Does the punishment fit the crime? Sanctions in Association football

Roy Hay

Uruguayan national team and Liverpool striker Luis Suarez is in the news because he has been banned for ten matches for biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic. The sanction has provoked an outpouring of rage and defence by Liverpool manager Brendon Rogers and the CEO Ian Ayre. The former says the Football Association has ‘punished the man rather than the incident’. He is right of course and that is exactly what should be done in such cases. Why? Because the man has previous and while a one-off incident might be dealt with entirely on its merits a serial offender needs to have his overall behaviour considered as in a court of law by the sentencing judge. The jury may only be presented with the facts of the specific case and be adjured to ignore any other information, but the decision on the penalty for those found guilty, by admission of the alleged offender or after trial, rests with the presiding magistrate.

 In fact, according to the written reasons of the FA Regulatory Commission which determined the sentence in this case, there is no mention of Suarez’s previous misdemeanours and they say it was the truly exceptional circumstances of this case which led to the additional seven match ban on top of the automatic three match penalty for violent conduct.[1] The committee, which was made up of a lawyer, Thura KT Win, FA Council member, Roger Pawley, and former player, Brian Talbot, did not take into account Suarez’s past record—which included a seven-game ban for biting while he was a player at Ajax— and judged the altercation with Ivanovic in isolation.[2] So if this is true then the Rogers’ objection falls, but the issues of whether the sentence fits the crime and who should determine it and on what grounds remains.

In 1994, Glasgow Rangers’ striker Duncan Ferguson was sent to jail for three months for head-butting an opponent, John McStay of Raith Rovers, on the field. There were complaints about the severity of that sentence, but the man was on probation for two previous off-field offences at the time. Willie Woodburn was suspended sine die by the Scottish Football Association in 1954 following a string of on-field incidents. It is possible that this sanction was ultra vires and it was not challenged in court because of the player’s loyalty to the club he played for. Woodburn said subsequently that he should have appealed the ban in court and indicated that would do so in the different circumstances of 1968 when interviewed by leading journalist Hugh McIlvanney for a book by John Arlott.[3]

Suarez grew up in Uruguay before moving to Groningen in Holland and then via Ajax Amsterdam to Liverpool. While in Holland he was banned for biting an opponent and last year he was sanctioned by the Football Association for racially abusing Patrice Evra of Manchester United. On the latter occasion his manager Kenny Dalglish flew to his defence so rapidly and vehemently that he was told to pull his head in because of the effect it was having on the club’s brand.[4] Playing for Uruguay in the world Cup in South Africa, Suarez saved a certain goal for Ghana by handling the ball on the goal-line. Ghana missed the penalty and Uruguay, minus Suarez who was correctly sent off, won the subsequent shoot-out to clinch the game. Suarez quickly went from being pilloried for the offence to a national hero for saving his side.
You could easily believe that this man has no respect for the laws of the game or the society of which he is a member. He wants to win at all costs and will do anything to achieve the result. His manager puts a somewhat different gloss on the behaviour of his star player.

This is a guy who I see on a daily basis trying very hard. His two passions in life are his family and Liverpool Football Club. He throws his life into that. It is part of his make-up – you can't change that – but I genuinely think he is trying to adapt those traits he has grown up with as a kid to life and the culture here. Each time he makes a step forward we find ways to beat him with a stick and beat him down. I can understand if he felt like that [wanting to quit England] in a moment of reflection.[5]

The ‘traits he has grown up with as a kid’ or ‘his impulse takes over,’ reflect the widely-held belief in England that Uruguayans and Argentinians like Diego Maradona will cheat in any way they can to achieve a result. There are enough examples to sustain this view for consideration but such stereotyping is not very helpful. Uruguay has won the World Cup twice playing excellent football within the laws and spirit of the game and reached the semifinal in South Africa in 2010. On the other side of the ledger there was an infamous episode in Mexico in 1986 when Uruguay kicked Scotland off the park to secure a scoreless draw and an earlier battle with Glasgow Celtic in 1967 involving the leading Uruguayan club Racing.

So it is not clear that Uruguayans are uniquely culpable of bending or breaking the rules to achieve results, but the belief persists. Whether it was part of the unconscious mind-set of the members of the tribunal which imposed the penalty on Suarez is imponderable but the penalty itself was not excessive and in line with those meted out in recent seasons to among others the England captain Rio Ferdinand for missing a drug test and Suarez himself for racially abusing Evra.

[1] The Football Association and Mr Luis Suarez, Liverpool FC, The Decisions and Reasons of the FA Regulatory Commission, 25 April 2013, http://www.thefa.com/News/governance/2013/apr/~/media/164A568A93784FE391CC1FDAB4D7313F.ashx

[2] Dominic King, ‘Sorry Suarez will not appeal ten match ban,’ Daily Mail, 26 April 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2315120/Luis-Suarez-latest-Liverpool-NOT-appeal-match-ban-bite.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[3]  John Arlott, ed., Soccer: The Great Ones: Studies of Eight Great Football Players, Pelham, London, 1968, pp. 89–106.

[4] Now writing for the Daily Mirror, Dalglish has attacked the independence of the FA Regulatory Commission. Daily Mirror, 27 April 2013, http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/kenny-dalglish-luis-suarez-ban-1855378#ixzz2ReezCLP4

[5] Rogers later added, ‘He is a genuine good-hearted man, who from time-to-time his impulse will take over. We’ll see it again, in top sports people.’ King, ‘Sorry Suarez’.

Anzac Day Footy

An edited version of this article Anzac sport celebrates a unity that didn't exist was published in the Age on Anzac Day 2013.

To write about sport and war is to risk censure: Why bring sport into it? Why bring war into it? Why combine the two? Moreover, in trying to balance personal attitudes towards war and military institutions with feelings of sympathy for the individuals and families killed and maimed by war, writers invite contradiction and ambiguity into their argument. The writer’s taste for one can turn sour because of the lack of appetite for the other. So why bother to struggle with this dilemma?

Like it or not, in contemporary Australia, in late April, it becomes necessary, if not mandatory, to contemplate sport and war. Our leading football codes put the connection front and centre. The AFL and the NRL both conduct highly publicised and highly popular Anzac Day matches. It’s a new tradition to which supporters of both codes have been drawn in large numbers. Since 1995 Collingwood and Essendon have battled for Anzac supremacy at the MCG. St George and the Roosters commemorate the day in the NRL. In recent years a cross-Tasman NRL game between Melbourne Storm and New Zealand Warriors has also been added to the Anzac Day mix. This year sees the first instance of Anzac footy in New Zealand, where the Sydney Swans will take on St Kilda.

And there’s something to be said for it. Both codes provided a number of troops who served at Gallipoli and across Europe, many of whom were never to return. Collingwood lost six players, Essendon seven. So these clubs’ own histories add to the solemnity of Anzac commemorations.

Yet something is missing in these memorialisations. Many things in fact. Whole segments of a bloody and divided story are left out of the tale we are usually told.

We were not a nation united in support of Britain’s prosecution of the First World War. Many Australians were set against it. The voting patterns in the conscription referenda, first in 1916 (the ‘Yes’ vote lost narrowly) and again in 1917 (‘Yes’ lost by a wider margin) make it clear that most Australians were against conscription. Many of them would have also been against the war.

Opponents to conscription came from many quarters. Catholics, republicans, the Irish, socialists, unionists and pacifists all had reason to be anti-war and anti-conscription. And they came together as a united force. The ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee of Queensland web site claims:

One reason why so many opposed conscription was that it provided a focus for a lot of different points of view about the war. Some people opposed the war; others were opposed to conscription as a principle; others were saying that they were hurt by the economic situation of the war, and were protesting against that; still others were voting to protect unionism; others were protesting at the British treatment of the rebels in Ireland. Normally these people might not have agreed with each other on many things, but they all agreed on the conscription question, and the issue gave them all a chance to express their opposition.

As Melbourne’s dominant sporting code, Australian Rules football reflected that diversity and opposition. One of the leading figures in the anti-conscription movement, Archbishop Daniel Mannix, happened to be a cultural and spiritual powerbroker within the Irish-Catholic community of Collingwood and his opinions and instructions carried great weight for many supporters of the Collingwood Football Club. He came increasingly to speak out against the war and conscription, especially after the Easter Rising on 1916. While Mannix’s influence was counterbalanced by Collingwood Football Club patron, John Wren’s support for conscription (even while Wren's own newspaper was against it), this tension underlines the point that there was little collective sense of unity of purpose in relation to the war.

In a fascinating piece of writing in 1916, ostensibly a letter to Oriel (writer of ‘The Passing Show’ column in the Argus), a strange and ambiguous attitude to the war is taken by a Victorian ‘sport’. The correspondent answers the frequent calls for footballers and barrackers to give the game away and join up to support their brothers in the trenches.

Abandon football! Give up our glorious winter pastime, which affords us the very best opportunity of exercising our lungs, in shouting objurgations at our brave boys’ opponents over the fence! No, no; the proposal is likewise ‘over the fence.’ Can we forego the intellect-stimulating pleasure of instructing the umpire in the rules which he ought to know but doesn’t? You ask us to go to the war; but if we did who would advise Dido Denver, that bonzer ‘wing’ man, as to his play? Dido should go too, you say? Well, that’s the limit. Who’s to feed the forwards if Dido goes? Unpatriotic? Who’s unpatriotic? You should hear us sitting at the tailboard of the van singing ‘Australia Will Be There.’

No, mister; if the Germans come here they’ll soon have the sense to know that the Australian game is the best – better than all your Rugby, or Soccer, and all those. Supposing all the footballers went to the war, what would become of the old game? Supposing all the ‘barrackers’ went, the sport would go bung just the same. The crowd makes the ‘gate,’ and the ‘gate’ makes the game. What you ask is out of the question; but we’ll tell you what we’ll do. Appoint a German as umpire, and we’ll show you what loyal Australians we are. We’ll call him everything we can lay our tongue to, and deal with him after the match. There’s a fair dinkum offer. We’re sports, we are. (22 January 1916)

Bristling away behind the attempts at humour and the wanting to appear good-natured might be a sarcastic anger that questions why we are fighting in this war. Perhaps it also puts the suggestion that this war would best be fought by the exponents of “Rugby, or Soccer”, the Poms. On the other hand, maybe the piece is simply an ironic ‘white feather’ attack on those who refused to enlist. One way or the other, it points to a social resentment that runs deep.

The problem of the contemporary remembering of ANZAC is that the narrative it drives is wrong, one of an already united nation forging its identity on a Turkish beach. When we see the Collingwood and Essendon players lining up before the clash we are led to see them in unity, as different factions of one overarching national brotherhood. We are encouraged to believe in a myth.

Pies and Bombers players run through the Anzac Day banner. (Getty Images: Mark Dadswell)

A mature and sophisticated Anzac Day footy narrative would see the teams as representing divergent positions across the Catholic/Protestant, republican/imperial divides. It would tell stories of both protest and loyalty. We would be asked as viewers/spectators to reflect on how diverse and antagonistic communities came to see themselves as united (or not) through the sacrifices made in war. It might even encourage the radical idea that our presently diverse and divided communities are similarly capable of establishing symbols of unity.

Nowhere does the myth as it stands acknowledge that at the time of the Gallipoli landing many Collingwood supporters (and supporters from many of the Catholic inner-city football clubs in Melbourne and Sydney) would have been very strongly against what they saw as the British imperialist war. Nor does the myth reveal the fact that the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) was largely made up of protestant soldiers. The embarkation lists in 1914-15 indicate that a small percentage were Catholic. In the three nominal rolls I looked at around 12 per cent of the initial enlistments were Catholics. And while Catholic enlistments increased in the later stages of the war, there was an initial reluctance, especially in the inner city.

Another point lost in the telling of Anzac is that between 20 and 25 per cent of troops in the very first Australian troop ships were British born, many of them recently arrived migrants. (Now revisit a crucial vehicle in the re-building of the legend, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli and see if the soldiers’ accents reflect that statistic.) The first to fall at Gallipoli (from the 11th Battalion) were in about equal measure Australian and non-Australian born.

If it is important to commemorate Anzac Day then it is important that we remember it well and not just via slick commercialised performances. We should remember it in as much detail as we are able. We need to remember who was there, who wasn’t, why they were there and why many refused. Until the commemorations do this they will remain evasive moments of myth-making. We need to remember all, or nothing.

Soccer and Anzac: conference abstract

This is the abstract for the paper I will be delivering at the ASSH conference in Canberra in July:

In the contemporary memorialisation of the nexus between sport and Anzac, Australian soccer does not figure prominently, if at all. Hegemonic codes of football and other 'established' sports take centre stage. Australian soccer, however, was very much a part of Anzac and there is an argument to be made that at crucial moments it was more involved than the two present-day codes of football that commemorate the Anzac tradition most aggressively. This paper looks at the place of soccer in the early stages of of the mobilisation of the AIF, into the Gallipoli campaign and beyond. It argues that soccer was in fact over-represented in the AIF and, as a result, in the Rolls of Honour, one of the main contributing factors to the game's lowered significance in immediate post-war Australia.

International journal of the history of sport

The next issue is out soon and will contain an article by yours truly and a number of other, good soccer pieces. Make sure you check it out at your library. If its not available at your library, nag them.

The International Journal of the History of Sport
Volume 30, Number 5, March 2013
Australasia and the Pacific Regional Issue
Edited by Rob Hess 

Articles 

The ‘Chimera’ of Origins: Association Football in Australia before 1880
Ian Syson

‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions, Memories and Communities of Sydney’s Italian Immigrants
Francesco Ricatti and Matthew Klugman

Against the Run of Play: The Emergence of Australian Soccer Literature
Paul Mavroudis

The Forgotten Grounds of Sydney: A Retrospective Overview of Select National Soccer League Venues
Les Street 

Organising Sport at the Olympic Games: The Case of Sydney 2000
Stephen Frawley 

Wicked Wikipedia? Communities of Practice, the Production of Knowledge and Australian Sport History
Stephen Townsend, Murray Phillips and Gary Osmond

Soccer Kicks Off in Bendigo 1902

Information has come to light that establishes soccer in Bendigo a little earlier than previously assumed, in May 1902. This is a period in which soccer is virtually absent in Melbourne but is starting to crop up in outlying towns and regions. The Bendigo Advertiser announces:

English Football.—An endeavor is being made to form an English Football Association in Bendigo. The matter took definite   form on Friday night, when a well-attended meeting was held at the City Club hotel. It was explained that the proposal was to form an association, comprising four teams, of 11 men each. The teams will be composed of a goalkeeper, two back men, three half-backs, and five forwards. It is the intention of the promoters of the movement to play in strict accordance with the   rules of the English Association game. A few particulars as to how the game is played may be of interest. In the first place, a round ball is used, and no player, excepting the goalkeeper, is allowed to handle the ball. In the event of a player violating   this rule a free kick is awarded. A goal is secured when the ball is sent between the uprights and beneath the crossbar. The five forward men act as followers. The game is immensely popular in England, where some of the premiership matches are witnessed by thousands of spectators. A meeting of those desirous of joining the association will be held at the City Club hotel to-morrow night. (Monday 19 May 1902)

Two days later the newspaper reported the same meeting, giving a little more practical detail.

A meeting was held at the City Club hotel, for the purpose of forming a club to play the English association game of football in Bendigo. Thirty-two were present, and the following office-bearers were elected: — President, Dr. Hinchcliff; vice-presidents, Messrs. Sternberg, M.L.C., A. S. Bailee, M.L.A., J. R. Hartley and D. Paterson; hon. secretary; Mr. A. Atkinson; treasurer, Mr. H. L.  Atkinson. A practice match will be hold at the Sydenham Gardens to-day, cabs leaving the fountain at 2.30 p.m. When local players become more proficient, it is intended to give expositions of the game before the senior premiership matches on Wednesday afternoons, and so help to popularise the new game.

There are a couple of noteworthy points to be made. First, the committee is made up of local community leaders and politicians, giving a strong sense of how significant a development this was seen by some in the community. Secondly, the implied good feelings and co-operation of the local footy association in helping to promote the new game can be contrasted with less co-operative attitudes in other times and places.

Though co-operation was not universal. On 31 May The Advertiser reported that:

In Bendigo the movement to establish an English Association was at first received very coldly, but the practice matches held  during the past few weeks have revealed the   interesting features of the game, and so awakened interest that the Association now boasts well over the requisite four-team strength—44 players. At these matches some of the men displayed remarkable cleverness for beginners. Without submitting to the temptation to   wander from the allotted positions, the young players embraced every opportunity of working the ball into their opponents' territory. Many of them give promise of developing into fast and useful players.

So while there was some opposition this seems to have wavered and the game sems to have made significant progress in a short time. 

 On June 4, the Association plays in 'colours' for the first time. The colours chosen certainly indicate an affinity with the English Public School system on the part of some of those involved.

ENGLISH ASSOCIATION GAME.

The newly-formed English Association engaged in a practice match at Back Creek on Wednesday, when the players made their first appearance under colors. The A team, captained by Fred. Pierce, was arrayed in Oxford and Cambridge blues, while the B team entered the field in neat-looking   chocolate and gold singlets. The game lasted 80 minutes, and was fast and interesting throughout. The teams are rapidly becoming   accustomed to the points of English  Association football. The play all round showed a marked improvement on previous exhibitions, and penalties were seldom  necessary. With assiduous training and close attention to the rules of the game, the new association should provide some interesting matches during the ensuing season.  

Now that the association has established itself in Bendigo, a plan of the playing field may be of interest to those unacquainted with the game. By the plan shown below it will be seen that at the commencement of play each team occupies half of the field, the five forwards on each side facing each other close to the centre line. The single player on the extreme back line represents the goal-keeper. In the practice match on "Wednesday the positions of the players were as follows: —

PLAN OF THE FIELD.

A TEAM.

M'Neill (goal-keeper).

Williams. Ashley.

Richardson. Cook. Huntley.

H. Atkinson, Pierce, Richards, Grant, Recce.

[Centre.]

B TEAM.

Cook, Tregear, Leggo, Eraser. Stickmann.

Crawford. Heffernan. Allen.

East. Hartley. Ashby (goal-keeper).

Later in June, the game is exposed to the public for the first time as a preliminary exhibition match before the South Bendigo v Eaglehawk footy match.

FOOTBALL.

To-day's Matches.

This afternoon patrons of football will be afforded an interesting display by the members of the newly-formed English Association team, who will make their first appearance in public, and will play a match between the A and B teams from 2.30 till 3.-1-5. The teams have been practising diligently since their formation, and spectators will have a chance of comparing the English Association game and its different points with the Australian game.

Similar exhibition matches are played throughout the season.

In what is a fairly typical narrative structure of these kinds of stories, the first year of soccer in Bendigo is a success. Establishment, the recruitment and training of players, exhibition matches and a reasonably successful season all indicate a healthy beginning. Yet it seems to come to nothing. Soccer is nowhere to be seen in Bendigo in 1903 and it is not until 1912 that we can find another archival reference to the game being played in Bendigo.

The 1912 game was previewed in the Advertiser:

SOCCER MATCH.

Arrangements for the exhibition game of British Association (Soccer) football, in the Upper Reserve next Wednesday, between a team from the surrounding district and a metropolitan combination, in aid of the Watson Sustentation fund, are well advanced.  

This will be the first occasion on which this class of football has been played in Bendigo.

At last night's meeting of the Miners' Association committee the Bendigo Football Association was severely criticised for its action in postponing one of its matches from last Wednesday for a week in order to run counter to the Soccer fixture.  

A typical mistake is made in this report. As we know soccer was played in Bendigo in 1902 something that the newspaper could have established by looking at its own archives or consulting long term residents. Yet it's a mistake that gets made across the country across the Twentieth century. Soccer is a game whose re-establishment can only ever be understood as a new, brand new enterprise.

The 10 years had also seen much change. The term Soccer had replaced English Association Football. More importantly, the pressure of new waves of British migration had seen soccer's stocks rise in the metropolitan regions. The rhetoric and practice of soccerphobia were starting to rise within footy communities. The local footy association's manipulation of fixtures to "run counter to the Soccer fixture" (a charity game) is a forewarning of the kind of battles that soccer has had to fight since that time.

AS Roma, at the Footy in 1966

This one speaks for itself

 

DOPE FOR FOOTBALLERS!

I knew the Footy Record was both ahead of its time and off its head. This from Round 4 1936 kind of proves it.

Startling Proposal.

A London exchange recently contained the following, which to Australians is as amazing as it is ridiculous;—

"A startling proposal hat been made to a first division football League club (soccer) that they should dope their players before a match. It was put forward with the plausible suggestion that the concoction offered would simply help the men to play for ninety minutes at full speed, but I am told that it was dope under the thinnest disguise.

"The flagging energies of a team have been stimulated at half-time by champagne, but this is the first time I have known of any plan being conceived to induce players to put forth greater physical efforts by 'doctoring' them.

"A director of the club Said: 'The offer came to us mysteriously, and, although we never had any thought of using it, we decided to explore it. Obviously we were being asked to dope the men, and, even if we could have persuaded them to take the medicine simply as a tonic, as we were asked to regard it, we should have deserved the severest censure. The suggestion was abhorrent to us.

"But, with the knowledge of some of my fellow directors, I decided to test the effect of the dope on myself. It was certainly remarkable. I became unusually roused and excited, and I felt livelier and stronger. These feelings, too, died away gradually, and I was not conscious of any reaction or ill effects.

"But, if we might have won all our matches by doping the players, you may bo sure we should not have done so. I reported the result of my test and—the concoction was thrown down the drain."

And with that action the sport loving Australian public will heartily concur.

Jack

A Lost Aboriginal Soccer Player Found?

This is as mysterious as it is exciting. Smack bang in the middle of this fantastic photograph of the Dinmore Bush Rats (is there a better name in Australian sport?) 1910 2nd Premiers, is a man who appears to be Aboriginal. He is named as Quilp and his presence in the photo sends a frisson through the settled histories of football in Australia.

Dinmore Bush Rats, 2nd Premiers, Ipswich, 1910.
Top row: W. Lucas, W. Pioch, G. Humphrey, D. Potts, N. Randolph. 2nd row: C. H. Jones (Vice-president), J. Potts (Vice-president), G. Skellern, Quilp, A. Nunn, W. Dawes (Treasurer), J. Tedman (Vice-president). 3rd row: W. Jordan (Secretary), J. Burns, J. Staafford (Patron), E. Dawes (Captain), G. Jones, M. Bailey (President), W. Thompson, A. Stewart (Vice-president). Front row: M. Reichart, W. Tait, H. Randolph, H. Hainsworth (Vice-president).

Quilp

Who is Quilp? Is he Aboriginal? Where is he from? How does he come to be playing British Association Football? Why the Dickensian name? There's a PhD in all of that!

A cursory glance at the digital archive reveals one reference to a soccer player named Quilp, playing for the Reliance team from Dinmore in 1904. Confusingly, it suggests the Quilp was sent off for backchat and then subsequently scored the winning goal that was to become the subject of a protest.

Quilp began talking to the referee and was ordered off the field. The game now was very fast and Hunter was playing well is also was Roberts and Salisbury. Verrol in goal as per usual was very clever in clearing his goal line. The Reliance got away, and Quilp had a shot at goal. To the spectators it did not seem as though they scored, but the referee gave a goal to Reliance, who were now 1 to nil. No further goals were scored, and at call of time a protest with regard to the above goal was lodged. The Brisbane Courier Monday 30 May 1904 p 6

It is possible that this is the first recorded goal by a senior Aboriginal player in Australian soccer, though it's also possible that as a forward (winger) he scored a few before that.

It's a mystery that is just begging to be explained. More to come!

No not that Robert Muir, this Robert Muir!

Robert Muir 1

SATURDAY'S FOOTBALL DISTURBANCE. Robert Muir, who was the leading spirit in the disgraceful football "barrackers'" rowdyism at Camberwell on Saturday afternoon, was before the local court to-day, charged with assaulting the police and two civilians and using obscene language. He was sentenced to three terms of three months' imprisonment for the assaults, and fined £10, or in default an additional three months, for obscene language. The chairman of the bench characterised accused's conduct as that of one of the greatest ruffians ever brought before him. Accused's plea all through was that he was drunk.Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954) Saturday 1 September 1900 p 15

Robert Muir 2

 

RAAF and other Australian Military Soccer Photos

Gearing up for the rewriting of my Soccer and Anzac piece in time for ANZAC Day, just found a little nest egg of photos recently added to the war memorial collection.

The first two are photos of soccer teams/games played in North Africa in 1943 involving members of the RAAF, or seconded RAF members.

El Daba, Egypt. c. December 1943. A group portrait of No. 451 (Spitfire) Squadron RAAF, soccer team.
The squadron, in its long service overseas, has made a big name for itself in the field of sport,
including football, Australian rules, rugby and soccer.

LIBYA. 1943. RAF MEMBERS OF NO. 454 SQUADRON, RAAF PLAYING SOCCER IN THE WESTERN DESERT.

BAALBEK, SYRIA. 1941-11-01. A SCENE DURING THE SOCCER MATCH BETWEEN AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN TEAMS. THE INDIAN TEAM WAS FROM THE ROYAL INDIAN ARMY SERVICE CORPS.

HOLLAND. 1944-10-23. RAAF AND RAF AIR AND GROUND CREWS OF SPITFIRE NO. 130 SQUADRON RAF KEEP WARM WITH A GAME OF SOCCER DURING A LULL IN OPERATIONS AT AN AIRFIELD IN HOLLAND.

Cuers, France. October 1944. Informal portrait of 11207 Leading Aircraftman K. E. Lewis of Hamilton, Vic, the only RAAF member of a soccer team from No. 451 (Spitfire) Squadron RAAF of France. All the other players were RAF members attached to the squadron.