from my visit to the State Library of Victoria. Firstly, maybe I was a bit optimistic in thinking a decent chunk of the senior league tables can be obtained. Second Division results in the 1920's a very sporadic, and sources are limited as The Sun and The Sporting Globe didn't kick-off until 1922 and 1923. Not getting very far in finding out more about the 1919 Dockerty Cup Final either.
Better luck with 1929. Worked out the complete Second Division table. With a 14 game season, I have the full results of half of the teams in Division Three, with only Richmond (12), Pascoe Vale (12), Coburg (13) and Camberwell (13) having results missing. Still more work to do on Division Four, where I have one team with the full 14 games, one with 13 accounted for, 5 on the dozen and one on eleven. Found announcements for the winners of the First and Third Division Reserves competitions, but tallying up the known results of the Second Division Reserves does not get close enough to resolving that issue.
Back to The Winner. It's first came out on July 29, 1914. It was done and dusted during 1918. Following the outbreak of the First World War, Victorian soccer battled though a season in 1915 before dwindling numbers saw competitive football come to an end in 1916. That year, soccer correspondent J.W.Harrison covered the minor Aussie Rules competition that was the Victorian Junior Football Association (which competed for the John Wren Shield). A football man to the core, he'd still squeeze in some soccer news if it was available, namely the results of friendly games between the Army and Navy or other scratch matched played at Middle Park.
I haven't mastered (actually even attempted) taking hard copies of what I come across on the microfilms yet, planning on learning that after I have completed as much result gathering as I can. So without being able to produce samples, here are some interesting things I found:
August 12, 1914 edition, page 7 - a picture of the original Victorian soccer committee from 1907.
October 7, 1914 edition, page 7 - a picture of the St Kilda team, played 18, won 9 lost 5 drawn 4.
October 21, 1914 edition - 597 registered players in the VABFA, and during the year H.L.Dockerty was presented with a Life Member's Badge, probably the first such honour in our history.
November 11, 1914 edition, page 7 - pictures of the Northumberland and Durham United and Melbourne Thistle teams.
April 28, 1915 edition, page 8 - a list of "players who responded to countries call".
May 19, 1915 edition, page 7 - individual pictures of the brothers T.E., A.H. and H.M.Lowe.
June 23, 1915 edition - news that H.M. (Hughie) Lowe was killed in action in the Dardanelles.
August 11, 1915 edition, page 7 - pictures of the England and Scotland teams from the Local International.
September 15, 1915 edition, page 6 - early picture of the Dockerty Challenge Cup.
Finally, can you imagine 20's-30's Moonee Ponds playing games at Moonee Valley Racecourse? They'd be able to have night games there nowadays.
Hard copies as in print outs, or as in downloading to a usb stick? In the past I've found the former to be easy, but not sure what was going wrong my when I was trying the latter.
ReplyDeleteMade some print outs many years ago, never tried using a usb stick yet. Temporary relocated newspaper reading room also unsettles me.
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