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.