For the uninitiated, this room was reached through the door that was to the side of the projector screen, next to the 'stage'.
Digression - there's always one
On a side note, one of the things I find in that room was some kind of IKEA-esque foosball table, in that one had to assemble it with one of those dinky Allen keys. Of course during our 'downtime' while packing away the social club stuff, me and Steve from Broady did assemble it - I was seriously surprised that it actually had most of its parts, because the box it came in was completely fucked - and we ended up playing several games. Now I'm no crack foosball player, but I kicked Steve from Broady's arse every single time, principally because of my decree that we play by 'foosball gentleman's rules' that is, not allowing seven year old style spinning maneuvers.
I think the table ended up in our players' locker room during the late stages of the Gus Tsolakis era. I have been told that the players quickly lost the balls that came with it, and when Chris Taylor came in, his hardline approach to fun meant that the table ended up getting thrown out of the change rooms. In the end, it was probably for the best that it ended that way, but I'm kinda annoyed at myself now that I didn't take any photos of the little table that love built.
Back to the main show
Curious to find out what content these cassettes had on them - there were no dates to denote what era they were from - I managed to find a battered radio with a cassette player, plug it into one of the available wall sockets hoping not to fry myself and burn the whole joint down, put one of the cassettes in and pressed 'play'.
As best as I can remember, rather than anything revolutionary, they were simply ads promoting our next home game, backed by Frozen Tears' South Melbourne theme song. If memory serves me correct, they were from around the 1998/99 season. Functional kind of work, but an interesting one for historians of the game, especially those people interested in the marketing used by clubs during the NSL era.
We were still running those 3AW adverts (contra setup for the sleeve sponsorship?) in 2001/2002, I think.
ReplyDeleteLoved hearing our club get itself out there in the "mainstream" media.
I think the last time I even listened to 3AW would have been around that era, while taking driving lessons with an instructor. It was round about the time Stan Zemanek was polluting Melbourne's airwaves. I told the instructor to put the radio onto RRR or PBS, and got called a beatnik for it.
DeleteNo we paid for those ads (although we had some sponsors make a contribution) Those ads were sponsored by Care Park & Rocket Batteries & I don't recall Frozen Tears in the background.
Delete3AW was & still is the No 1 talk station in this town. Perfect mainstream advertising. But the old clubs did nothing!
Sports Today (Gerard Healy & David Hookes) also broadcast their show one night from the ground before a SMFC v Carlton fixture. But the old clubs did nothing!
We would pay the FFV postage of about $10K & insert free kids membership flyers (Trimmers Turf) to every registered child playing the game. But we did nothing!
Blame NSL failure on the old Clubs & not the corrupt, inept Soccer Australia.
I could go on,, but I need to maintain a reasonable Blood Pressure reading
Thanks for that Anonymous, some good information there.
DeleteSo, 3AW paid for the sleeve sponsorship? Always assumed it was a deal for the radio adverts.
ReplyDelete** definitely has Frozen Tears playing as the backing track to the commercials.