Wednesday 29 January 2014

New segment - Social Club Artefact Wednesdays - 1966 West Adelaide pennant

Back during the early part of 2010, I (along with Mr Valkanis, Steve from Broady, and a couple of other people) packed away (in a bit of a hurry I might add, and look how that worked out, sigh) stuff that was in the social club. A lot of this stuff will be familiar to you, my South Melbourne audience, but a lot of it won't. That's because it was often hidden or kept inside small office spaces or alcove rooms.

While the camera I used to document some of these items is not really up to the task, as is my skill as a photographer, I thought I may as well release an image or so a week, just for the sake of it. Hopefully by the time I run out of usable or interesting photos, we'll have our social club up and running, and we can all share in their glory. Over to you Ministers Delahunty and Guy.

For the most part, if the item itself is self-explanatory, I won't be adding too much in the way of elaboration. Chances are that I won't know much about a lot the objects anyway. Some times it won't even be social club objects, but stuff that was lying around all over the place, maybe even stuff that other people have posted on the net, so if you have a weird or unusual object you'd like to show off to the great South Melbourne public, give us a buzz.

I was going to start off with another artefact, but in honour of West Adelaide Hellas' trip across to Victoria for the 3XY Cup, I've decided to go with this one instead.

In a box in one of the back rooms there was a lot of stuff, including a lot of pennants, usually as part of the custom of exchanging pennants after friendly or other matches.

Quite why we have a 1966 South Australian state league championship pennant (see above photo) I'm not sure, and I hope that it wasn't left behind by accident and that the West Adelaide people still have their own copy. 1966 was the year of West Adelaide's first state championship.

As an aside, the material and design bears at least some similarity to the pennant on the left, which I got from one Pave Jusup, a Melbourne Croatia committeeman, who put this up on his twitter feed. The provenance of it was unknown until one helpful West Adelaide person noted that it was from the Australia Cup (a tournament that we always seemed to underachieve in) - the tournament apparently being held at Hindmarsh stadium that year. Croatia probably qualified for the tournament by finishing as runner up in the Dockerty Cup that year to Slavia. But what was the score from this Australia Cup tie?

Update - West Adelaide - Croatia pennant mystery solved, properly this time.
This is where it pays off to do your due diligence in these matters, and for that I apologise. At least one of our regular readers was able to do the hard yards and set the record straight, and we thanks MelbCro for supplying the correct information as to the provenance of this article's second pennant. 


3 comments:

  1. Melbourne Croatia didn't qualify for the Australia Cup in 1965. The Australia Cup qualification was based on finishing top 4 in the State League, we finished 6th that season, The Dockerty Cup had nothing to do with qualification for the Australia Cup. That's why between 1962 and 1968 the end of season Top 4 State League Cup series was not played, due to it being replaced by the Australia Cup. That weekend of 13/11/1965 did see the semi finals of the Australia Cup take place, the matches were George Cross v Hakoah and South Melbourne v Apia.

    However Melbourne Croatia did participate in the Australia Cup in 1967, where they played West Adelaide at Hindmarsh Stadium. Croatia came away with a 2-0 win. I'd say that is where the confusion has occurred and why the West Adelaide fan assumed the pennant was from the Australia Cup.

    In regards to that pennant itself I think it is safe to say that it was for an end of season friendly match. I believe this to be the case as the following weekend on 21/11/1965 Croatia played Slavia in the Dockerty Cup final. Prior to that the last competitive match Croatia had played was a month before on 16/10/1965 in the Dockerty Cup semi final (the league itself had finished in September). So that month gap would have seen Croatia playing a whole series of friendlies to keep match fit in the lead up to the final, and no doubt a match against West Adelaide would have been on of those.

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    Replies
    1. Brilliant stuff, MelbCro, thanks for that post, very informative.

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  2. Croatia played two games in Adelaide before that Dockerty Cup Final. On a Friday night under lights at Kensington Oval they defeated Adelaide Croatia 3-1, Billy Vojtek(2) and Ian Currie the scorers. On the Saturday afternoon at Croydon Oval they defeated Adelaide Hellas 2-0, with goals from Currie and Adlam. The Croatia v Croatia game was filmed with highlights shown on the local Channel 9.

    ReplyDelete

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