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.
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The second section is the historical content.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.
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.
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.
Once again the great Doug Butcher has supplied me with two new booklets to share, this time covering 1950-1959. One of course covers Australian representative teams, and the other overseas teams touring in Australia. They can be found on the History Documents page.
Some other recent additions to the archive can be found on the Yearbooks and Annuals page, namely three Albury Wodonga Soccer Association Yearbooks covering 1979-1981.
There is also a new Podcast archive on the History Documents page which features episodes of The Pumpkin Seed Eaters and FNR's The Pioneers.
The what was to have been the second annual State of the Blog post has been put back to December.
By that time I hope to have completed the Soccer Action archive.
Released in the build up to the World Cup, Andrew Howe's Encyclopedia of Socceroos is a book of great importance. When commentators utter lines like "that's one for the record books" or "this will make the history books" the fact is in Australian football the record books and history books do not really exist. Luckily for us Howe is leading the way in attempting to redress this situation.
The premise is simple, a listing of small biographies of Socceroos that have played "A" internationals. It's not a book that you would read from cover to cover in order, more one you may pick through in stages. Some will head to the players they know first, or those from their club. Others may be inclined to read about the names they had never heard of first. The presentation is brilliant, which is a challenge in sections where there can be as much data as there is prose.
Ray Gatt does a great job in profiling our World Cup captains, adding depth to their stories in a manner their position deserves. Though these stories have been told before, there are a few new insights and the retrospective appraisal of their careers is right on the mark.
Again the data-laden appendices are presented in the brightest manner possible. It is here the trends of team composition are established in fact, not myth.
I appreciated little touches in acknowledging events that should be part of our football folklore, such as including the name of Bill Siavalas as the man who intervene to save Alan Davidson's life at Middle Park. Most of all I enjoyed reading more about the names I have read from the pre-WWII days in Melbourne but knew little about. George Bristow also going by the name of Tom clears some confusion. George Raitt being at Huddersfield Town. Jim Robison hailing from Northumberland (okay, should have figured that out given his first Melbourne club was Northumberland and Durham United). Aku Roth being in the fur trade. The use of Dockerty Cup Final appearances to illustrate Johnny Orr's significance (9 appearances in 14 years, 5 wins).
There are a few errors here and there, which is to be expected in such a large undertaking and given the lack of proper record-keeping and biographical histories kept by previous generations. Hopefully there will be future editions where these can be ironed out.
It's a book every Australian football fan should possess. The cover sums it up, the badge on the shirt. People should honour those that have worn it by reading and learning a bit about those who did so before their time. Our game does have a history, and we should be more proud of it.
It truly is a tome worthy of what it has set out to achieve. It's a book every football club should show their juniors and challenge them to be a part of future editions.
Having come across the blog, and having read The United Appeal For The Missing Issues, a top bloke called Steve Delmenico has loaned me 40 old issues of Soccer Action. These have all now been copied and scanned, and over the next month I will be adding the 10 new links for these issues every Friday to the Soccer Action Archive.
This now leaves just 8 issues of Soccer Action to be found to complete the online archive.
Those issues are:
1976 - February 4 March 31
1981 - July 22 (only need pages 3,4,13 and 14 of this one)
1985 - September 4
1986 - April 9 May 14 July 16 (only need pages 1,2,15 and 16 of this one) October 8
Hopefully there are some other legends out there and this mammoth project can soon be complete.
It may not have been his dream, but I'm sure Ratko would have liked to see this archive completed. I think he's still alive actually. Anyway, let's find those last 8 issues.
This is a collection of team photos of Australian club, state and representative teams.
Some come from websites, some come from Twitter. They were obtained by the old click the right mouse button and save file as method. Some came from the Goal! Weekly online archive. That involved pressing print screen, then opening MS Paint and pressing paste before cutting, cropping and minor editing. I took the Richmond ones with the Bitburger Beer advertising banner myself. The Richmond photos at AAMI Park for a friendly against Melbourne Heart were taken with my camera, by Gerd Steinborn. Other pics were scanned from newspapers, yearbooks and magazines. A few more were taken from newspapers on Trove via the print screen and MS Paint method. Some more of the Richmond ones involved taking photos off the walls, out of the frames and scanning before putting them back together.
I've been collecting football clip art since my programme editing days. Thanks to the Miles Maclagan programme scans I'm always adding to this, using the print screen button with MS Paint method.
Most of these are easily found on federation and club websites, or google. Some of the older ones were scanned from yearbooks, magazines, programmes or letterheads.
These emblems and logos are of football sponsors and governing bodies or competitions. As above, many available on the net with a few scanned from publications.
Feel free to save to your hard drive and share with anyone you think may get something out of them.
It is with great pleasure that I am able to share with you all the brilliant work of Sydney football historian Doug Butcher. Doug has produced several booklets based on his research into early Australian representative games and international teams that toured the country. The links to the booklets can be found below:
These expand in greater detail what can currently be found on OzFootball. They also contain searched and explanations for the issues behind various name discrepancies amongst touring players. In the early part of last century newspapers often had various spellings for simple British surnames, so it's no surprise that more exotic foreign names posed problems. Christian names were not always published, in fact sometimes even an initial didn't appear and Doug has endeavoured to uncover as much about these players as he can.
He also explains the make-up of the touring sides, in a time when match organisers were part-wrestling promotors, looking to add more lustre to their teams. This is when the public accepted Hajduk Split being billed as Yugoslavia, and Bohemians of Prague were advertised as a Czechoslovakian national team.
In the days when travel was more by boat than plane, we see how tours were longer as teams were made to make the most of having made long voyages. These were not one-off friendlies, but massive tours often with a series of test matches.
Thanks to Doug for sharing, hopefully a few more people get as much out of going through these booklets as I did.
Edited to add: The video has been blocked in some countries due to musical copyright claims by that prick Billy Joel's reps. I'll carry around a USB with it on me for those keen to get a copy. You just need to get in touch. markboric@bigpond.com
Predating the great Football Chaos, Moorabbin City had most of their games in 1994 filmed by former first team and then reserve team player Rob Mihalek. I now present that video in it's entirety, complete with some graphic I made up on the old Amiga 1200.
It was Moorabbin's first on field (there had been some league re-structures) promotion in almost 20 years. Initially coached by the late Billy Whiteside, it was Dave Christians who led the side into securing a place in Division Two. Stevie Irvine (Jackson's dad) was Billy's assistant.
The first team squad was:
Bertie Arlove, Ray Bryden, Paddy Cooper, Davie Fourna, Tony Hermus, Dom Iasenza, Gerry Lepkowski, Mickey Maguire, Craig Miller, Jimmy Nelson, Brian Smith, Jimmy Stewart, Iain Stirton, Brian Sweeney, Brendan Thomas, Rob Tobin, Stan Webster, John Whiteside and Troy Williams.
(Click on images to enlarge)
Promotion was secured on the final day of the season, in dramatic circumstances which is of course the highlight of the video, along with the reserve team celebrations after winning their championship under Sven Helbig on the same day. Other highlights (some may say lowlights) are Mickey Maguires knockout v Fitzroy City and the smart work to prevent Jimmy Nelson battering a referee. The home ground for the year was Gaelic Park, Keysborough. The best game there was the defeat of South Dandenong (now Dandenong Thunder).
If you it and want to keep it, use one of those video downloader thingies in case the use of music sees the sound taken from the video at some point in the future due to certain violations.
A few years ago Pave Jusup asked if I'd kept any records on junior leagues. I said no, as given the obscurity of finding some senior and reserves final tables I figured I would be on a hiding to nothing attempting to compile that data.
Well, like the glutton for punishment that I am, I've decided to have a crack. This preliminary attempt is based of what could be found in VSF Yearbooks, FFV Annual Reports and the current FFV website. I've yet to go through the Soccer Action era to fill in more of the 1970's and 1980's but most of that should be covered. I will make notes in the comments section below on my success in that area.
As usual, there is a void in the years 2002-2003 where official record keeping did not keep up with changes in the digital age. If anyone can help, please contact me at markboric@bigpond.com
That goes for any other of the gaps throughout time. Once again, I will be using the comments section to provide updates.
Compiling this list emphasised the growth of the game over the years, most especially the recent boom in female football. The changes in junior boundaries can also be observed. Then there are the experiments like dividing the 1996 season into Autumn and Winter Competitions.
I will soon go through the Soccer Action collection to update those years, but this project is very much on the backburner, down the list of my other historical searches. Unless there is a flood of information supplied (I'm happy to do the typing) further updates may be some time coming. There are the usual issues of VSF Yearbooks neglecting junior details in many years.
Things have been a little quiet on the blogging side recently, as I'm going through old notes to double check and reorganise my records as I try and track down what is missing to complete the seasons from 1910-1949. I've made a few State Library visits for very little reward.
If anyone wants some clip art, here is my current collection:
Thanks to some photos of clippings about soccer in Whyalla and the Northern Areas Soccer Association sent to me by Danny Wilson, a page on football in that area has been added to the History Documents page and can be found here.
They cover the career of Tommy Russell from his early days at Croatia then his veteran years with Wanderers in the local competition.
The above clip is from one of the greatest sketch comedy movies of all, The Kentucky Fried Movie. Sadly Henry Gibson is no longer with us, and therefore unable to narrate a video for the latest appeal for missing issues of Soccer Action and Soccer News. There are just 48 issues needed to complete the Soccer Action set (they are listed below), and it would be great to get the archive filled this year. If anyone can lend me any of these missing editions so they can be copied, scanned and uploaded please contact me at markboric@bigpond.com
1976
February 4 March 31
1979
March 14 July 26 August 29
1980
March 29 May 28 June 4 June 25 September 10 October 15 October 22
November 6 November 19
1981
March 25 April 1 July 1 July 22
1982
January 27 February 10 March 3 March 10 March 17 March 24 April 14
May 19 June 30 July 14 August 11 September 22 October 20
1983
February 16 March 16 March 23 April 6 June 8 July 20 August 10 August 17
October 19 October 26
1984
April 4 September 12
1985
September 4
1986
April 9 May 14 July 16 October 8
Until I have some papers to copy and scan, I'll just be watching more The Kentucky Fried Movie clips.
The impressive Big Jim Slade:
For when you've just sold your last case of incense:
