Atypical artefact Friday - Hellas Soccer Club Melbourne pennant

In lieu of the Kiss of Death having gone missing this week, I decided to pull out an artefact for a Friday instead of a Wednesday. This pennant was in the South Melbourne Hellas boardroom back at the old Lakeside offices, and I assume that it dates well back to our days at Middle Park. Most notably, it does not include the name 'South Melbourne' in any part of its design - could this mean that it dates back to the 1959 merger of Yarra Park and Hellenic to form Hellas, but before that newly formed club amalgamated with South Melbourne United in early 1960? I can't say for sure; perhaps it was a later Anglisised example of the club's Greek name 'Ελλάς Μελβούρνης', (Ellas Melvournis). All that I can say for sure is that it's one of our most beautiful and well made pennants - flimsy this ain't - and something that many if not most of our fans would have never seen.

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.

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.

Yarra Park never stood a chance

Looks like the collective amnesia has shifted from South Melbourne United to Yarra Park Aias. I'm sure in another 50 years we'll sort that out too. I've ordered the jersey Rama is wearing, but hopefully the other two become available for purchase as well, seeing as how there has been a fair bit of interest in the Hellenic strip in particular.