Scrapbook artefact Wednesday - SM Hellas vs Newcastle BHP, 1993

After initially being a cautiously keen user of the Australian Football Before the A-League page, I'd boycotted it for a few years. Partly because I'm not a Facebook fan; partly because the page was becoming increasingly repetitive and was of poor quality from an artefact and discursive perspective; and partly because the moderators of the site did nothing to curb possibly libellous personal abuse levelled at myself and another user.

But the past is the past. Though some of the discussion on there is still vintage garbage TWGF level in terms of its pitting the past against the present, the quality of the artefacts seems to have improved somewhat, as the page's user base has increased in size. Some people are even posting full programs instead of just newspaper cut-outs!

In amid the usual and the surprising, you occasionally stumble across interesting items like this:

Click to enlarge the image. Credit: Mark Taylor.

It comes from a series of scrapbook notes taken by one of the page's members, Mark Taylor, who has been sharing them on the group's page. The game was South vs Newcastle in February 1993, the home game after the Clash of the Titans. In its own way it's a kinder gentler version of something like this,

Anyway, thanks to the relevant Facebook page, I've also been able to add even more content to South of the Border's match program archive, including the program from the opening of St George Stadium - at present our oldest NSL program on the site, and our second oldest overall. We've also got away to Marconi in 1979, and hopefully soon Marconi away 1980 and 1981.