Original Bingate artefact Wednesday

Apart from the main goal of (re)presenting) and presevring these materials, the words in this post is mostly me trying to fill out a page with text when the entries themselves - including the teacher's comment of 'nasty stuff Peter!' - speak for themselves.


Back in 2009, I put up this post which focused on how once upon a time (circa 2001), South Melbourne Hellas was still relevant enough that references to it in local Greek school course materials seemed entirely natural.

But of course, independent of any curriculum mandate, South Melbourne Hellas fans had been using South as part of their schoolwork for many years before that, and in my case also much later.

Some time ago a bloke posted these diary entries he'd written in primary school onto a Facebook group; I think it was the 'Bring Back the NSL' page. If true, this would be both ironic and hilarious because these images provide several strong arguments on why the NSL should not be brought back - unless you're into this kind of thing of course. Some people are.

I never got around to posting those here on South of the Border at the time, despite obtaining the permission of Peter Kougi to do so. So here they are, and a belated thanks to Peter for sharing them in the first place, and for allowing us to share them here as well. It's safe to say that these diary entries, especially the one with the bin, have already earned a significant amount of notoriety of their own volition.

We'll never know why I delayed putting these up, but the whole 'bingate' affair from this year's trip to Kingston reminded a lot of people of these images, so it seems fitting that we at South of the Border have eventually got around to uploading them, I am also reminded of Billy Natsioulas' story post from the blog's earliest days, which included reference to the 1993/94 Hellas-Croatia riot incident.

Social club artefact Wednesday - Club Italia pennant

A few weeks or months ago - I can't remember exactly, but it was towards the end of the home and away season - I ended up chatting with a couple of the older heads, and the Club Italia '82 tour popped up in discussion. One of the two older blokes in this discussion could not remember anything about this tour, which was unusual as he's usually good with this stuff. As for myself, I'd never heard of it. Club Italia? What was that? Turns out it was a team made up partly of players from Italy's 1982 World Cup winning team, which toured Australia sometime in 1992, probably during the first half of that year (see below for exact date). And then I had a little bit of a light bulb moment - hadn't I seen a Club Italia pennant when I was cleaning up the social club? Indeed I had. That pennant had made little sense to me then, but it makes perfect sense to me now. Club Italia had beaten Adelaide City 1-0 before our meeting, which we lost 2-1, and then onto Marconi who they beat 4-2. That Marconi game actually has some footage online, which makes one hope that out there, somewhere, there is some footage from South's match against Club Italia. There may also be a match programme out, which we'd also love to see. Apart from the video of the Marconi exhibition match, the only online information about this tour (that I can find in English at least) comes from this link, which is a description of the Marconi match. What's interesting is that Marconi also used some guest players from other clubs for this match, so I wonder if South did the same. Of course, any further information on this tour, and especially the South game, would be appreciated.

Update
Thanks to Mark Boric for digging through some of the old Italian-Australian papers for us to get some more info on this.

For the Melbourne leg of their tour, Club Italia were due to arrive on the day before their match (on an Ansett flight), immediately heading to the Veneto Club for a welcoming reception, before holding a clinic for junior players. That evening they were to attend a reception in their honour. Their game in Melbourne (Thursday 27th February, at Olympic Park) was meant to be against a composite team coached by Ferenc Puskas, but was mostly made up of South Melbourne players. The lineups for the game were as follows:

'When classes does not get old'. Paul Wade receives the Club Italia pennant.
Image scanned by Mark Boric.

Club Italia: Copparone, Gentile, Mozzini, Filippi, Fontolan, Guida, Cirelli (Scarnecchia 62), Roggi (C. Sala 49), Rossi, Causio, Graziani (Briaschi 41). Coach: Valentino Angelillo

South Melbourne: MacLaren, Wright, Micheil, Durakovic, Fernandes, Wade, Taliadoros, Petersen, Trimboli, Tsolakis, Hasler. Coach: Ferenc Puskas.

At the start of the second half the following players took the field for 'South Melbourne', though in most cases it isn't clear who they replaced: Lilikakis (incorrectly listed as Lilikas), Michalokopoulos (incorrectly listed as Nichalokopoulos), Boutsianis, Healey, Tsoumerkas (incorrectly listed as Tsoumarkis), Tombolato (Fawkner), Della Rocca (Juventus), Di Martino (Thomastown), Ruccia (Bulleen). The crowd was approximately 12,000.

Joe Gorman on David Hill's attempted shoving of the NSL into the 'mainstream'

This article is, I think, a well researched and balanced look back at the mid 1990s attempt at de-ethnicising Australian soccer. A bit Sydney centric, but very interesting - and good to see someone analysing the multicultural factors more thoroughly then I'm used to seeing.

12 Days of NSL Talkback Radio - Daniel

A Melbourne Croatia/St Albans fan uploaded these some time ago. Some of these are pretty funny. This first one is not too funny though, and is in quite poor taste, being the day that some of our fans attacked the Adelaide City bus, with Angelo Constanzo being the most notable victim of the broken glass.