Update on an old Floros Dimitriadis post

A few weeks ago I finally made it down to the Public Record Office in North Melbourne. It's like the more uptight sister to the State Library.

I looked through files containing details of the hotel interests of one of South's founding vice-presidents, Floros Dimitriadis, principally the Duke of Kent Hotel on La Trobe Street - where South was born. That is, it was the place where the newly formed Hellas - the merger between Hellenic and Yarra Park - amalgamated with South Melbourne United, completing the triumvirate.

Check the comments section of the relevant post to see what we confirmed, and what other tidbits we've learned.

You know, like, whatever

Last week we here at South of the Border deliberately ignored the Battle of La Trobe Street stoush where several Victory fans/keyboard warriors attacked the Duke of Kent Hotel because some Sydney FC fans were drinking there. But along came the winner for biggest genuine New Dawn comment of the year.

The rivalry goes back many years, when emotions between former National Soccer League clubs sometimes turned ugly. Many hardcore supporters of clubs such as Sydney Olympic, Marconi, Sydney United, South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights stuck with their clubs when the A-League began. Some were put off by what they saw as a ''manufactured'' league with no tradition. Many made the transition and the Victory and Sydney FC also drew in thousands of new supporters. However, a small number of agitators are unwilling to move with the times.

David Sygall, you're an idiot. But then again, he's only following the template set out years ago.

Apollo Athletic - another predecessor of what we have now

This is a partially colourised version of the photo I used to have on this article.
The previous version was hosted on a third party hosting site, which stopped
working. This one has been sourced from the La Trobe Greek archives.

Before Melbourne's urban sprawl was filled to the brim with little Greek fiefdom clubs, before even the days of Hellenic, Olympic, Yarra Park Aias, Alexander and Florina, there was Apollo Athletic, which is as far as anyone knows, the earliest Greek Australian club of them all.

The club was born sometime around 1934, and didn't last much longer than 1935, playing in the 3rd division at the time, and reaching the 2nd round of the Dockerty Cup, where they lost 3-0 to Shepparton East. Curiously, another club calling itself Apollo participated in competition during 1952, but disappears thereafter... and it's late in 1952 that Hellenic is formed... is there any connection? Who knows. There was also one final team using that name, but this was more of an amateur outfit playing somewhere out of Fitzroy/Collingwood calling itself Apollo 11, during the early 1970s.

Apollo Athletic had a mix of Greeks and non-Greeks in the team, perhaps the most notable of which was Floros Dimitriadis. Dimitriadis later became involved with Yarra Park, and through this association was one of the two founding Vice-Presidents of South Melbourne Hellas (the other being South Melbourne United's Des Hamilton). It was also at Dimitriadis' hotel The Duke of Kent that the amalgamation between newly formed Hellas and South Melbourne United took place. Whether it's the same pub as the current Duke of Kent on La Trobe street I don't know, and any information on that is more than welcome. *see comments section for update.

The following information is from a La Trobe Uni pdf I found on the net somewhere.

Athletes and members of the Apollo Athletic Club in the early ‘30’s. In 1934, shortly after its establishment Apollo appears as the first Greek Soccer Club in Australia. In 1935, despite its progress to the 3rd category in the Victorian State Championship, it dissolved mainly due to lack of interest on the part of the Administration. In the front row from left is seen Mr Floros Dimitriadis, the founding member of Melbourne Hellas.