Victorian and Australian soccer library

My original hope with this page was to eventually start a separate website - an online Australian Soccer Library - that would collect and preserve all sorts of published materials to do with Australian soccer.

Since then, Mark Boric turned his modest blog railing against Victorian soccer into the formidable Australian historical library Melbourne Soccer. 

Then Mark retired his site and took it offline (since returned), so I pulled my finger out and embarked on making my own archive page after all.

And thus was born the OzFootball Library, very much still a work progress, but slowly getting there. I'm leaving everything here as a legacy item, but I will trying to put as much stuff as I can on my new venture.

Club histories
At the moment, I'm not looking for things which are still in print or which can be purchased from a club or author with relative ease. I'm mostly interested in documents produced by clubs, which have been made available for free; or where it is appropriate to do so, to reproduce long out of print materials.
Football Federation Victoria annual reports
Football Federation Victoria Gold Medal Night program
Football Federation Victoria media guides
Match programs - regular
Eventually a separate website is going to have to be started to do this stuff properly, but for the time being here they are renting one of the spare rooms on my blog.

1980

1981

1982

Match programs - Finals, Cups and Miscellaneous matches
Soccer News Victoria
Soccer News was the official news publication of the Victorian Amateur Soccer Football Association, as well as its successor the Victorian Soccer Federation (now FFV). These were sourced from a combination of the efforts of Damian Smith and Mark Boric.
Soccer World Annuals
Sourced from The Agitator. Mostly focused on New South Wales, but also contains roundups of most states as well as national team and touring side reports.
    Studs Up magazine
    Pioneering fanzine of the NSL era, headed by the late Kevin Christopher. 
    Tournament programs/books
        Victorian Soccer Federation and VASFA yearbooks/handbooks
        The following yearbooks were scanned by me, from a collection kindly lent to me by Mark Boric.
        Miscellaneous objects These are things which don't necessarily fit anywhere else.

        12 comments:

        1. Mark Boric1 August 2014 at 16:15

          Yeah the spines on the 1977 and 1978 editions are tricky.

          They are also the cream of the crop in terms of quality/content.

          ReplyDelete
          Replies
          1. Paul1 August 2014 at 16:16

            Will try to take extra special care with them.

            Delete
        2. Savvas Tzionhs24 February 2016 at 15:29

          Reading the history of Italian Soccer club mergers/de-mergers', I decided to do some wikipediing, and discovered that there currently exists two separate Zebra's, Brunswick and Moreland! Which is considered the more legitimate successor of the historical Brunswick Juventus?

          ReplyDelete
          Replies
          1. Paul24 February 2016 at 16:34

            My professional opinion is that each entity - Moreland, Brunswick and Ranges - has so forfeited important parts of either Brunswick Juventus legacy or continuity, that none of them has the right to claim the status of being the legitimate successor.

            In that respect, I consider Juventus as we knew it to have died in the mid 1990s. Each descendant of the splits and mergers would contest that assertion - Moreland because they have highest ranked senior team and Juventus business name, Brunswick because they didn't leave the 'heartland', and Ranges because they have thr trophies - but that the mess and confusion exists at all is enough for me to declare the issue irrelevant. Juventus is dead, has been for 20 odd years, and all those which have followed are only imitations.

            Delete
          2. MelbCro5 March 2016 at 16:40

            My two cents on this is that Brunswick Zebra's have more of a claim than Moreland. When Juve dropped out of the NSL it was only the senior team that merged with Bulleen, while the Juve/Zebars juniors continued to operate uninterrupted and have done so to this day. Few years they re-started their senior team. So to me they are the legitimate claimants.

            Delete
        3. Savvas Tzionhs25 February 2016 at 14:54

          I decided to immerse myself in the first 4 editions of Studs Up from early 1995, and, my goodness, I felt like I was in a time portal, and all my older disdain and anger at the old NSL bubbled to the surface yet again.

          'Highlights':
          - Instead of a highlights program, just showed a full game!
          - Coaches speaking with accents. Les pronouncing names with the accent
          - the woeful penalty shoot out for draws!
          - abolishing pro/rel, so that NSL powerhouses don't get relegated!
          - LOTS of Heidelberg infighting ($500,000 debt?!!!)
          - SM Hellas threaten to leave NSL?! Adel City to play in Malaysia?! Preston to return to NSL (snigger)
          - the constant threat of Basketball (LOL)
          - constant refrain of clubs needing to be more Australian (this was my mistaken belief), when the question should have been made to others to create an 'Australian' club!
          - the hate for Andy Paschalides far greater than the hate for David Basheer and David Zdrillic
          - Flares were given back to fans after they threw them!
          - numerous fan problems (invading pitch. Has that happened in A League?)
          - numerous player problems (Markovski's political statement). Interesting that fans allowed to make political statements today (pro refugees)
          And best of all
          - death threats from Labozetta to Peter Kogoy (who I think I saw on twitter the other day!

          One thins that has improved
          - player drain has been solved with A League. Except that the older generation returning, and the younger generation staying are not in the same class as back then!

          ReplyDelete
        4. Anonymous28 July 2016 at 14:49

          "Italian-Victorian soccer club merger/de-merger flowchart"

          Still one of the greatest things in Australian soccer

          ReplyDelete
        5. Anonymous5 August 2016 at 17:56

          Any more of those NSW Soccer World annuals, or just those years? would be great to see the rest of them

          ReplyDelete
          Replies
          1. Paul6 August 2016 at 20:41

            It's all I've got at the moment I'm afraid.

            Delete
        6. djbullock2404@gmail.com13 March 2018 at 12:42

          Yes l agree as the author of the Ringwood City publication that some errors did occur unfortunately the project was a six week project back in the day with limited resources for the time but it was nice to see it highlighted and always happy to discuss any errors found cheers Dave

          ReplyDelete
        7. Anonymous11 May 2022 at 20:22

          Thank you for the This Is Your Life link. At the going down of Australian Football, we will remember them.

          ReplyDelete
        8. Luiz Antonio Duarte Ferreira26 September 2024 at 17:58

          What a fantastic read! "South of the Border" captures the spirit of South Melbourne Hellas beautifully. Your insights into the team’s journey and community impact are inspiring. Thanks for keeping fans connected and informed—looking forward to more updates!

          ReplyDelete

        A few notes on comments.

        We've had a lot of fun over the years with my freewheeling comments policy, but all good things must come to an end. Therefore I will no longer be approving comments that contain personal abuse of any sort.

        Still, if your post doesn't get approved straight away, it's probably because I haven't seen it yet.

        As usual, publication of a comment does not mean endorsement of its content.

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