Manchester United in Melbourne and Sydney, 1967

Earlier this year George Cotsanis of My World Is Round made a great find, locating someone selling old film reels, some of which included soccer content. He purchased the film and then set about getting them converted to a more modern media format. This week he was able to share part of his discovery, with his release of a Craven Filter Sports Feature covering the Manchester United tour of Australia in 1967.

Here's the links to the newspapers which covered the build up and the action from the games against Victoria and New South Wales. Some great photos were captured by Uwe Kessner of Soccer News.

Soccer News June 8

Soccer News June 15

Soccer News June 22

Soccer World June 9

Soccer World June 23

The film opens with narration over footage of a junior game. This is to begin a storytelling segment which was a staple of newsreels. Sir Matt Busby is interviewed before footage of a Manchester United training session is shown, before the storytelling segment intensifies. The kid from the story and the Manchester United players are shown at the Park Royal Hotel in Melbourne, standing by a pool it is too cold to swim in given it's the middle of winter.

On to Olympic Park we go, for the match footage. A packed ground awaits and advertising for Craven Filter and Craven A abounds. The direction of the footage is a little disappointing, with the strange use of close ups meaning we don't get a great look of the two goals. Firstly it zooms in on Willy Schroiff as Bobby Charlton dribbles in the box and then shoots past him. Then we get a cutaway to a crowd shot as Victoria equalise. That said, the action captured remains priceless.

We then move on to the Sydney Showgrounds, where New South Wales take on the Red Devils. United are now in white, opposed to the sky blue of NSW. A Johnny Warren flick-on header leads to a disallowed goal. Here the goals are shown in their entirety.

At the time, Manchester United were champions of England. The following year they would go on to become champions of Europe. Denis Law was under an injury cloud for much of the tour, but the legendary George Best, Bobby Charlton and Nobby Stiles featured prominently. Most who recall witnessing one of these games have vivid memories of Best dribbling through mud with ease.

Equally as exciting, though, is this footage gives us brief glimpses of Australian greats we have only really been able to read about, not see. Ron Corry, Frank Micic, Hammy McMeechan, Johnny Warren and Ray Baartz are chief amongst that category.

Also exciting is the prospect that there are still some great historical finds out there to be made. As I mentioned in my last piece a mountain of history has disappeared, but perhaps there can now be a serious campaign to rectify that, spurred on by this glorious find.

Match Details:

Sunday June 11, 1967.
At Olympic Park (Crowd: 31638)
Referee: David Maitland

Victoria 1 (O.G.) Manchester United 1 (Charlton)

Victoria: 1- Willy Schroff 2- George Keith 3-  David High 4- Billy Cook 5-Dick van Alphen 6- Tommy Randles 7- Attila Abonyi 8- Frank Micic 9- Johnny Sanchez 10- Jimmy Armstrong (12- John Anderson 81') 11- Hammy McMeechan.
Coach: Sjel (Mike) de Bruyckere

Manchester United: Alex Stepney, Shay Brennan, Tony Dunne, John Fitzpatrick, David Sadler, Nobby Stiles, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Noel Cantwell, Jimmy Ryan (Brian Kidd 46'), John Aston.
Manager: Matt Busby

Sunday June 18, 1967.
At Sydney Showgrounds (Crowd: 36500)
Referee: Tony Boskovic

New South Wales 1 (Hughes 87') Manchester United 3 (Charlton 35' 75' Foulkes 69')

New South Wales: Ron Corry, Brian Lincoln, Cliff van Blerk, Hughes, Alan Marnoch, John Watkiss, Joe Alagich, Ray Baartz, Johnny Warren, Alan Westwater, Johnny Giacometti.
Coach: Joe Marston

Manchester United: Alex Stepney, Shay Brennan, Tony Dunne, John Fitzpatrick, Bill Foulkes, Nobby Stiles, George Best, David Sadler, Bobby Charlton, Brian Kidd, John Aston.
Manager: Matt Busby

Evaporating History

Back in 2001 Roy Hay put out this appeal for old issues of Soccer News to aid in football research. It took up about an eighth of a page in Australian and British Soccer Weekly. I think I ended up going to the Oakleigh Public Library to makes photocopies (Pre-Officeworks days) of two issues that I had that he didn't to send to him. His collection can now be found at the MCC Library. I don't think the State Library would microfilm a collection which was so far from being complete.

What staggers, and infuriates, me is eighteen years later no governing body of the game has made any sort of concerted effort to make a similar appeal to redress the vanishing history of our game in this country. In these years how many more old newspapers, programmes, photos and yearbooks have ended up in landfill, many lost forever. We have competition histories that are incomplete and the resources to try and remedy that continue to disappear.

It makes me think of Dr Ian Syson's The Game That Never Happened. We have history rotting away, and only have ourselves to blame. Six paragraphs in ABSW in 2001, in one issue. Today we have social media. The FFA twitter account has 150,000 followers, Football Victoria over 11,000. There is a far greater platform now to appeal for historical documents by these well-staffed organisations, yet there has been absolutely nothing done. If they truly loved the game, these people would be ashamed.

                                      (Click on image to enlarge)

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.

The Latest Draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History

Found below is a link to the 2018 draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History. A few missing results and details have been added, as well as all the 2018 senior leagues. A lot of photos and newspaper clips have been added, as well as more clip art and some general tidying up.

At the back there's a list of photos that would be nice to add (hint, hint) and a list of missing results and details that are needed to make it a complete record.

This completes the end of year updates of:

Free (Santa's) Hat!

and the

Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

The best way to record a season, and update historical records, is to produce a Yearbook. So that's what I did.

The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook has two sections, the first covers the season just gone. Final tables for all the seniors and reserves league in the FFV's State League for both men and women. All the award winners and Cup Final details, as well as a round-up of junior league champions. The final tables for all the Victorian regional leagues for men's and women's senior teams are also included.

The second section is the historical content. Honour rolls for the senior men's competitions since 1909. These are presented in a different way from the Statistical History of Victorian Football.

Part of the reason I undertook this project was to improve the access to these records for those covering the game in Victoria. I was particularly disappointed with the way the (then) FFV released the State League Best and Fairest Award winners and Golden Boot Award winners. No fanfare, no historical context, they may as well come out and say "here's the pdf files with some results for awards we don't really give a shit about". Why not state that Caleb Nicholes, in winning the top scorer for State League Division Three South East, had won a top scorers title for the 6th time in his career? And then point out that the record is held by Dave Greening, who just took out the Golden Boot in State League Division Five South to notch his 7th success.

Not enough has been made of the feats of Volkan Kalayci, Thomas Amahdzai and Christophe Durand. Kalayci won a record 7 State League Best and Fairest Awards (1 x SL2NW, 6 x SL3NW) including 5 seasons in a row between 2004-2008. Amahdzai has won 6 State or Provisional League Best and Fairests, including the title in SL1SE for three years in succession from 2015-2017. Durand won 5 State and Provisional League Best and Fairests.

Then we had three time VPL Gold Medallist (1997-1999) still kicking on in 2013 to win the SL5N Best and Fairest. Achievements of note going virtually unnoticed due to indifference and the Federation not maintaining it's own records.

It took me a weekend to type up the tables (the senior men's ones had already been done in a night previously) and the honour rolls. Another weekend to create the layout on Microsoft Publisher then insert, cut and paste the tables and honor rolls and add the club logos and a few clip art pictures and it was done. It should take considerably less time to update the whole thing next year.

The Yearbook can be accessed via clicking on the image below. It's free to download, would probably cost between $20-30 if you want to get it printed out in booklet form by Officeworks.

Free (Santa's) Hat!

Here's the update of some of the folders I shared back in May.

Today, you can have the new Emblems and Logos folder.

It contains association/federation, sponsors, competition and media group emblems and logos.

On Sunday the updated Club Emblems folder will go on line.

It contains the emblems of clubs from all around the country, mainly present but with some vintage ones as well.

On Monday the new Clip Art folder will be added.

It contains hundred of various football related clip art images.

On Tuesday the updated Australian National Team Photos folder will be up.

Contains photos of Australian national representative teams, obviously.

Then, lastly, on Wednesday the all new Team Photos folder will be available.

It contains a collection of photos of Australian club and state football teams.

A new blog post on Thursday will reveal the inaugural Melbourne Soccer Yearbook.

On Friday another new blog post will contain this year's new draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History.

On The First Day Of Christmas, Melbourne Soccer Gave To You...

One folder of Emblems and Logos - Saturday December 15th
Organisation, competition and sponsor's emblems and logos

One folder of Club Emblems - Sunday December 16th
Australian club emblems and logos

One folder of Clip Art - Monday December 17th
Football clip art collection

One folder of Australian National Team Photos - Tuesday December 18th
Photos of Australian representative teams

One folder of Australian Club Team Photos - Wednesday December 19th
Photos of Australian club and state teams

One Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018 - Thursday December 20th
PDF file of the Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018

One new draft of the Victorian Football Statistical History - Friday December 21st
PDF file of the 2018 update of the Victorian Football Statistical History

The folders will be shared on the same blog post, which will be updated to add a new link each day. The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook 2018 and Victorian Football Statistical History update will have their own blog posts.

The Emblems and Logos folder has had a few additions since the last time I shared it. Same as the Club Emblems folder. The Clip Art folder has had a couple of hundred files added at least. Sadly the Australian National Team Photos folder has had few additions. The Australian Club Team Photos folder has had many new additions. If I can cut and paste a photo from a website or booklet, I will. If I can "save file as" of a picture on Twitter, I do. If that infringes anyone's copyright, they can get in touch via email and I will respond like the regional football federations do to my emails i.e. ignore them.

The Melbourne Soccer Yearbook contains two main parts, the 2018 season tables for all senior competitions and a historical section with honour rolls covering senior men's football since 1909.

The Victorian Football Statistical History update includes 2018 season information, an expanded regional league section, and some missing historical results I found during the last year. Plus a few more team and player photos with some errors corrected and some general tidying up.

Merry Christmas.