Victorian Soccer Season Files - 1919

The time has come to clean up the various scraps of paper lying around which are the result of trying to figure the hidden mysteries of Victoria's soccer past. A new page is being added to the History Documents section of the blog - Victorian Season Files. These Word Pad files contain the scores and some notes on each season, as best as I can uncover. I will put up the seasons prior to the more comprehensive records than can be found on OzFootball.net 

A few disclaimers and excuses. I am not a trained academic or historian and began compiling records haphazardly. In many cases the source of the information is not noted. A lot of that is due to the changing nature of my hobby research. My first visits to the State Library Victoria to look through microfilms were to find Moorabbin City results and tables. In the years after they folded I looked to find final tables for the Victorian top division since 1909. That later spread to all senior leagues. After a diversion looking for Richmond Alemannia first team results, the focus turned to what I try to cover in the Victorian Football Statistical History - final senior league tables, reserves league championship winners, Dockerty Cup Final scores and line-ups, other Cup Final scores, League top goalscorers and League Best and Fairest Award winners.

Since then further lists I began compiling include Victorian state team game details/line-ups, junior league champions, regional league champions and Cup/Grand Final scores and now women's league champions and Cup Final scores. A few of these I've only just taken up, previously assuming/hoping someone more interested in those areas would have started establishing records/history.

It should be noted when I first hit the microfilms, Trove and mobile phones with inbuilt cameras did not exist. This further accounts for the patchy notes. If one newspaper in a particular year was not coming up with much, I would skip a decade or so in the hope of finding something to make the visit worthwhile. This lead to exercise books full of notes in no particular order. Cross referencing between the main papers was also very time consuming, which with limited time meant it did not often occur.

Another factor to consider was I always assumed that at some point the VSF/FFV would make a push to uncover all it's Yearbooks and more issues of Soccer News. There was a hope that if they went from having (rough estimate) 65-75% availability to above 90% a lot more information would be uncovered, especially beyond what the major daily newspapers of the time were prepared to publish. Sadly...

So because it's Anzac Day, and it was the smallest file to clear of typos and other notes accumulated over the years, I shall start with the 1919 season, the resumption of competitive football after the Great War.

This is the only file I include the results of club friendlies on. That is because clubs began gathering at Middle Park in May and playing games, which the papers published results of (often including the line-ups for one game each week). However, the league competition did not get under way until July 12. Due to the late start, the eight teams would play each other just the once. Which means the champions Northumberland and Durham United are probably the team to take the honour with the fewest wins in a season, despite winning 6 of their 7 league fixtures. They were denied the double by Windsor, who defeated them in the Dockerty Cup semi-final before losing to Footscray Thistle in the final. Not only did Windsor deny the "All Digger Team" the double, their 1-1 draw in the final round meant "N&D" fell narrowly short of winning every league fixture at the final hurdle.

The delay in commencing the season came about because though the returned soldiers were keen on having a kick, officialdom had been in recess for four years and establishing a new committee required a few meetings. As luck would have it, when the league season finally commenced, the first week's games were all abandoned around half-time when Melbourne was struck by a ferocious hailstorm.

The full record of Northumberland and Durham United's season can be found here.

Going through what can be found on Trove, the league season came up with two results missing. After writing out each clubs results, then compiling a league record and comparing it to a published final table, I was able to deduce that on July 26 Footscray Thistle must have beaten Preston 2-1. Also on September 13 Preston must then have had a walkover win against Spotswood. So we have all the results, but too many games without goalscorers noted to attempt uncovering a leading scorer.

The biggest winning margin, and most goals scored in a game, were the two 7-0 wins recorded by Northumberland and Durham United, on July 26 against St Davids and on August 16 against Preston. In the latter game Miller scored 4, the most of any player in a single game that league season.

It was the days of 2 points for a win, not 3. The custom for a forfeit or walkover was to record the win/loss but not touch goals for or against.

Anyhow, here it is:

Victorian Soccer Season 1919