The Search in Research

I never expected researching football history to be easy. Some setbacks are to be expected. A six hour stint in the State Library Victoria newspaper microfilm archives to yield just three new match results was a tad disappointing. I'd noticed Croydon results were often missing in the late 1920's. I suspected it was the tyranny of distance to the then outpost which meant results weren't getting through in time for publication rather than the games not being played.

Searching for a local paper, I uncovered the Ringwood Mail and Warrandyte Gazette. Local papers, coming out once a week, had much later deadlines. I found a great match report for a 2-0 win (Benson double) over Kingsville on Saturday July 20, 1929. It had the local team line-up and everything. Sadly, there were only two such reports for that season. Did the club publicists only sing when they were winning? It may account for such patchy coverage in those days.

It's not just the olden days where information may have vanished out of existence. Back in January I emailed the FFV requesting information from this century that was no longer available on their website (click on image to enlarge).

I got the level of service I've come to expect of the FFV i.e. poor. I shouldn't have been surprised, it's a fact of the history that I'm studying.