and running next year if this drags on any longer.
The A-League is back up and running, with the Melbourne Derby drawing a big crowd that witnessed a game that didn't live up to the hype. This also means Goal! Weekly is back in print, so get to a newsagent and read something better than this blog.
Monday, 16 September 2013
Well, What Can You Say?
Seriously, what can you say after another black day in one of the blackest years in Victorian football history?
It's not everyday someone you know is arrested for alleged match fixing. It's not every day Kevin Bartlett Reserve gets mentioned in the mainstream media, including making the SEN promos all day as Robert Walls recycles the old comb-over grass gag.
On SEN, issues like these do show up how little their supposed experts know about the game beyond what is shown on Foxtel or ESPN.
Seeing as I was there, and this is the one article to focus on the game, I'll take a closer look:
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/football/how-friday-nights-fixed-match-unfolded-20130915-2tswp.html
It's not everyday someone you know is arrested for alleged match fixing. It's not every day Kevin Bartlett Reserve gets mentioned in the mainstream media, including making the SEN promos all day as Robert Walls recycles the old comb-over grass gag.
On SEN, issues like these do show up how little their supposed experts know about the game beyond what is shown on Foxtel or ESPN.
Seeing as I was there, and this is the one article to focus on the game, I'll take a closer look:
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/football/how-friday-nights-fixed-match-unfolded-20130915-2tswp.html
As the final whistle sounded over a patchy pitch in a unregarded corner of outer suburban Melbourne, a nil-all draw seemed a fitting result.If Burnley is outer suburban Melbourne I wonder what Nino would call Dandenong or Epping?
The game on Friday night was unlikely to linger in the memory, a scrappy match between two sides seemingly so hopeless they were no longer even capable of losing.Can't dispute that.
But thousands of kilometres away, an international criminal syndicate was counting its winnings after betting up to half a million dollars on the hapless Southern Stars drawing with Richmond in the Victorian Premier League.
And as the players who allegedly fixed the match were getting changed, they had no idea plain-clothed police, sitting alone in cars parked behind the city-end goals, were plotting their arrest.In the GE Carpark at the Heyington Bridge End, site of many a wrong-doing I would suspect.
There was little in the game that roused the small crowd. Apart from the occasional shout of ''c'mon Southern'' and Richmond's reserves heckling behind the Stars' goal, the small crowd stayed silent. Passing traffic on the Monash Freeway drowned out the occasional shouts of players. An elderly woman with a Richmond scarf sold $2 raffle tickets, and the canteen had a well-stocked bain-marie.
Nice to see Annie get a mention, hopefully he bought a ticket. The loudest calls on the night, in a bit of an indictment really, came from some workmates of Andrew Viola who provided more vocal support for him than anyone else did for either of the two teams combined.
want to win the league, although I'd love to win the league.'' On Sunday, he, too, was arrested.
It's interesting that the police would have the media on hand to record the build-up to the bust. What I recall was the man identified in other reports as Reiss Noel was very vocal on the sidelines. For a team with no chance of avoiding relegation, he was taking it very seriously and encouraged every Stars tackle and appealed for every decision from the referee. It was something that stood out even before the subsequent stunning revelations.
Already the debates are raging. There is the line that the club should have suspected something was up when players were offered with only accommodation and local transport costs expected to be covered. If that's the case, surely the FFV should be considered slack in allowing a broke club to sign so many imports (reasonably well-credentialled for "amateurs") during the mid-season transfer window. Even Tom Waterhouse copped a whack, though it is bookmakers in far away lands on internet sites that will be impossible to ever regulate that would be at the heart of this scandal.
How these football journeymen lost their way remains unknown.Less than 48 hours after the final whistle, police swooped. Those arrested include players who may have once held aspirations to play first-class football in Europe but whose last match may have been on Kevin Bartlett Reserve.
A the start of the season, Southern Stars coach Zaya Younan was upbeat: ''It would be silly of me to say weLast year, Nicholas McKoy debuted in England for Tamworth in a third-round FA Cup match against English Premier League side Everton at the famous Goodison Park. Even though his club lost, he and his teammates were met with a standing ovation from the Everton fans as they walked from the pitch.Another Stars' player, suspected of involvement in the match fixing but overseas when arrests were made on Sunday, had previously trialled for Arsenal.
want to win the league, although I'd love to win the league.'' On Sunday, he, too, was arrested.
It's interesting that the police would have the media on hand to record the build-up to the bust. What I recall was the man identified in other reports as Reiss Noel was very vocal on the sidelines. For a team with no chance of avoiding relegation, he was taking it very seriously and encouraged every Stars tackle and appealed for every decision from the referee. It was something that stood out even before the subsequent stunning revelations.
Already the debates are raging. There is the line that the club should have suspected something was up when players were offered with only accommodation and local transport costs expected to be covered. If that's the case, surely the FFV should be considered slack in allowing a broke club to sign so many imports (reasonably well-credentialled for "amateurs") during the mid-season transfer window. Even Tom Waterhouse copped a whack, though it is bookmakers in far away lands on internet sites that will be impossible to ever regulate that would be at the heart of this scandal.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Richmond Alemannia - 1970
Still stuck sorting through a large mass of historical items. Amongst the finds is this look by Soccer News at Richmond back in 1970. Then coach Wolfgang Smoger is the current President. Until three years ago Manfred Kuhn was Secretary, a role he performed for nearly as long as he was a gun striker. Sadly Mani's memory is starting to deteriorate, but he is still getting to games. I once asked him if he could list for me the years he won the Best and Fairest Award or Top Goalscorer title, but either because he had no record or was too modest, the list never came to fruition.
The article has a solid history of the club, including the upheaval and split that occurred when the VSF was established. It also correctly captions a photo of the German side that won the Junior Laidlaw World Cup in 1958 that would later have the junior part omitted in subsequent club histories. Fritz Schwab was the father of The Age and Soccer Action journalist Laurie, whilst I believe Franz Marth is the father of Melbourne Knights legend Andrew.
The affiliation to the Club Tivoli would wane in the 1980's. Perhaps an opportunity was missed when the Club Tivoli moved from Richmond to Windsor when a move to acquire the Leonda By The Yarra reception centre was considered.
I've also included another item from Soccer News that year which shows Manfred Kuhn meeting with the touring Hertha Berlin players at the German Consulate. Hertha played a game against the Victorian state team at Olympic Park which ended in a 1-1 draw, the late Jimmy Mackay scoring for The Vics.
The article has a solid history of the club, including the upheaval and split that occurred when the VSF was established. It also correctly captions a photo of the German side that won the Junior Laidlaw World Cup in 1958 that would later have the junior part omitted in subsequent club histories. Fritz Schwab was the father of The Age and Soccer Action journalist Laurie, whilst I believe Franz Marth is the father of Melbourne Knights legend Andrew.
The affiliation to the Club Tivoli would wane in the 1980's. Perhaps an opportunity was missed when the Club Tivoli moved from Richmond to Windsor when a move to acquire the Leonda By The Yarra reception centre was considered.
I've also included another item from Soccer News that year which shows Manfred Kuhn meeting with the touring Hertha Berlin players at the German Consulate. Hertha played a game against the Victorian state team at Olympic Park which ended in a 1-1 draw, the late Jimmy Mackay scoring for The Vics.
Monday, 26 August 2013
The Olympic Park Record
Until Friday, I had never known of the Olympic Park Record. All the issues I've come across are from 1968, which is it's inaugural year and I'm not sure if it came out beyond that. It was the work of former star player and multimedia journalist Alex Barr, who you can find out more about in blogs here and here.
The Olympic Park Record was a four page booklet of team line-ups for the weekend's games at the home of big time soccer, Olympic Park. There were brief previews and editorials from Barr, who was not afraid to voice his opinion against the establishment. It seems he was taking on the official V.S.F. publication, Soccer News.
The home tenants of the Park that season were Alexander, Port Melbourne Slavia, George Cross and eventual State League champions, Croatia.
Great names of the past to appear in the line-ups include Mike Jurecki, Horst Rau, Hammy McMeechan, Billy Vojtek, Jimmy McKay, John Sanchez, John Bedford, Frank Micic, Ulyesses Kokkinos with the list going on beyond those I've just mentioned from the first two pages.
Enjoy:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163125861/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-a-Pr-6
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126296/OlympicParkRecord1968April14-15
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126571/OlympicParkRecord1968April20-21
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126815/OlympicParkRecord1968April27-28
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163127353/OlympicParkRecord1968May4-5
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163127488/OlympicParkRecord1968May11-12
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128004/OlympicParkRecord1968May25-26
http://www.scribd.com/doc/162885494/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-June-19
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128482/OlympicParkRecord1968July20-21
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128625/OlympicParkRecord1968Aug31Sept1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129178/OlympicParkRecord1968September7-8
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129529/OlympicParkRecord1968September14-15
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129862/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-September-29
The Olympic Park Record was a four page booklet of team line-ups for the weekend's games at the home of big time soccer, Olympic Park. There were brief previews and editorials from Barr, who was not afraid to voice his opinion against the establishment. It seems he was taking on the official V.S.F. publication, Soccer News.
The home tenants of the Park that season were Alexander, Port Melbourne Slavia, George Cross and eventual State League champions, Croatia.
Great names of the past to appear in the line-ups include Mike Jurecki, Horst Rau, Hammy McMeechan, Billy Vojtek, Jimmy McKay, John Sanchez, John Bedford, Frank Micic, Ulyesses Kokkinos with the list going on beyond those I've just mentioned from the first two pages.
Enjoy:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163125861/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-a-Pr-6
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126296/OlympicParkRecord1968April14-15
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126571/OlympicParkRecord1968April20-21
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163126815/OlympicParkRecord1968April27-28
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163127353/OlympicParkRecord1968May4-5
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163127488/OlympicParkRecord1968May11-12
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128004/OlympicParkRecord1968May25-26
http://www.scribd.com/doc/162885494/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-June-19
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128482/OlympicParkRecord1968July20-21
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163128625/OlympicParkRecord1968Aug31Sept1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129178/OlympicParkRecord1968September7-8
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129529/OlympicParkRecord1968September14-15
http://www.scribd.com/doc/163129862/Olympic-Park-Record-1968-September-29
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