Token of our appreciation artefact Wednesday - Goal Weekly mementos

For several years I was an intermittent contributor for the print edition of Goal Weekly. Indeed, most of the copies of that paper that I still have are because of the complimentary copies sent to me when I had an article printed in there. It is one of my chief regrets of the past few years that I did not stump up the cover price of three or so dollars more often than I actually did.

A couple of Christmas cards and sturdy mug from
Goal Weekly. Missing from this photo is a wooden
plaque. I've got no idea where it could be.

Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun writing for Goal Weekly. I think I got one genuine match report published in there. There were of course a smattering of book reviews, all of which you can find on the blog. I also filled in several times for Southpole's state league round-up when he couldn't do it - though there was one occasion where I botched the results of a Provisional League 2 North-West result and hoped no one would ever notice. I even watched a World Cup qualifier between Singapore and Malaysia on a dodgy internet stream, and wrote a report on that and had it published.

But my favourite things to write were the quasi-journalistic and quasi-factual news blended with opinion pieces, especially those dealing with the oncoming implementation of NPL and the furore that was causing in Victoria. How could I write such pieces without breaking my own unwritten rule of pretty much never interviewing anyone? I don't know, but I somehow made do with attending the odd information session, reading media releases and doing a lot of summing up the more reputable posts from the various forums.

Eventually this process saw the production of pieces that were way of out control, and ended up with then the FFV CEO Mitchell Murphy penning a not entirely unreasonable letter to Goal Weekly to complain about what would turn out to be my final piece for the paper. That was two years ago now, and while I have some regrets about some of the material that I ended up producing for Goal Weekly, I still had a blast providing a variety of content for what was a wonderfully ramshackle production, which gave a lot of writers a chance to learn their craft - both those who saw their work as the starting point of their journalistic vocation, and those amateurs who felt they performing a public service.

As for the artefacts, Costa from Goal Weekly had a habit of sending out these items at the end of the year, as a way of showing his appreciation for the efforts put in by his writers. I'm not one for Christmas cards and such, but the mug got a good run until the enamel/plastic label started peeling off, and it was forced to retire to a dusty corner of some built in wardrobe in West Sunshine.

Anyway, all the best to the people who'll be doing the hard yards for Victorian soccer reportage in 2016. Don't ever forget that we're clearly the most important demographic in Victorian soccer.