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.