I went up to Villier's Terrace...

No, nothing to do with the Echo and the Bunnymen song. Yesterday Ian Syson and I sought out pioneering Victorian football journo Fred Villiers. Fred had been at a number of papers (Argus, Sporting Globe to name just two), as well as on radio and a lengthy spell on World of Sport. Fred's getting on in years, and his mind and memory are slipping... I would easily say it was the most difficult interview that I've had to do, and was not any easier on Fred either. Questions, comments, memories, references to friends vanished and gone, often nameless, all looped and repeated upon themselves... so while we couldn't get full access to the goldmine that was Fred's football life, we did come away somewhat humbled nevertheless, as well as informed by those things Fred could recall.

Amongst those things were Fred's pushing for soccer coverage in the papers he was working on... with the proof being in the pudding with circulations rising whenever the round ball game was included. The young men he recruited to report on the games, and who got paid twice over, once for their print reports and once for their radio work. His struggles within the 'mainstream' sporting media, and against those who hated our game... Jack Dyer in particular received ratbag status while others, like Lou Richards, were more indifferent to the game.

An interesting theme has started developing perhaps about cultural gatekeepers... we covered this earlier with our first interviewee, women's soccer pioneer Betty Hoar, who said the ability of women and girls to break into established clubs was dependent on the main stalwart, worker, diehard, however you'd like to put it, being either for or against women playing. Likewise it seems, in the media, newspaper editors and culturally important people like Dyer hold large sway over how their minions will behave... and what they say goes. So no second tier sport in The Age really means no second tier soccer, but heaps of second, third, fourth and fifth tier aussie rules. Jack Dyer ripping into soccer and giving Fred a hard time repeatedly on the show means that acceptance from the wider public, who hold Dyer up as a paragon of Australian values (especially masculine and sporting wise), is near impossible to attain.

Fred also showed us some of his photos, taken before he came to Australia in the late 1940s. Few had anything to do with football (there was one photo of the team he played for in England), but there were some taken from a position in the crowd, of such people as the late Queen Mother, Princess Elizabeth, Wallis Simpson, Edward VIII, Neville Chamberlain.... in my opinion some remarkable shots, taken with a photographer's eye for the moment. It's sad that we had to meet Fred at this time, and not earlier - but it was better late than never. I'm certainly richer for the experience.