Soccer World, Week & News Plus A Spot Of Tennis

A few years ago I got a USB from leading historian Roy Hay which contained files of scans of old Soccer newspapers. The file was labelled the John Punshon-Tom Wall Collection. John is another of the great football historians, largely responsible for the Victorian state league section of OzFootball. I don't know who Tom Wall is.

The scans were a mixture of jpeg and pdf files, but each file was just a single page from the paper. They must have been able to scan full size A3 pages and are great quality. Having discovered sites that allow you to make pdf files of jpeg images, and merge single page pdfs into multi page documents, I can now add these papers to the various archives on the blog.

Soccer World

The Green Paper (not hard to figure out where this nickname came from) was Sydney's soccer newspaper from the 1960's to the early 1980's with Andrew Dettre and Lou Gautier chief contributors. Jim Cook was the longtime Melbourne correspondent.

If you scroll down the History Documents page, you will find the Soccer World archive.

The new editions added to my previous scans of 1970's issues are:

1961 September 8

1962 Septmber 21, 28 October 5

1963 August 9 November 8

1964 June 12

1966 October 7, 14

1967 June 9

1968 May 3 July 26 September 13 October 4, 11

1969 January 24 May 9 August 22 September 5, 12 October 3

Soccer Week

I've blogged about this mid-1970's Melbourne paper before. Now I can share the following editions, also found on the History Documents page:

1975 April 23 June 9, 18 July 9, 16 August 6

Soccer News

The old faithful Soccer News underwent several changes in the 1960's. Having begun as a small A5 booklet in the 1940's, it grew slightly larger in the late 1950's. In the 1960's it would go full newspaper size, also becoming Soccer Weekly in 1962 in an attempt to go national. Reverting back to Soccer News the following year, it became Soccer News & Soccer Life in 1966 and then Soccer Tennis News in 1968 with the legendary Harry Hopman involved in the tennis section, again reverting back to Soccer News for 1969.

Some of the news scans are missing pages, but I've added them to the archive as there may be information someone is after and something is better than nothing. The Soccer News Archive now has had the following added to it:

1962 August 30

1963 April 11 October 3

1964 February 27 March 26 April 2, 16, 23 May 21 June 25 July 30 August 27 September 17
         October 15 November 5

1965 March 12 May 27 September 9

1966 June 2 August 11

1967 April 6 June 8 and better versions of June 15, 22 & 29

1968 April 25 May 16 June 27 August 1

1969 May 22

Soccer News, Of Late 1965

I've reduce copied, scanned and uploaded four issues of Soccer News from 1965:

Thursday August 12

Thursday October 14

Thursday November 18

Thursday November 25

Morrie Buckner had page two, with Jim Cook having the back page. Martyn Harris did a round-up of the Metropolitan League. Fred Villiers was editor.

In the August 12 issue, one of the letters to the editor came from controversial J.U.S.T. President Tony Kovac. South Melbourne Hellas sat top of the State League. Jim Cook asks has the Argus Medal had it, and it has because the award would eventually be renamed in honour of Bill Fleming.

The October 14 edition came after the conclusion of the league competitions. The Australia and Dockerty Cups were being contested, and the silly season of interstate/national league talk was underway. Victoria, a first division club from Adelaide, defeated Richmond Alemannia 2-1, probably taking the crown of top German club in Australia in the process. George Scott of Juventus won the Argus Medal, which was presented to him by Stuart Beaton on Channel 7's World of Sport the previous Sunday.

A Dockerty Cup Final preview can be found in the November 18 issue, with Croatia and Slavia set to face-off. Page 4 features a special on South Australian football. Jim Cook's page reveals the chance to see films of Torpedo Moscow v Victoria and Torpedo Moscow v New South Wales at North Melbourne Town Hall. I wonder if those films still exist somewhere?

The Cambodia Catastrophe is covered in the November 25 number. Australia's World Cup qualification chances were crushed with a 6-1 loss against North Korea in Phnom Penh. A double page centrespread celebrates Slavia winning the Dockerty Cup Final. Jim Cook's page list a few honours, including Tommy McPherson (George Cross) winning the Soccer News Best and Fairest Award, with Alistair Scott (Melbourne) taking out the Sporting Globe Best and Fairest Award for the State League. Again, highlights of the Adelaide Croatia v Melbourne Croatia match were shown on Channel 9 in Adelaide the previous week. Another treasure probably lost.