Doug Butcher Booklets

Australia's International Socker Results 1922-1929















Doug Butcher was born on the first of June in 1944, in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England. As a youth he lived in New Addington, Surrey where he attended Wolsey Primary School. A fellow classmate, and a big fan of his mum's chocolate cake, was a future World Cup Socceroo, the great Ray Richards.

In his teens his family moved to Thornton Heath, a convenient brisk walk to Selhurst Park for the Crystal Palace fan. His next door neighbour was Ron Crisp, not a household name but one who would play for Watford, Brentford, Los Angeles Torros, San Diego Torros and later in South Africa. It was there in 1969 that Doug became reacquainted with him when he was at Durban United. Driving him to the New Kingsmead Stadium gained Doug free parking! Joining the Kingsmead club saw Doug mix with well known players having a stint in South Africa near to the close of their careers, like Johnny "Budgie" Byrne (Crystal Palace and West Ham United) and Tony Macedo (Fulham).

It was apparent to him that he needed to make use of his contacts rather than rely his "fifth grade" soccer skills. Employed in the petro-chemical and allied industries as a draftsman, he improved his skills to eventually become a "pipe stress analyst". It was the job where he began to hone his skills as a researcher. 

When he moved to Australia, he began to research Australian football records, mostly dealing with national team games and details of foreign touring teams in our country. Now in retirement, with the support of his wife Christine, he continues this endeavour to produce the booklets available on this page. 

He asks that you "remember nobody is perfect and I am sure there are mistakes in my booklets". That said, they are meticulously compiled and contain a level of detail for the matches that they cover that cannot be found in any other single source.













No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)