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Harry Kewell: Star quality
by Roy HayHarry Kewell is bringing down the curtain on a stellar career at the end of the current A-League season. It is a pity that he could not make it to what would be his third World Cup in...
View ArticleNPL Round 2 Results
NPLROUND 2: Oakleigh Cannons FC 2 (D. Bosnjak 2) Heidelberg United SC 1 (K. Sheppard 1)(HT: 0-1)Pascoe Vale SC 0 Melbourne Knights FC 2 (J. Colosimo 2)(HT: 0-0)Port Melbourne Sharks SC 2 (K. Braniff 1,...
View ArticleAnzac Day, by John Forbes
This is one of John's final poems, written in the year before his death in 1998. He didn't care much for soccer, being a rugby league follower. Cronulla was his team. He and I used to imagine we were...
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Soccer and Anzac
This piece is now at least 4 years' old. Yet I think it retains a freshness and perhaps a timelessness that is important. It is by far the most popular article on this site and I'm sure people keep...
View Article'I wouldn't like to see that'
The brief rise and inevitable fall of the BulldogsJohn Weldon wrote this piece for the Age in 1998. It's from a different time and speaks to a sentiment that's missing across all of our top-line...
View ArticleSummer Soccer: Tell 'im e's dreamin'
And then there's this, by Ian Warren from the Canberra Times, 20 July 1987. It's interesting because it shows how a number of aspects of the game and attitudes around it have changed. Interesting also...
View ArticleFronting Up: Australian Soccer and the First World War
This is a link to my recent 9000-word article on soccer and World War One, 'Fronting Up: Australian Soccer and the First World War'. It's a culmination of a lot of the work I've done previously. Feel...
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A Bibliography of Australian Football
Roy Hay has generously given us his permission to publish the bibliography from his and Bill Murray's A history of football in Australia: A game of two halves published by Hardie Grant, 2014. ISBN:...
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The violence that dare not speak its name
Violence in Australian Rules Football CrowdsTwo more examples of the thing that doesn't happen: violence between or by AFL supporters -- this time after Collingwood's visit to Adelaide. This after the...
View ArticleNPLV results 26 May 2014
NPLROUND 10Bentleigh Greens SC 1 Heidelberg United SC 3(HT: 1-1) Pascoe Vale SC 2 Oakleigh Cannons FC 0(HT: 1-0)Dandenong Thunder SC 3 (J. Nakic 2, D. King 1) Ballarat Red Devils SC 1 (D. O'Donnell...
View ArticleThe 2014 AFL season: a Guide
Bob J. Penny recently sent us this piece. Now I'm not a big footy fan but this seemed so hilarious that I just had to publish it. Be interested in your responses.You won’t believe what I got accused of...
View ArticleQualifying is never easy: Australia’s World Cup history
Roy HayAustralia will soon begin its fourth football World Cup finals campaign – the third successive tournament it has qualified for – with group stage matches against Chile, the Netherlands and...
View ArticleAnd by amazing co-incidence . . .
Melbourne Soccer also 150 years old in 2020The AFL might well be shifting the history goalposts once more and moving its origin date back from 1987 to 1870. Preparations seem underway already to...
View ArticleAustralian Soccer: Must We Always Forget the Past?
It is a given that the broader Australian culture cares little for the positive memorialisation of soccer. Yet the game itself is not much better at asserting its own legitimacy or remembering its own...
View ArticleHobart Football 1877-1879
Notes taken Monday 24 May 2010 at State library of Tasmania.These are the notes I took and a table I drew up after visiting the library. I think that I recorded nearly all of the football games...
View ArticleHobart Football Grounds, 1866-1912
List of grounds in Hobart footballThese grounds are taken verbatim from news articles at the time so as to capture the changing usage of names and ownership. The post 1898 ground are soccer...
View ArticleThe Heavy Sleeper's World Cup Reviews
One of the features of this World Cup for me has been Paul Mavroudis' literary efforts, not from some exotic location or press box in Brazil but from his home in Altona. The Heavy Sleeper's World Cup...
View ArticleNPL VIC Round 17/16
NPL : ROUND 17: Bentleigh Greens SC 4 (D. Stirton 3, W. Wallace 1) Werribee City FC 0 (HT: 2-0) , Ballarat Red Devils SC 5 (P. Harvey 2, S. Murphy 1, S. Harding 1, D. O'Donnell 1) Heidelberg United SC...
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Multicultural Round, or "Spot the Wog"
This article appeared first in the Age as "A multicultural AFL? Not quite"13 July 2013. A year on and it's just as fresh. I've tweaked it to reflect 2014 figures published by the AFL.Someone needs to...
View ArticleSoccer in Otago 1875
Recorded games of soccer in NZ are a little earlier than those in Australia. This is from Otago in 1875.FOOTBALL.The third football match this season took place at the South Recreation Ground, on...
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