Melbourne Soccer

Saturday, 26 January 2019

Uncovering Pieces in Knox City's History

Bruce Darnell, a great football man, has undertaken the huge endeavour of researching Knox City's history and attempting to find a result for every first team game played. Knox City were founded as Bayswater, and he now only has a few results missing for the 1954 and 1955 seasons.

For their inaugural season in VASFA competitions, Bayswater fielded a senior team in the 1954 Fourth Division Reserves league. Until now Bruce was unable to ascertain two results from that campaign.

Looking through a folder of old papers I picked up from Moorabbin City when they were preparing for a 50th anniversary celebration in the mid-1990's, I found this fixture list for that league:

1954 Division Four Reserves Fixtures

Now when I crossed-checked the known results that Knox have, here:

we uncover a few things. Firstly the game fixtured for August 28 at home to St Albans was played on the free weekend on June 12. Similarly, the game fixtured for August 14 against Heidelberg was played a week earlier on August 7.

Now the April 24 issue of Soccer News (which is one of a dozen or so I've just realised have yet to be added to the archive, by the way) has a table dated "as at April 19". This shows Bayswater as having a record of 4 games played, 3 wins, 1 loss, 11 goals for, 2 goals against and 6 points. The known results from the Knox City records give us 3 games played, 2 wins, 1 loss, 11 goals for, 2 goals against and 4 points. This means they were awarded points for a walkover in the missing game against Nunawading, as was the custom of the time (points awarded only, goals for/against not involved).

Now Soccer News on August 21 has a table listed as "as at Monday August 2". This shows a record of 16 games played, 13 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses, 72 goals for, 18 goals against and 27 points. Add the game on August 7 to that and we get 17 games played, 14 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses, 80 goals for, 18 goals against and 29 points. Stack this up against the final table in the 1955 VASFA Yearbook which has a record of 18 games played, 15 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses, 84 goals for, 19 goals against and 31 points and we can deduce the missing result against Wilhelmina was a 4-1 win for Bayswater. This gives us a complete season record:

That only leaves a few conundrums from 1955 left to complete the record. Once again, anyone that can be of any assistance, please get in touch.

Friday, 21 December 2018

The Latest Draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History

Found below is a link to the 2018 draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History. A few missing results and details have been added, as well as all the 2018 senior leagues. A lot of photos and newspaper clips have been added, as well as more clip art and some general tidying up.

At the back there's a list of photos that would be nice to add (hint, hint) and a list of missing results and details that are needed to make it a complete record.

This completes the end of year updates of:

Free (Santa's) Hat!

and the

Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

The best way to record a season, and update historical records, is to produce a Yearbook. So that's what I did.

The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook has two sections, the first covers the season just gone. Final tables for all the seniors and reserves league in the FFV's State League for both men and women. All the award winners and Cup Final details, as well as a round-up of junior league champions. The final tables for all the Victorian regional leagues for men's and women's senior teams are also included.

The second section is the historical content. Honour rolls for the senior men's competitions since 1909. These are presented in a different way from the Statistical History of Victorian Football.

Part of the reason I undertook this project was to improve the access to these records for those covering the game in Victoria. I was particularly disappointed with the way the (then) FFV released the State League Best and Fairest Award winners and Golden Boot Award winners. No fanfare, no historical context, they may as well come out and say "here's the pdf files with some results for awards we don't really give a shit about". Why not state that Caleb Nicholes, in winning the top scorer for State League Division Three South East, had won a top scorers title for the 6th time in his career? And then point out that the record is held by Dave Greening, who just took out the Golden Boot in State League Division Five South to notch his 7th success.

Not enough has been made of the feats of Volkan Kalayci, Thomas Amahdzai and Christophe Durand. Kalayci won a record 7 State League Best and Fairest Awards (1 x SL2NW, 6 x SL3NW) including 5 seasons in a row between 2004-2008. Amahdzai has won 6 State or Provisional League Best and Fairests, including the title in SL1SE for three years in succession from 2015-2017. Durand won 5 State and Provisional League Best and Fairests.

Then we had three time VPL Gold Medallist (1997-1999) still kicking on in 2013 to win the SL5N Best and Fairest. Achievements of note going virtually unnoticed due to indifference and the Federation not maintaining it's own records.

It took me a weekend to type up the tables (the senior men's ones had already been done in a night previously) and the honour rolls. Another weekend to create the layout on Microsoft Publisher then insert, cut and paste the tables and honor rolls and add the club logos and a few clip art pictures and it was done. It should take considerably less time to update the whole thing next year.

The Yearbook can be accessed via clicking on the image below. It's free to download, would probably cost between $20-30 if you want to get it printed out in booklet form by Officeworks.

Saturday, 15 December 2018

Free (Santa's) Hat!

Here's the update of some of the folders I shared back in May.

Today, you can have the new Emblems and Logos folder.

It contains association/federation, sponsors, competition and media group emblems and logos.

On Sunday the updated Club Emblems folder will go on line.

It contains the emblems of clubs from all around the country, mainly present but with some vintage ones as well.

On Monday the new Clip Art folder will be added.

It contains hundred of various football related clip art images.

On Tuesday the updated Australian National Team Photos folder will be up.

Contains photos of Australian national representative teams, obviously.

Then, lastly, on Wednesday the all new Team Photos folder will be available.

It contains a collection of photos of Australian club and state football teams.

A new blog post on Thursday will reveal the inaugural Melbourne Soccer Yearbook.

On Friday another new blog post will contain this year's new draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History.

Tuesday, 4 December 2018

On The First Day Of Christmas, Melbourne Soccer Gave To You...

One folder of Emblems and Logos - Saturday December 15th
Organisation, competition and sponsor's emblems and logos

One folder of Club Emblems - Sunday December 16th
Australian club emblems and logos

One folder of Clip Art - Monday December 17th
Football clip art collection

One folder of Australian National Team Photos - Tuesday December 18th
Photos of Australian representative teams

One folder of Australian Club Team Photos - Wednesday December 19th
Photos of Australian club and state teams

One Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018 - Thursday December 20th
PDF file of the Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

One new draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History - Friday December 21st
PDF file of the 2018 update of the Victorian Football Statistical History

The folders will be shared on the same blog post, which will be updated to add a new link each day. The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018 and Victorian Football Statistical History update will have their own blog posts.

The Emblems and Logos folder has had a few additions since the last time I shared it. Same as the Club Emblems folder. The Clip Art folder has had a couple of hundred files added at least. Sadly the Australian National Team Photos folder has had few additions. The Australian Club Team Photos folder has had many new additions. If I can cut and paste a photo from a website or booklet, I will. If I can "save file as" of a picture on Twitter, I do. If that infringes anyone's copyright, they can get in touch via email and I will respond like the regional football federations do to my emails i.e. ignore them.

The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook contains two main parts, the 2018 season tables for all senior competitions and a historical section with honour rolls covering senior men's football since 1909.

The Victorian Football Statistical History update includes 2018 season information, an expanded regional league section, and some missing historical results I found during the last year. Plus a few more team and player photos with some errors corrected and some general tidying up.

Merry Christmas.

Wednesday, 24 October 2018

Victorian Regional League Websites

After deciding to add Victoria's regional leagues to the Statistical History, the first starting point for gathering the necessary data was naturally their websites. To say they were useless is probably being complementary.

The Geelong Region website is an extension of the FFV website. It has no historical section, or roll of honour of previous champions. The results section goes back as far as 2012.

The Sunraysia S-League website is also an extension of the FFV website. The last News item on this site dates back to 03/05/2018. It also has no historical section or roll of honour of previous champions. The results section goes back to 2012 though the score from the 2013 Grand Final has yet to be entered.

The Ballarat and District Soccer Association has it's own website. It's had more than one news item added this year, which is a positive compared to Sunraysia. There are some history records which go back as far as 1995, though there are several gaps of a few years in it. The results section goes back as far as 2012.

The Bendigo Amateur Soccer League site is a sportstg site. It has no historical section or roll of honour of former champions. The results section goes back as far as.... 2017.

The South West Victoria (formerly Warrnambool & District) Soccer League website is also sportstg site, with all other frills like News, Documents, History, Photos section removed. It is strictly fixtures and results, which go back to 2013 again with no final score entered for the 2016 Grand Final.

The Albury Wodonga Football Association has it's own site. News updates are frequent. There is no list roll of honour of former champions, but some historical content can be found. The results section goes back as far as 2013.

The Latrobe Valley Soccer League uses a sportstg site. It had one new news item in 2018. There is no historical section or roll of honour of previous champions. The results section goes back as far as 2016.

The Gippsland Soccer League also use a sportstg site. There's no historical content or roll of honour of former champions, and the results section goes back as far as... 2018. Yes, that far back!

Are these serious football leagues? Will some ever progress from Facebook pages to perhaps having a grown ups website? Is it any surprise that regional NPL teams have so far proven to be a burden upon the competition? Nothing about their websites suggest many of these regions are anything other than backward outposts, not worth bothering with.