Soccer in Mirboo North 1910

All the other football codes look after the memory of their pioneers. How do we in association football look after those who went before. For example, how well do we look after the memory of these guys in Gippsland?

Mirboo North "Soccor" team 1910

We know very little about the game as played in the coalmining districts of Victoria and yet we know soccer was very strong in the Hunter and West Moreton coalfields in the pre-WW1 period. Should this suggest a greater coverage in Gippland than the received history indicates. Soccer was played extensively in Wonthaggi but where else east of Melbourne?

Maybe some of the Mirboo North players photographed were involved in the following game in 1914, reported in the Argus 26 August.

MIRBOO NORTH- For the purpose of assisting the British soldiers the immigrants of this district on Saturday played a "soccer" football match. The teams represented Mirboo South and Mirboo North. The match resulted in a win for the former team by scoring 4 goals to nil. A goodly sum was raised by a collection.

These snippets represent the sum of our available knowledge of soccer in the Mirboo region before WW1. We need to do so much more.

2012 Mooney Valley; 1954 Revisited

Here we go again. The Hun is frothing at the mouth about soccer on page 3 of today's issue, complaining that a historic footy club (Moonee Valley Football Club) is being threatened by the encroachment of the round-ball game. In many ways it repeats the complaints through the ages that "soccer is taking our grounds". It observes that "junior footy clubs everywhere wage a fight for territory against the 'world game'." 

I've written about the Toorak Park episode in 1954 when the same arguments were being mobilised. Soccer wanted to share the grounds; footy wanted sole possession.

And of course it's largely rubbish. It's a beat up aimed to stir emotion. The council is merely investigating the options to allow soccer to expand to meet its demand; while the article promotes the idea of code war. Rather than "soccer threatens to oust juniors" it might have simply gone with "council considers options". The content differs from the headline and the confrontational pose in the photo. The problem is many readers will have formed their views on the piece simply from the headline and image. The damage has already been done, no matter how 'balanced' the content.

The content is not particularly balanced in any case. Unbelievably it makes no mention of the current co-tenant of Ormond Park, Essendon Royals Football (soccer) Club, whose membership dwarfs MVFC and makes it possibly the biggest sporting club in the region.

Radio station 3AW went with "Footy clubs threatened as Soccer soars". It warns that "More children in Victoria are playing soccer than our beloved Aussie Rules [which is simply not true] and the repercussions have begun."

The bottom line is that there are not enough sportsgrounds in the Moonee Valley district and at present they are allocated inefficiently. A process of rationalisation needs to occur. Footy needs to give a bit; soccer needs to be prepared to be flexible. The council has expressed a preference for Ormond Park to have sole occupancy. In all likelihood MVFC will get this (as is appropriate) and Essendon Royals will be shifted to a more suitable playing space like say Fairbairn Park. 

As a summer game, cricket is just irrelevant to the issue.