The WTF League Division Four 1930

On first looks, finding a final table for the Fourth Division of the Metropolitan League doesn't not appear to be too much of a drama.

The Age gives us a late table in early September. Eight teams. 7 times 2 makes for 14 home and away games. Most teams have played all 14. Four haven't, so surely it's just a case of working out which two results are missing, finding out when they should have been played and trying a few other sources to find the results. If nothing can be found, assume this is the final table and just worry about the blurry nature of Spotswood's goals for figure.

But it's not that easy. It rarely is. Here's the first problem. Why are Spotswood playing Malvern in a League game when they've already finished their 14 game season? Gathering known results into a wordpad file, I then get the pen and paper out and list each club's results. More anomalies. Why did Pascoe Vale play Malvern three times? Why did Bentleigh play Kingsville three times?

Using the tables published in The Age on Fridays, and the published fixtures, it was possible to figure out some missing results. But still the anomalies remain. It's a note alongside a Third Division result from Saturday August 9 that provides a breakthrough. "Replayed game after protest". It was the only Third Division game that day, no full programme because of a Dockerty Cup semi-final. So were the two Fourth Division games that day also replays after protests? It starts to make sense.

So why did Spotswood play Malvern again on October 4? It seems their August 16 clash may have been included in the table published by The Age on September 9. It was abandoned due to players fighting, with Spotswood 3-0 up. Maybe it was assumed the score would stand, before a ruling came through for the October 4 replay?

This leaves the two missing games as September 6 clashes between Malvern United and Kingsville, and Nobels v Croydon. As well as trying to figure why goals scored for and against don't seem to tally....

Would it have killed them to have have published the tables again on October 6? And does Dr Ian Syson place the blame for that at the feet of Michael Lynch?

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.