Sports & Editorial Services Australia is saddened that Dennis Jones had to put his distribution company Dennis Jones & Associates into administration recently. SESA benefitted considerably from Dennis and his loyal and proactive staff’s efforts to promote and sell its publications.

All of our publications continue to be available for sale, unless otherwise indicated via SESA and you can contact me at

Roy Hay
Sports and Editorial Services Australia
Tel: 03-5281-2020
Mob: 0419-572961
Address: 9 Knowles Court’
Bannockburn
Victoria 3331
email: roy@www.sesasport.com.au
website: www.sesasport.com.au

We are trying to find a new distributor for the books. As an indication of some of our publications the list of those relating specifically to football (soccer) follows.

Sports & Editorial Services Australia (SESA) football publications

Ian Syson, The Game That Never Happened: The Vanishing History of Soccer in Australia, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Bannockburn, Victoria, 3331, July 2018, ISBN 9780994601933. RRP. $29.95, special launch price $25.00.

Steve Horvat, Accomplished Dreams: From hardship in a tiny Croatian village to success in Australia, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Bannockburn, Victoria, 3331, November 2017, ISBN 9780994601919. RRP. $25.00

Roy Hay (ed.) GamesGoals Glory: The A-League’s Teams, Players, Coaches and Greatest Moments, Hardie Grant, Melbourne 2016. RRP. $29.95.

Roy Hay, Football and War: Australia and Vietnam 1967–1972, A Missing Part of the National Narrative, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Bannockburn, Victoria, 2016. RRP. $25.00.

Roy Hay and Bill Murray, A History of Football in Australia: A Game of Two Halves, Hardie Grant, Melbourne 2014, paperback edition 2016. Special price $10.00.

Bill Murray and Roy Hay (eds), The World Game Downunder, ASSH Studies in Sports History, no. 19, Australian Society for Sports History, Melbourne, 2006. RRP$15.00

Roy Hay, James ‘Dun’ Hay, 1881-1940: The Story of a Footballer, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Teesdale, Victoria, 2004. RRP. $20.00.

Phil Mosely, Soccer in New South Wales, 1880–1980, SESA and Vulgar Press, Bannockburn and Carlton, 2014. RRP. $29.95.

Peter Desira with Richard Curmi, Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years, SESA in association with Green Gully Soccer Club, Teesdale, 2006. RRP: $25.00.

Roy Hay, Geelong Advertiser Cup, 1981-2005: 25th Anniversary Souvenir Record, SESA, Teesdale, 2005. RRP $5.00.

Roy Hay, David Cervinski: A tribute by his friends, SESA, Bannockburn, 2018, Private Circulation only, Out of Print.

Roy Hay, with an introduction by Ruth Rentschler, Paul Turner & Pam Kellett, The Global Game: A History of Football in Australia: Exhibition Catalogue, National Sports Museum and SESA, 2010, reprinted 2018. RRP $9.95.

Roy Hay & Ian Syson, The Story of Football in Victoria, Football Federation Victoria, 2009, Private Circulation only, Out of Print.

(Click on photographs below to enlarge them)

John Watkiss, Billy Vojtek, Frank Micic, Ron Corry, Ray Lloyd, Roger Romanowicz, Ray Baartz, Gary Wilkins, Stan Ackerley, Atti Abonyi, Ray Richards, Ian McAndrew, Manfred Schaefer. Ian McAndrew was the Secretary of the Australian Soccer Federation in 1967.

Tony Shepherd AO, the Chair of the SCG Trustees, spoke about the importance of the squad that went to Vietnam and the significance of their contribution to the Australian story. He pointed out that the team had not just made history for their code but had contributed to Australia as whole by their efforts. He noted that the nucleus of this team and the spirit they engendered in Vietnam was to help Australia qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 1974.

Robbie Slater with the crew

Three Victorians. Frank Micic, Billy Vojtek and Atti Abonyi

Most of those present were at Homebush the following evening to see the current Socceroos book their place in the 2018 World Cup with the 3–1 victory over Honduras in the Intercontinental play-off.

By Roy Hay

In 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War, the Australian government, led by Harold Holt, agreed it would be a good idea if the national football team took part in a tournament in Vietnam to boost morale in some of the nations involved in the war. Football diplomacy in Asia preceded ping pong diplomacy by a few years. So Australia set off for the Vietnam National Day Soccer Tournament in Saigon at the start of November 1967. ‘Uncle Joe’ Vlasits was appointed coach in succession to Dr Joe Venglos who had returned to Europe. Vlasits took a young group of players, eight of whom went on to be part of the squads which helped Australian qualify for the World Cup in Germany in 1974.

(Click on pictures below to enlarge them)

National Day Tournament Program front cover

In many ways it was a strange and frightening experience for the Australians being pitched into the middle of an ongoing war which was beginning to become unpopular at home. As Johnny Warren remembers, the team would be eating with soldiers in their mess and then going to play football, while their colleagues went off to fight. Players were warned by security on arrival not to spend time with Americans, because the latter were prime targets for the Viet Cong.

Eight teams from nations involved in the war took part. Australia, South Vietnam, New Zealand and Singapore made up Group A and South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong were in Group B. The first match was against New Zealand on 5 November at Cong Hoa Stadium and the Socceroos won by five-goals to three. Atti Abonyi scored a hat-trick and Johnny Warren, the skipper, and Ray Baartz scored the others. Roger Romanowicz was in goals ahead of the more experienced Ron Corry and Frank Micic started in central defence. The latter was replaced at half-time as the pitch was a quagmire which did not suit Micic’s skills. The tough, nuggety Manfred Schaefer took over. Luckily all the fireworks that day were on the pitch.

Billy Vojtek covered in mud in first game against New Zealand

In the next game two days later Australia took on the host team, which was buoyed by a visit from the South Vietnamese Vice-President to their change rooms at half time, with an offer of a big reward for victory. Johnny Warren scored the only goal of the game after 35 minutes and ran himself into exhaustion for the team. That left a third match against Singapore which was won comfortably by five goals to one. The Australian scorers were identical to those in the first match—three to Abonyi, and one each to Warren and Baartz.

An exhausted Ray Richards washes the mud and sweat out of his eyes. Alongside him is Lou Lazzari the team physio and trainer.

The semi-final against Malaysia turned out to be the toughest yet with a brawl on the pitch after a Malaysian player kicked out at Tommy McColl and the police and military had to come on to the field to restore order. The match went into extra time and there were only three minutes left to play when Ray Baartz scored the goal which won the game.

In the final Australia came up against South Korea on 14 November. The match nearly did not take place after the team was informed that there was no space in the stadium for the Australian military personnel who had been a huge support to the players on and off the field. The Australians threatened not to take part. As it turned out the service personnel were allowed in and the rest of the crowd supported Australia rather than the Koreans, much to the Aussies’ surprise. South Korea scored in the first minute but the Australians responded brilliantly. Billy Vojtek produced a wonderful solo goal after 36 minutes and Abonyi and Warren added the others in a three-two win and the first international tournament victory for the Socceroos.

Though mortar batteries could be heard in Saigon on most days, it was said at the time that there were so many Vietcong at the matches that there was no trouble at the Cong Hua stadium!

John Barclay, the tour manager, told the team he had put his head on the block for them. He overturned an Australian Soccer Federation decision that the team should return their official track suits at the conclusion of the tour! Talk about playing for the jerseys. John Warren wrote in his autobiography that the players received $50 a week while on tour plus $10 as an allowance. The contrast with modern times is striking, even allowing for changes in the value of money.

The day after the victory the Australians went off to visit the troops in Vung Tau and played a game against them and then there were matches with Indonesia and New Zealand again in Malaysia on the way home. The Socceroos played ten games on that tour and won them all. The camaraderie in the face of adversity was an important element in the mind-set which eventually helped the Australians to qualify for the World Cup in 1974.

My thanks to the late John Barclay for assistance with this account, which draws heavily on Johnny Warren’s autobiography and Laurie Schwab’s The Socceroos and Their Opponents. The full story is in Roy Hay, Football and War: Australia and Vietnam 1967–1972, A Missing Part of the National Narrative, Sports and Editorial Services Australia, Bannockburn, Victoria, 2016, available from all good booksellers via Dennis Jones and Associates. Ask the bookseller to order a copy if it is not in stock.

Caption for main picture:

The Socceroos with their medals after having won the Vietnam tournament in 1967, standing from left: Attila Abonyi, Ray Richards, Manfred Schaefer, Dr Brian Corrigan, Roger Romanowicz, Gary Wilkins, Frank Micic (rear), Ray Baartz (crouching), Stan Ackerley (peaking through). Ron Corry, John Watkiss, Billy Vojtek (leaning forward), Ray Lloyd, Terry Smith (reporter), George Keith, Jim Connell (manager), Martin Royal (ABC reporter). Front: Tommy McColl, Johnny Warren, Lou Lazzari (masseur), Joe Vlasits (coach). Alan Westwater, Ted De Lyster, Tony Boskovic (referee).

Members of the travelling party in 1967

Players

Attila Abonyi

Stan Ackerley

Ray Baartz

Ron Corry

Ted De Lyster

George Keith

Ray Lloyd

Tommy McColl

Frank Micic

Ray Richards

Roger Romanowicz

Manfred Schaefer

Billy Vojtek

Johnny Warren

John Watkiss

Alan Westwater

Gary Wilkins

Staff and others

Joe Vlasits (coach)

John Barclay (manager)

Jim Connell (manager)

Dr Brian Corrigan (doctor)

Lou Lazzari (masseur)

Tony Boskovic (referee)

Tom Patrick (Qantas staff)

Terry Smith (journalist)

Martin Royal (commentator)

Don Woolford of AAP also covered the tour.

Nick Pantelis was selected, but had not yet been naturalised and was unable to travel.

*          The name Socceroos was not used until after the team came home. The first time it was used was in 1972.

On 14 November 2017 there will be a lunch and reunion of the survivors of the victorious 1967 team hosted by the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust. This will be virtually the first public recognition of the team since its extraordinary triumph in 1967.

(This article was first published in The Conversation on 25 May 2017 and is republished here with permission)

It would be wonderful if there was a connection between the [Indigenous games of ball and football](https://eprints.usq.edu.au/8102/) – like marngrook and pando – and the codified game now known as Australian rules. But, despite several attempts [since the suggestion](http://search.informit.org/documentSummary;dn=305473061222662;res=IELHSS) was first raised, no-one has been able to show anything other than the vaguest similarities between some features of the Indigenous games and what the white men were playing in the 1850s and 1860s.

The notion of a personal conduit through Tom Wills, the only one of Australian rules football’s founders with the slightest connection with Indigenous games from those years, was [advanced and amplified later](https://meanjin.com.au/essays/marngrook-tom-wills-and-the-continuing-denial-of-indigenous-history/). But it is not supported by any evidence in Wills’ quite extensive writing, nor by the innovations he introduced into the game or sought to bring about.

The current revival of the idea of Indigenous influence on football’s origins diverts attention from another, much more uncomfortable and largely untold story about Indigenous relationships to football in the second half of the 19th century.

Indigenous people who played their traditional games, particularly in regional areas, saw or interacted with the white men at football. They would probably have been involved in it very quickly if they had been allowed to do so. But since they were effectively kept out, they formed their own teams and played with each other, or tried to break into local activities or competitions when they could.

This story can be partially gleaned from evidence already available in the colonial archive. It returns a better explanation of why some Indigenous people today believe the game had a history in which their predecessors were deeply involved to whatever extent they could be – given their scarce numbers in Victoria, and the locations on the periphery of the colony where they were effectively confined.

It is more powerful, more persuasive and more noble. On the eve of this year’s AFL Indigenous Round, it has potential to give an indication that those people who tried to break into the white men’s game before 1900 are the real heroes – not Wills.

## Did football borrow from Indigenous games?

Football as codified in Melbourne in 1859 was only “a game of our own” initially in the sense that it was based on a cherry-picked selection of [very few of the rules](http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/13563524?selectedversion=NBD5636967) of various English public schools, particularly Eton and Rugby.

It was a very simplified form, with only ten rules in 1859. These rules allowed limited handling, but no throwing of the ball, and there was no offside rule.

<image align=”right” source=”Wikimedia Commons” caption=”Tom Wills was one of the pioneers of Australian rules football.” zoomable=”true” />

Nothing in Wills’ voluminous correspondence with the newspapers and with his family and friends offers the slightest hint of any borrowing from Indigenous games. Nor, more importantly, do any of the tactical and legislative innovations he introduced or suggested in the formative period of the domestic game.

The pattern of the game as played in the 1850s and 1860s bears little resemblance to the modern game of Australian football. It was a very low-scoring, low-level kicking and scrummaging game in which weight and strength counted for more than any ability to jump or initially to run with the ball.

Positional play and carrying the ball came in before long, and Wills was involved in pioneering both. But these were not features of marngrook.

In 2016, Jenny Hocking and Nell Reidy [wrote](https://meanjin.com.au/essays/marngrook-tom-wills-and-the-continuing-denial-of-indigenous-history/) the Australian game was different from the English games. The ball was kept off the ground to avoid or reduce injury – and this shows Indigenous influence, they claimed.

The noble art of hacking an opponent’s shins, tripping and holding were the main causes of injury. These were gradually banned by the rules, though they did not disappear as a result. In the mid-1860s, Wills was still in favour of hacking, which was allowed under Rugby School rules. But he could not convince his peers to allow it.

Far from any of the Hocking and Reidy argument pointing to closer links between marngrook and Australian football, it simply reveals the gulf between pre- and early-contact Indigenous games and what the white men did.

## Why the claim for involvement?

Several scholars [have drawn attention](http://www3.brandonu.ca/cjns/25.1/cjnsv25no1_pg215-237.pdf) to attempts, some successful, by Indigenous players and teams to break into the white men’s games.

Nobody suggests Indigenous Australians invented cricket, yet [they formed](http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/collection_interactives/cricketing_journeys/cricket_html/the_australian_eleven/the_australian_eleven_the_first_australian_team) the first Australian team to tour overseas in 1868 – and Wills coached the players involved a year earlier. It does not demean Indigenous players in any way to suggest they learned the white man’s game and then tried to take part whenever they could.

They were largely excluded from involvement because there were so few of them. They were restricted to remote areas. And they were subject to the control of the “protectors” and others, and the barriers [imposed by the white cricket clubs](http://www.wallawallapress.com/cricket-aboriginal.php) and their memberships.

Indigenous people were being “ethnically cleansed” by settlers, disease, neglect and policy. If they could not protect their country, fundamental to their being, how could the few survivors penetrate the white men’s effective bans on their absorption into settler society?

Despite that, a pioneering few managed to [work their way](https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/contemporary-history-studies/2017/02/02/roy-hays-new-article-albert-pompey-austin-1846-1889-a-man-between-two-worlds/?doing_wp_cron=1486089070.9047789573669433593750) into the local code of football. It is these people who should be researched and recognised: they are the real heroes.

The key reason Indigenous players were unable to take part in football in significant numbers from 1860 onwards is primarily demographic. By the 1860s, the Indigenous population of Victoria (where what became Australian rules was played) had been [reduced to a few thousand](http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record/89584). Most were in the remoter parts of the colony or in reservations under the control of the “protectors”.

If, as recent demographic history suggests, around the time the Europeans arrived there was population pressure in Victoria, then the subsequent destruction of the local nations must have been appalling in its severity. If [careful recalculations](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143704?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) are correct, there may have been around 60,000 Indigenous people in the land area of the later colony of Victoria in 1780, but only around 650 as calculated in the census in 1901. This is a decline of nearly 99%.

What complicates that calculation is the existence of significant numbers of people who were not counted as Aboriginal and did not identify as Aboriginal in any administrative source.

The so-called Half Caste Act of 1886 defined non-pure-blood Aborigines as non-Aboriginal and insisted they be removed from the reservations and become ineligible for public support on the eve of the great depression of the 1890s. This [effectively “disappeared”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143704?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) a significant number of people. Such people had [every incentive](http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/25132.pdf) not to identify themselves as Aboriginal.

<image align=”centre” source=”AAP/Dan Peled” caption=”The AFL will pay tribute to Indigenous Australians’ involvement in football this weekend.” />

## What does this all mean?

Our interpretation may help explain why, to this day, Indigenous people believe Australian football is their game – not because they invented it or contributed to its origins, but because they forced their way into it, despite all the obstacles, in the second half of the 19th century.

Particularly in regional and remote areas, they had more success in doing so either as individuals or by forming teams to compete. Sometimes they monopolised the game in their locality, and word spread about their capacity to play and [beat the white men](http://www.shootfarken.com.au/cummeragunja-aboriginal-football-team-that-opened-the-eyes-of-white-australia/) at their own game.

[The Bendigo Independent](http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/181020880) reported a game in 1900 between an all-Indigenous and an all-white team as:

>And yet here in Bendigo, the “pivot” of Australia, was to be witnessed the sight of its best team of footballers having rings run round them (and those very literal ones) by the despised and fast-dying Aboriginal.

Indigenous Australians’ claim to the game of Australian football comes by virtue of participation at grassroots level in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of the skills they had honed long before the white men arrived could be used to develop different ways of playing the game: speed at ground level, rapid hand movement and brilliant hand–eye and foot–eye co-ordination, plus physical play, as well as high marking.

The oral tradition has always had difficulty with precise chronology, so modern-day Indigenous people relying on the stories handed down through the generations find it very hard to pin down when key developments occurred.

It is not unreasonable, then, to conclude it was in the second half of the 19th century that Indigenous Australians began the prolonged process of infiltrating the white man’s game of football and, most importantly, making it their own.

***

_This piece was co-authored by Athas Zafiris, a freelance researcher and publisher of football and popular culture website [Shoot Farken](http://www.shootfarken.com.au)._

We all know the rules to the senior game but do you remember the rules of Primary School playground fitba? (In other parts of the English-speaking world the game is known as football, in Australia it used to be called soccer).

Straiton Primary School. The football playing area is across the foreground. There used to be a shed at the right, with two supporting columns which acted as goalposts. Jerseys or dustbins were used at the extreme left wall.

Duration

Matches shall be played over three unequal periods: two playtimes and at lunchtime. Each of these periods shall begin shortly after the ringing of a bell, and although a bell is also rung towards the end of these periods, play may continue for up to ten minutes afterwards, depending on the nihilism or ‘bottle’ of the participants with regard to corporal punishment meted out to latecomers back to the classroom. In practice there is a sliding scale of nihilism, from those who hasten to stand in line as soon as the bell rings, known as ‘poofs’, through those who will hang on until the time they estimate it takes the teachers to down the last of their gins and journey from the staff room, known as ‘chancers’, and finally to those who will hang on until a teacher actually has to physically retrieve them, known as ‘bampots’. This sliding scale is intended to radically alter the logistics of a match in progress, often having dramatic effects on the scoreline as the number of remaining participants drops. It is important, therefore, in picking the sides, to achieve a fair balance of poofs, chancers and bampots in order that the scoreline achieved over a sustained period of play – lunchtime, for instance – is not totally nullified by a five-minute post-bell onslaught of five bampots against one. The scoreline to be carried over from the previous period of the match is in the trust of the last bampots to leave the field of play, and may be the matter of some debate. This must be resolved in one of the approved manners (see Adjudication).

Parameters

The object is to force the ball between two large, unkempt piles of jackets, in lieu of goalposts. These piles may grow or shrink throughout the match, depending on the number of participants and the prevailing weather. As the number of players increases, so shall the piles. Each jacket added to the pile by a new addition to a side should be placed on the inside, nearest the goalkeeper, thus reducing the target area. It is also important that the sleeve of one of the jackets should jut out across the goalmouth, as it will often be claimed that the ball went ‘over the post’ and it can henceforth be asserted that the outstretched sleeve denotes the innermost part of the pile and thus the inside of the post. The on-going reduction of the size of the goal is the responsibility of any respectable defence and should be undertaken conscientiously with resourcefulness and imagination. In the absence of a crossbar, the upper limit of the target area is observed as being slightly above head height, although when the height at which a ball passed between the jackets is in dispute, judgement shall lie with an arbitrary adjudicator from one of the sides. He is known as the ‘best fighter’; his decision is final and maybe enforced with physical violence if anyone wants to stretch a point.

There are no pitch markings. Instead, physical objects denote the boundaries, ranging from the most common — walls and buildings — to roads and burns. Corners and throw-ins are redundant where by-lines or touchlines are denoted by a two-storey building or a six-foot granite wall. Instead, a scrum should be instigated to decide possession. This should begin with the ball trapped between the brickwork and two opposing players, and should escalate to include as many team members as can get there before the now egg-shaped ball finally merges, drunkenly and often with a dismembered foot and shin attached. At this point, goalkeepers should look out for the player who takes possession of the escaped ball and begins bearing down on goal, as most of those involved in the scrum will be unaware that the ball is no longer amidst their feet. The goalkeeper should also try not to be distracted by the inevitable fighting that has by this point broken out. In games on large open spaces, the length of the pitch is obviously denoted by the jacket piles, but the width is a variable. In the absence of roads, water hazards or ‘a big dug’, the width is determined by how far out the attacking winger has to meander before the pursuing defender gets fed up and lets him head back towards where the rest of the players are waiting, often as far as quarter of a mile away. It is often observed that the playing area is ‘no’ a full-size pitch’. This can be invoked verbally to justify placing a wall of players eighteen inches from the ball at direct free kicks It is the formal response to ‘yards’, which the kick-taker will incant meaninglessly as he places the ball.

The Ball

There are a variety of types of ball approved for Primary School Football. I shall describe three notable examples.

1. The plastic balloon. An extremely lightweight model, used primarily in the early part of the season and seldom after that due to having burst. Identifiable by blue pentagonal panelling and the names of that year’s Premier League sides printed all over it. Advantages: low sting factor, low burst-nose probability, cheap, discourages a long-ball game. Disadvantages: over-susceptible to influence of the wind, difficult to control, almost magnetically drawn to flat school roofs whence never to return.

2. The rough-finish Mitre. Half football, half Portuguese Man o’ War. On the verge of a ban in the European Court of Human Rights, this model is not for sale to children. Used exclusively by teachers during gym classes as a kind of aversion therapy. Made from highly durable fibreglass, stuffed with neutron star and coated with dead jellyfish. Advantages: looks quite grown up, makes for high-scoring matches (keepers won’t even attempt to catch it). Disadvantages: scars or maims anything it touches.

3. The ‘Tube’. Genuine leather ball, identifiable by brown all-over colouring. Was once black and white, before ravages of games on concrete, but owners can never remember when. Adored by everybody, especially keepers. Advantages: feels good, easily controlled, makes a satisfying ‘whump’ noise when you kick it. Disadvantages: turns into medicine ball when wet, smells like a dead dog.

Offside

There is no offside, for two reasons: one, ‘it’s no’ a full-size pitch’, and two, none of the players actually know what offside is. The lack of an offside rule gives rise to a unique sub-division of strikers. These players hang around the opposing goalmouth while play carries on at the other end, awaiting a long pass forward out of defence which they can help past the keeper before running the entire length of the pitch with their arms in the air to greet utterly imaginary adulation. These are known variously as ‘moochers’, ‘glory hunters’ and ‘fly wee bastarts’. These players display a remarkable degree of self-security, seemingly happy in their own appraisals of their achievements, and caring little for their team-mates’ failure to appreciate the contribution they have made. They know that it can be for nothing other than their enviable goal tallies that they are so bitterly despised.

Adjudication

The absence of a referee means that disputes must be resolved between the opposing teams rather than decided by an arbiter. There are two accepted ways of doing this.

1. Compromise. An arrangement is devised that is found acceptable by both sides. Sway is usually given to an action that is in accordance with the spirit of competition, ensuring that the game does not turn into ‘a pure skoosh’. For example, in the event of a dispute as to whether the ball in fact crossed the line, or whether the ball has gone inside or ‘over’ the post, the attacking side may offer the ultimatum: ‘Penalty or goal.’ It is not recorded whether any side has ever opted for the latter. It is on occasions that such arrangements do not prove acceptable to both sides that the second adjudicatory method comes into play.

2. Fighting. Those up on their ancient Hellenic politics will understand that the concept we know as ‘justice’ rests in these circumstances with the hand of the strong. What the winner says, goes, and what the winner says is just, for who shall dispute him? It is by such noble philosophical principles that the supreme adjudicator, or Best Fighter, is effectively elected.

Team Selection

To ensure a fair and balanced contest, teams are selected democratically in a turns-about picking process, with either side beginning as a one-man election committee and growing from there. The initial selectors are usually the recognised two Best Players of the assembled group.

Their first selections will be the two recognised Best Fighters, to ensure a fair balance in the adjudication process, and to ensure that they don’t have their own performances impaired throughout the match by profusely bleeding noses. They will then proceed to pick team-mates in a roughly meritocratic order, selecting on grounds of skill and tactical awareness, but not forgetting that while there is a sliding scale of players’ ability, there is also a sliding scale of players’ brutality and propensities towards motiveless violence. A selecting captain might baffle a talented striker by picking the less nimble Big Jazza ahead of him and may explain, perhaps in the words of Lyndon B Johnson upon his retention of J Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, that he’d ‘rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in’.

Special consideration is also given during the selection process to the owner of the ball. It is tacitly acknowledged to be ‘his gemme’, and he must be shown a degree of politeness for fear that he takes the huff at being picked late and withdraws his favours. Another aspect of team selection that may confuse those only familiar with the game at senior level will be the choice of goalkeepers, who will inevitably be the last players to be picked. Unlike in the senior game, where the goalkeeper is often the tallest member of his team, in the playground, the goalkeeper is usually the smallest. Senior aficionados must appreciate that playground selectors have a different agenda and are looking for altogether different properties in a goalkeeper. These can be listed briefly as: compliance, poor fighting ability, meekness, fear and anything else that makes it easier for their team-mates to banish the wee bugger between the sticks while they go off in search of personal glory up the other end.

Tactics

Playground football tactics are best explained in terms of team formation. Whereas senior sides tend to choose – according to circumstance – from among a number of standard options (e.g. 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 5-3-2), the playground side is usually more rigid in sticking to the all-purpose 1-1-17 formation. This formation is a sturdy basis for the unique style of play, ball-flow and territorial give-and-take that makes the playground game such a renowned and. strategically engrossing spectacle. Just as the 5-3-2 formation is sometimes referred to in practice as ‘Cattenaccio’, the 1-1-17 formation gives rise to a style of play that is best described as ‘Nomadic’. All but perhaps four of the participants (see also Offside) migrate en masse from one area of the pitch to another, following the ball, and it is tactically vital that every last one of them remains within a ten-yard radius of it at all times.

Stoppages

Much stoppage time in the senior game is down to injured players requiring treatment on the field of play. The playground game flows freer having adopted the refereeing philosophy of ‘no Post-Mortem, no free-kick’, and play will continue around and even on top of a participant who has fallen in the course of his endeavours. However, the playground game is nonetheless subject to other interruptions, and some examples are listed below.

Ball on school roof or over school wall

The retrieval time itself is negligible in these cases. The stoppage is most prolonged by the argument to decide which player must risk life, limb or four of the belt to scale the drainpipe or negotiate the barbed wire in order to return the ball to play. Disputes usually arise between the player who actually struck the ball and any others he claims it may have struck before disappearing into forbidden territory. In the case of the Best Fighter having been adjudged responsible for such an incident, a volunteer is often required to go in his stead or the game may be abandoned, as the Best Fighter is entitled to observe that

A: ‘Ye canny make me’; or B: ‘It’s no’ ma baw anyway’.

Stray dog on pitch

An interruption of unpredictable duration. The dog does not have to make off with the ball; it merely has to run around barking loudly, snarling and occasionally drooling or foaming at the mouth. This will ensure a dramatic reduction in the number of playing staff as 27 of them simultaneously volunteer to go indoors and inform the teacher of the threat. The length of the interruption can sometimes be gauged by the breed of dog. A deranged Irish Setter could take ten minutes to tire itself of running in circles, for instance, while a Jack Russell may take up to fifteen minutes to corner and force out through the gates. An Alsatian means instant abandonment.

Bigger boys steal ball

A highly irritating interruption, the length of which is determined by the players’ experience in dealing with this sort of thing. The Intruders will seldom actually steal the ball, but will improvise their own kick-about amongst themselves, occasionally inviting the younger players to attempt to tackle them. Standing around looking bored and unimpressed usually results in a quick restart. Shows of frustration and engaging in attempts to win back the ball can prolong the stoppage indefinitely. Informing the intruders that one of the players’ older brothers is ‘Mad Chic Murphy’ or some other noted local pugilist can also ensure minimum delay.

Menopausal old bag confiscates ball

More of a threat in the street or local green kick-about than within the school walls. Sad, blue-rinsed, ill-tempered, Tory-voting cat-owner transfers her anger about the array of failures that has been her life to nine-year-olds who have committed the heinous crime of letting their ball cross her privet

Line of Death

Interruption (loss of ball) is predicted to last ‘until you learn how to play with it properly’, but instruction on how to achieve this without actually having the bloody thing is not usually forwarded. Tact is required in these circumstances, even when the return of the ball seems highly unlikely, as further irritation of woman may result in the more serious stoppage: Menopausal old bag calls police.

Celebration

Goal-scorers are entitled to a maximum run of thirty yards with their hands in the air, making crowd noises and saluting imaginary packed terraces. Congratulation by team-mates is in the measure appropriate to the importance of the goal in view of the current scoreline (for instance, making it 34-12 does not entitle the. player to drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross), and the extent of the scorer’s contribution. A fabulous solo dismantling of the defence or 25-yard* rocket shot will elicit applause and back-pats from the entire team and the more magnanimous of the opponents. However, a tap-in in the midst of a chaotic scramble will be heralded with the epithet ‘moochin wee bastart’ from the opposing defence amidst mild acknowledgment from team-mates. Applying an unnecessary final touch when a ball is already rolling into the goal will elicit a burst nose from the original striker. Kneeling down to head the ball over the line when defence and keeper are already beaten will elicit a thoroughly deserved kicking. As a footnote, however, it should be stressed that any goal scored by the Best Fighter will be met with universal acclaim, even if it falls into any of the latter three categories.

*Actually eight yards, but calculated as relative distance because ‘it’s no’ a full-size pitch’.

Penalties

At senior level, each side often has one appointed penalty-taker, who will defer to a team-mate in special circumstances, such as his requiring one more for a hat trick. The playground side has two appointed penalty-takers: the Best Player and the Best Fighter. The arrangement is simple: the Best Player takes the penalties when his side is a retrievable margin behind, and the Best Fighter at all other times. If the side is comfortably in front, the ball-owner may be invited to take a penalty. Goalkeepers are often the subject of temporary substitutions at penalties, forced to give up their position to the Best Player or Best Fighter, who recognise the kudos attached to the heroic act of saving one of these kicks, and are buggered if Wee Titch is going to steal any of it.

Close Season

This is known also as the Summer Holidays, which the players usually spend dabbling briefly in other sports: tennis for a fortnight while Wimbledon is on the telly; pitch-and-putt for four days during the Open; and cricket for about an hour and a half until they discover that it really is as boring to play as it is to watch.

(An abbreviated version of this story appeared as ‘Butler ready to serve’, in the Geelong Advertiser, Friday 1 May 2015, p. 58.)

Roy Hay

The fairy story of English football this season has been the transformation of AFC Bournemouth from a team in danger of being relegated from senior football and going out of existence to the latest entrant to the English Premier League. That story is underpinned by the contribution of Geelong’s Russell Butler, long time referee and supporter of all things good in football. Russell is the sponsor of AFC Bournemouth’s Under 10s, helping make sure that this ascent is not going to be followed by an equally rapid descent as has happened to many clubs in the past.

He wakened up on Monday morning in England with a very sore head after a night of celebration at Dean Court after Bournemouth all but confirmed their promotion to the EPL with a three-nil win over Bolton Wanderers in the Championship, the second tier in England. It will take a nineteen-goal turnaround in the final games next weekend to prevent Bournemouth’s automatic promotion. Even then they could still qualify via the play-offs.

Russell was born in Bearcroft, a suburb of Bournemouth in 1947 and came to Australia as a four-year-old. His family brought him here, because his mother’s sister would not travel without her! ‘Women!’ he says. The families settled in Tasmania and Russell took up football (soccer) with the Police Boys Club and later went on to play for Burnie Celtic and Hobart Rangers, which sounds as if he were a member of Glasgow’s ‘Old Firm’. When he came to Geelong, it was the dark blues of Hamlyn Rangers, now Geelong Rangers, where he played. In 1974 he took up refereeing and since that day his height and his throaty voice, the result of blow he received while playing, have made him the whispering giant of the game in Geelong. He became a Grade One referee in 1988 and had officiated in well over a thousand games before he hung up his whistle in 1994. He did Premier League games, a Victorian League Cup final and Asian-Pacific Deaf competition at Olympic Park.

In the background, but close to the action, Russell Butler observes Joe Markovac of North Geelong and Sam McNeilage of Bell Park in the Geelong Advertiser Cup. Photo: Geelong Advertiser.

He has been secretary of clubs and leagues, has worked tirelessly both in Geelong and Melbourne to raise the standard of refereeing, and has been a strong advocate of a single team to represent the area at the highest level. He was the Geelong Soccer Personality of 1996, sponsored by the Geelong Advertiser. But he has never lost his attachment to AFC Bournemouth, a club that has spent most of its 125 years in the lower divisions, never rising above the second tier. Now it is on the verge of entry to the most watched league on the planet.

When Russell gets back home next month he will be finding some way to assist one of the local clubs or leagues or their officials or referees to improve their performance and their chances of success. He does not seek reward for his efforts but he has ‘the good of the game’ imprinted in his DNA.

Russell Butler (left) with Nick Monteleone, former President of Football Federation Victoria at the opening of Moreshead Park in Ballarat. Photo: Roy Hay.

He is a member of Melbourne Victory, has helped Ballarat Red Devils in their ascent to the Victorian Premier League, presides over a group of refereeing colleagues who form a wine-appreciation society and makes this soccer-tragic feel at times that he is a dilettante by comparison. So that is why he has put his hard earned money, much of it earned as a porter at Geelong hospitals, into the Under-10s in far away Bournemouth. What an example of selfless dedication to sport and society.

Roy Hay

This week Australians and others around the world will remember the carnage that was the two world wars of the 20th century and subsequent conflicts in Korea and Vietnam which took the lives of so many. Yet there are many aspects of these cataclysmic events that are almost completely forgotten and have no part the tale we tell about ourselves. Over the weekend, the Age carried a story about Normie Rowe and the other musicians and show business folks who went to Vietnam to entertain the troops, but another group of non-combatants has never been recognised.

In mid-1967 the government of Harold Holt decided it would be a good idea for the Australian football team, not yet called Socceroos, to go to Saigon to take part in the Independence Day tournament to lift the morale of troops and nations taking part. As Ray Richards who took part said later, ‘It was pure propaganda, we went into the middle of a war zone, to boost the morale of the troops’. The late Johnny Warren remembered the team would be eating with soldiers in their mess and then going to play football, while their colleagues went off to fight. Players were warned by security on arrival not to spend time with Americans, because the latter were prime targets for the Viet Cong.

When they were taken on a bus tour of the grounds they were to play on they saw strange objects on the pitch and were told that these were mine detectors. From their hotel they could hear blasts going off and a car was blown up nearby. They were told not to go near an isolated unattended bicycle because it might be booby-trapped with explosives in the frame. The big guns could be heard firing virtually all through the night as the players tried to sleep.

Ray Richards dousing himself with water after coming off injured and exhausted. Lou Lazzari, Australia’s masseur to his right. Source: Laurie Schwab collection, Deakin University Library.

Security was tight. Ray Richards remembers, ‘We went to the Australian Army barracks, they called it the Canberra. It was just a big concrete building with table tennis and pool tables and we had hamburgers and beer. We also went to the American building and had New York steaks. Outside the Canberra there were these sandbagged bunkers with two soldiers with rifles. They had whistles and if anyone stopped in the street outside they would blow the whistle. If the person did not move they could fire a warning shot over their head. If they still did not move then they could open fire at them’.

Up to his ears in glaur. Billy Vojtek is covered in mud as he breaks away from the New Zealand defence in the opening match. Source: Laurie Schwab collection, Deakin University Library.

Gary Wilkins was one of the youngest members of the squad, taken along for the experience and with an eye to the future. He nearly witnessed the first casualty of the tour. Gary roomed with Stan Ackerley, a senior defender and the only player who played every minute of every game on the tour. Stan was given to wearing new boots in the shower to help soften them and mould them to his feet. It was when he came out of the shower and tried to turn on the fan because of the humidity that he received the shock that threw him across the room. Gary thought instantly that he might be dead but rushed off to find Dr Brian Corrigan, the team doctor, who arrived and got Stan back on his feet.

Australia won the tournament, beating South Korea in the final, thus winning the first international trophy for football. The final nearly did not take place when the Australian troops who had been supporting the team were not allowed in. The team refused to play until the decision was reversed and the locals supported the Australians against the Koreans. The journalist Hugh Lunn who was at the final said then and now that there were lots of Viet Cong present enjoying the game, so there were no guns firing during the match. John Barclay, one of the tour managers, told the team he had put his head on the block for them. He overturned an Australian Soccer Federation decision that the team should return their official track suits at the conclusion of the tour.

The Australian team return with the trophy from the Independence Day tournament in Vietnam. Source: Soccer World, 1 December 1967, p. 1.

All those who took part in the 1967 and subsequent wartime tours in 1970 and 1972, were part-time players, reliant on employment or making their own living. Several players had to turn down invitations to play because they could not gain time off from employers or would have seen their hard won businesses collapse in their absence. Yet the team spirit forged on these tours helped Australia qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 1974.

‘They talk about bonding exercises now and rugby league players went horse riding recently but we went to war zones, much like Afghanistan or Iraq are now’, said Ray Richards.

It would have taken a miracle for Australia’s triumph in Vietnam to become a part of the national sporting narrative, far less the national narrative. The death of Harold Holt on 17 December 1967 and its aftermath occupied public attention. The anti-Vietnam War movement, the failure to qualify for the World Cup in 1970, the involvement with Oceania, the opposition of the Asian Football Confederation to Australia’s membership, the rise of Gough Whitlam and Labor with a different story, all played a part. The game did not promote itself or its triumphs effectively in the aftermath of the victory in Vietnam in 1967.

But that is no reason why the Australians of 1967 should be forgotten and unrecognised today. They deserve public acclaim for what they did, when they did it and the circumstances they faced. They were not servicemen, they did not face the kinds of battle that young Australian infantry went through and they have never claimed that their experience matched that of the service men and women they met in Vietnam. But they are a part of the national story.

Roy Hay

(This article first appeared in the Almanac on 3 April 2015 at http://www.footyalmanac.com.au/a-heterodox-suggestion-about-the-origins-of-football-in-victoria/ )

As the 2015 football season kicks off, I am ruminating about how it all started way back in the mid-nineteenth century.

Perhaps we will never know what, if any, were the connections between the games played by indigenous inhabitants of Victoria and the game for which a group of recent migrants and English-educated ‘currency lads’ drew up sets of rules in the late 1850s. We do know for certain that Aboriginal people played a variety of games involving ‘balls’ and feet and hands. Unfortunately all the extant descriptions in print come from the European migrants, as far as I know. There are Aboriginal oral traditions that give us tantalising hints about games that have been handed down through families and groups. Inevitably these are now a mixture of ancient lore and more modern interpolations, as is the case in the oral history of other communities. Much of what we call history today has similar elements, overlaid by a striving after ‘scientific’ certitude that is never attained.

In my own research I have found multiple examples of football being played by British migrants all over Australia long before the codification of either Association football or the Victorian game. Many of those were small-sided, predominantly kicking games played for money or other prizes and hence according to some rules—rules that must have existed given that money was at stake. They were probably very simple, more like the rules we adopted in the playground at school, not a code to determine the future of a distinct form but something to fit the specific circumstances of the day or event. Everybody seems to have known what was going on, since very few reports or advertisements thought to spell out what football was. Colleagues in the United Kingdom and the United States report a similar pattern.

British people seem to have had a propensity to form clubs and associations independent of the governing body of the state in which they find themselves, whereas nineteenth-century continental Europe governments were very leery of intermediate bodies between themselves and their citizens. Here in Victoria, the first settlers appear in the 1830s and within a few years they have established the Melbourne Club, a Chamber of Commerce, a Caledonian Society, and the Melbourne Cricket Club, the Victoria Turf Club and more. Overlapping memberships ensure that there is a rapid circulation of ideas and a common desire to civilise and control the activities in which they engaged. So the group including Tom Wills, J B Thompson, William Hammersley, Alex Bruce, T Butterworth, J Sewell and Thomas Smith, whose names appear on the set of rules dated May 1859, were just doing what Brits were doing all over the globe and at home. They went through the rules of the public schools and universities they had attended and made up a composite set that were quite like the ones the Football Association in England adopted in 1863 or the ones that a group of students and town boys in Hartford Connecticut in the USA drew up for their game on 8 November 1858.

The first page of the first extant set of rules of the Melbourne Football Club. The original is in the Melbourne Cricket Club Museum.

Hartford, Connecticut rules, November 1858

(1)    Each side shall choose two umpires, whose decision, under the following rules shall be final.

(2)    A line shall be drawn at 50 feet from either bound, over which lines the sides shall not pass before the ball has been canted.

(3)    There shall be no carrying of the ball.

(4)    A clear space of at least ten feet shall be given in front of the ball after it has been caught.

(5)    Fifteen minutes shall be allowed between each game.

(6)    Players shall, under no circumstances, be allowed to hold on to one of the opposite party.

(7)    Each must keep on their own side of the ball.

(8)    If the ball goes over the side bounds, it shall be kicked through the middle by the player who gets it.

This set of rules corresponds quite closely with that drawn up in London in 1863, with its version of offside and the ban on carrying the ball or holding an opponent. It indicates that where necessary written rules were supplied and enforced, in this case by four umpires.

So what happened in Melbourne and later more broadly in Victoria and eventually Australia was part of an exercise going on elsewhere even though there was to be much division into separate and distinct codes of football as the games evolved.

Let’s get back to one of the key figures in the early game, one Tom Wills. By now just about everybody agrees he was no administrator but a huge influence on the way the game was played on the field. None of his innovations seems to bear any relationship to any of the Aboriginal games that we know anything about.

Wills always looked upon himself as an upholder of the amateur tradition but like an equally influential English cricketer, Dr W G Grace, he found that was not incompatible with obtaining an income or some subsidisation for playing the games of cricket and football. In November 1866 he was employed to go to Lake Wallace in the Western District of Victoria to coach an Aboriginal cricket team that was slated to play the might of the Melbourne Cricket Club at the instigation of the groundsman of the latter club, Roland Newbury. Wills spent a month in the area that was close to where he grew up on the other side of the Grampians near Lexington.

I have no doubt that Wills spent much of his time coaching the indigenous players on the finer points of cricket but I suspect that, like all good coaches, he introduced a bit of variety into their training sessions, on and off the field. I can easily visualise him producing a football and having a scratch match at the game he played in the winter. It is not something he would record in his letters since that was not part of his remit. So perhaps we should reverse the popular notion that the indigenous folks in the Western District introduced a young Tom Wills to football and argue rather that the mature Tom Wills taught his local charges in 1866 to play the game.

There is one more piece of intriguing circumstantial evidence. The Lake Wallace lads took on and beat the men of Hamilton at cricket using their Wills-inspired competence in the game. But when the Aboriginal cricket team set off on the first leg of the journey that would take them to England in 1868 they stopped at Hamilton on the way. At that point some of the Hamilton cricketers came to their hotel and challenged them to a game of football. It is reported that the cricketers refused, saying the men of Hamilton had ignored their offer of a return game at cricket so that the latter could regain the laurels they had lost in the previous defeat. I suspect the Hamilton men thought they could get their own back by roughing up the ‘blacks’ at football rather than risk another defeat at cricket. I also suspect that the tour organisers and perhaps the Aboriginal players themselves thought the risk was too great to run given the arduous tour that lay ahead. That rather than the other reported explanation of lack of time seems quite plausible.

There are far too many imponderables in my story and I keep digging hoping to come up with some contemporary evidence, but as the footy season gets under way in 2015, I just wonder if we have the tale of the links between Aboriginal activities, including their ball games, and those of the Europeans the wrong way round.

Philip Mosley Book Cover Final

It began in 1880 when The Wanderers trotted onto Parramatta Common.  Thereafter immigrants, locals, miners and workers have combined to shape soccer into what has always been the code’s premier state in Australia.  Over time the game progressed from paddocks to stadia but the quest for players and patrons, money and media was as difficult as protracted.  There were such problems as Depression, war and the rivalry of other codes.  There was also a dominant culture so often unmoved by a game it deemed to be foreign.  The first 100 years of soccer in NSW is a story previously untold.  This book plots and unearths how the ‘world game’ has fared in antipodean soil.

Phil Mosely has played, coached and managed, just not for Manchester United or the Sydney Wanderers.  An academic historian by trade, his doctorate was followed by Ethnic Involvement in Australian Soccer and the co-edited Sporting Immigrants. A young, growing family and The University of Melbourne’s Queen’s College proved distracting but finally, upon the urgings of Ian Syson and Roy Hay, Phil decided to publish this book, his original University of Sydney doctorate.

Roy Hay

Norm Hobson was one of Australia’s best goalkeepers in the 1950s and 1960s. He arrived from England where he had played with Leeds United in 1955 and joined Moreland, quickly becoming the first choice keeper. He helped the club win the Dockerty Cup in 1957, playing alongside Ted Smith, Frankie Loughran and Don Hodgson. In 1960 he moved to George Cross where he was the keeper when the club won the Australia Cup in 1964, beating APIA in the final. George Cross was runner-up in the league in four seasons while he was in goal for the club. He had spells with Wilhelmina and Croatia and time in Sydney with APIA while he was working in New South Wales.

Nigel Shepherd behind the post, Norm Hobson and Ricardo da Silva (9) of Roma and Vic Janczyk, right, Victoria v AS Roma at Olympic Park on 29 May 1966. Photo: Uwe Kuessner. Source: Laurie Schwab collection, Deakin University Library.

He played eleven games for Victoria including starring performances against Everton in 1964 and Chelsea in 1965. His performance against Chelsea won him selection for the Australian squad, but John Roberts was preferred to him in the two matches in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1966 he played in front of a crowd of over 35,000 at Olympic Park (and many more perched on vantage points outside the ground) against AS Roma from Italy.

He had offers to return to England to play but preferred to continue in Australia, where he found a home and a great reception at every club with which he played. Of his time at George Cross he said, ‘I look forward to my future with George Cross and I have never been happier, I would also like to say that the people at the club, whether they be Maltese, English, Scottish, or whatever, are the greatest bunch of fellows I could possibly ever wish to be associated with. I am happy to wear the goalkeeper’s jersey for as long as the club thinks I am good enough’.

Norm Hobson diving to save for George Cross against Slavia Port Melbourne at SS Anderson Reserve or Murphy Reserve as it was known in the 1960s. This information from Victor Brincat. Source: Laurie Schwab collection, Deakin University Library.

My thanks to Ted Smith, John Punshon and Victor Brincat for their assistance.