AS Roma, at the Footy in 1966

This one speaks for itself

 

Talking about soccer: in the 1934 Grand Final Footy Record?

Australian Game Vastly Superior

This is a doosie. The Grand Final Footy Record in 1934 felt impelled to publish this communique from England, dismissing soccer and praising the "Aussie code". (Imagine reading your A-League Grand Final program and coming across a piece bagging footy or Rugby League.)

The piece claims that soccer is an inferior game for a number of reasons. It is less exciting and exhilarating. The crowd numbers are low and those who are there don't even like the game. The players are afraid to be adventurous and they are incompetent at what they do. Like Jack Dyer after him, the writer assumes that with a little bit of training footy players would take soccer by storm. This is what they used to call arrant nonsense.

This is silly enough as it is but when we realise that the author is making stuff up as well as leaving out fairly crucial information then the piece shifts from the realms of stupidity to propaganda.

We can forgive the author for calling the goalkeepers full-backs, but he can't be forgiven for calling them cowardly for refusing to handle the ball illegally outside of the penalty area.

Yet the more serious errors are ones of detail. The author claims to have gone to the opening game of the season in the Newcastle area. The trouble is Newcastle United were playing away on this day, hammered 5-1 by Nottingham Forest. The professional teams in the area who played at home on that day were Gateshead and Darlington (3rd Div) and 1st division Sunderland who beat Huddersfield Town 4-1 at Roker Park - a game at which there would have been a few more than 14,000 given that Sunderland were in the elite of English football in the mid 1930s.

If the author is referencing a game he saw Newcastle United play (possibly their first home game on 1 September. beaten 5-2 by Brentford), he really needed to point out their 2nd div status. He might also have added that the club was in a shambles, having been relegated the previous season and only just avoiding relegation in 1934-35 on goal average. As he rightly pointed out, they weren't very good!

I suspect that accuracy in reporting wasn't at the forefront of the writer's mind. The important work to be done on Grand Final day 1934 was simply to remind footy spectators that soccer was such a feeble game compared with the fare they were about to receive.

The Footy Record could get away with this kind of propaganda then because there was no other source of information on English football for its readers. Imagine the flurry of refutations that would happen today.

DOPE FOR FOOTBALLERS!

I knew the Footy Record was both ahead of its time and off its head. This from Round 4 1936 kind of proves it.

Startling Proposal.

A London exchange recently contained the following, which to Australians is as amazing as it is ridiculous;—

"A startling proposal hat been made to a first division football League club (soccer) that they should dope their players before a match. It was put forward with the plausible suggestion that the concoction offered would simply help the men to play for ninety minutes at full speed, but I am told that it was dope under the thinnest disguise.

"The flagging energies of a team have been stimulated at half-time by champagne, but this is the first time I have known of any plan being conceived to induce players to put forth greater physical efforts by 'doctoring' them.

"A director of the club Said: 'The offer came to us mysteriously, and, although we never had any thought of using it, we decided to explore it. Obviously we were being asked to dope the men, and, even if we could have persuaded them to take the medicine simply as a tonic, as we were asked to regard it, we should have deserved the severest censure. The suggestion was abhorrent to us.

"But, with the knowledge of some of my fellow directors, I decided to test the effect of the dope on myself. It was certainly remarkable. I became unusually roused and excited, and I felt livelier and stronger. These feelings, too, died away gradually, and I was not conscious of any reaction or ill effects.

"But, if we might have won all our matches by doping the players, you may bo sure we should not have done so. I reported the result of my test and—the concoction was thrown down the drain."

And with that action the sport loving Australian public will heartily concur.

Jack

A Lost Aboriginal Soccer Player Found?

This is as mysterious as it is exciting. Smack bang in the middle of this fantastic photograph of the Dinmore Bush Rats (is there a better name in Australian sport?) 1910 2nd Premiers, is a man who appears to be Aboriginal. He is named as Quilp and his presence in the photo sends a frisson through the settled histories of football in Australia.

Dinmore Bush Rats, 2nd Premiers, Ipswich, 1910.
Top row: W. Lucas, W. Pioch, G. Humphrey, D. Potts, N. Randolph. 2nd row: C. H. Jones (Vice-president), J. Potts (Vice-president), G. Skellern, Quilp, A. Nunn, W. Dawes (Treasurer), J. Tedman (Vice-president). 3rd row: W. Jordan (Secretary), J. Burns, J. Staafford (Patron), E. Dawes (Captain), G. Jones, M. Bailey (President), W. Thompson, A. Stewart (Vice-president). Front row: M. Reichart, W. Tait, H. Randolph, H. Hainsworth (Vice-president).

Quilp

Who is Quilp? Is he Aboriginal? Where is he from? How does he come to be playing British Association Football? Why the Dickensian name? There's a PhD in all of that!

A cursory glance at the digital archive reveals one reference to a soccer player named Quilp, playing for the Reliance team from Dinmore in 1904. Confusingly, it suggests the Quilp was sent off for backchat and then subsequently scored the winning goal that was to become the subject of a protest.

Quilp began talking to the referee and was ordered off the field. The game now was very fast and Hunter was playing well is also was Roberts and Salisbury. Verrol in goal as per usual was very clever in clearing his goal line. The Reliance got away, and Quilp had a shot at goal. To the spectators it did not seem as though they scored, but the referee gave a goal to Reliance, who were now 1 to nil. No further goals were scored, and at call of time a protest with regard to the above goal was lodged. The Brisbane Courier Monday 30 May 1904 p 6

It is possible that this is the first recorded goal by a senior Aboriginal player in Australian soccer, though it's also possible that as a forward (winger) he scored a few before that.

It's a mystery that is just begging to be explained. More to come!

No not that Robert Muir, this Robert Muir!

Robert Muir 1

SATURDAY'S FOOTBALL DISTURBANCE. Robert Muir, who was the leading spirit in the disgraceful football "barrackers'" rowdyism at Camberwell on Saturday afternoon, was before the local court to-day, charged with assaulting the police and two civilians and using obscene language. He was sentenced to three terms of three months' imprisonment for the assaults, and fined £10, or in default an additional three months, for obscene language. The chairman of the bench characterised accused's conduct as that of one of the greatest ruffians ever brought before him. Accused's plea all through was that he was drunk.Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954) Saturday 1 September 1900 p 15

Robert Muir 2

 

RAAF and other Australian Military Soccer Photos

Gearing up for the rewriting of my Soccer and Anzac piece in time for ANZAC Day, just found a little nest egg of photos recently added to the war memorial collection.

The first two are photos of soccer teams/games played in North Africa in 1943 involving members of the RAAF, or seconded RAF members.

El Daba, Egypt. c. December 1943. A group portrait of No. 451 (Spitfire) Squadron RAAF, soccer team.
The squadron, in its long service overseas, has made a big name for itself in the field of sport,
including football, Australian rules, rugby and soccer.

LIBYA. 1943. RAF MEMBERS OF NO. 454 SQUADRON, RAAF PLAYING SOCCER IN THE WESTERN DESERT.

BAALBEK, SYRIA. 1941-11-01. A SCENE DURING THE SOCCER MATCH BETWEEN AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN TEAMS. THE INDIAN TEAM WAS FROM THE ROYAL INDIAN ARMY SERVICE CORPS.

HOLLAND. 1944-10-23. RAAF AND RAF AIR AND GROUND CREWS OF SPITFIRE NO. 130 SQUADRON RAF KEEP WARM WITH A GAME OF SOCCER DURING A LULL IN OPERATIONS AT AN AIRFIELD IN HOLLAND.

Cuers, France. October 1944. Informal portrait of 11207 Leading Aircraftman K. E. Lewis of Hamilton, Vic, the only RAAF member of a soccer team from No. 451 (Spitfire) Squadron RAAF of France. All the other players were RAF members attached to the squadron.

A reply to Bazza Whatsisface

This letter was sent to Baz Blakeney by Ozespri, a poster on the Melbourne Victory message board. Baz it will be remembered felt that socceristas should probably go back to where they came from and take their soccer balls with them.

The letter's an elegant piece of satire to which Baz has failed to respond. No surprise there, He's probably too busy speaking to his lawyers about how to handle the accusations of racism and bigotry that have been flying his way.

The final para of the letter changes the mood however, because it relates a true and moving story.

Dear Sir/Madam,

A good friend has been kind enough to email a copy of your current article.

She is a connoisseur of all such anti-sockah articles in the Herald Sun and is collecting them with a view to publishing them in a book one day. She tells me she has had to purchase a 2tb hard drive for the backups, but I digress.

I don't normally bother with them reading them, finding them somewhat repetitive and seemingly published for the purposes of 'trolling' or 'getting hits' or whatever the current terminology is.

Anyway. I've never heard of you and doubt I will again, but I do note you're more qualified than most of the Sun writers who have their weekly turn pontificating on the subject having attending a total of two games. No doubt you played a season at under 6 and found it too easy, but are just too modest to state.

Now, my friend believes your article verges on racism, but of course it doesn't. She has failed to spot the subtleties of your prose reminiscent of the best of Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Monty Python.

I mean, who could seriously write and believe that throwing punches and spitting is to be held up as the ideal of Aussie spectator larrikin behaviour. Next thing you'd be saying that shouting 'BALL' every five seconds demonstrates how advanced the atmosphere and bogan behaviour at AFL has progressed over the years. I know, sends a tingle down the spine every time.

Some wonder why obscure journalists get a weekly turn in the Sun to write an anti-sockah column, but I know that any day soon all the Sun's soccer writers will be getting their own column to wonder aloud why AFL is still a provincial sport after 150 years, why fifty rules change every season and why it's so boring after the 30th goal was scored. Possibly because it looked amazingly similar to previous 29.

Anyway, sorry I've digressed again.

The reason for this email is that my good friend, a fifth generation Aussie, died this week. He attended almost every Victory home game for the last five years. How fortunate it is that he didn't have to learn - from you - that he wasn't a proper Australian and should go back to wherever he came from.

RIP.

Yours sincerely,
****** ****** (Yes, a foreign name, but still born here. Where do you want me to take my sockah ball to?)