How the West was Won

This article (a retrospective from The West Australian in 1929 on the occasion of an Australian rules junior carnival) tells an interesting story of how soccer went from being a dominant junior sport in Perth into being a poor relation. The author sees a J.J. Simons-led Victorian invasion and an upsurge in Australian nationalism as being responsible for Australian rules' ascension into first place in Perth's sporting culture. I've posted about this before but this article speaks wistfully and eloquently for itself. It's biased for sure and there will be alternative perspectives, but the letter's tone of resignation articulates a kind of wearily defensive and reactive perspective familiar to contemporary socceristas.

The piece also offers an interesting perspective on the contemporary AFL push into Western Sydney. Do the schools still hold the key?

LOOKING BACK.

(By 'Penalty.')

How many of those who will throw themselves with zest into the schoolboys' football carnival will look back to the vital days in the annals of metropolitan school football— the period of 1900-2— and venture to concede a word of gratitude and praise to those who brought about the great change from the supremacy of British Association football to Australian football?

About 1900-2 there were some 28 schools almost entirely given over to the playing of the soccer game, and the then-called 'Victorian' game had scarcely a footing. The outlook for the home code was gloomy indeed. Soccer had a well-established and popular association, with, senior and junior leagues of excellent and promising standard; it was gradually moving ahead in popularity. It drew officials players and supporters from every walk of life, and seemed destined to become firmly fixed in the hearts of the populace. It was not exactly due to any inherent and special merit of the soccer code that this supremacy was due, but rather to the in difference of such Australian authorities as there were in those days. The soccer association recognised—quite early—that the schools were the best recruiting grounds for any game of football, and from this sphere they looked forward to receiving a large number of promising lads, together with the personal interests of their parents and friends, to build up the popularity of the game in Perth and district. And it was not costing them very much, perhaps only an occasional ball. They tried to inculcate the spirit of self-help or pure amateurism, and the response was remarkable. The association was fortunate in having in those days a band of enthusiastic and untiring men to push this work along in Alex Peters, Captain White, the Burt brothers, and many others, and members of the Schools' Athletic Association, particularly Messrs. Hamilton, Hughes and Wheeler, with all of whom time and expense appeared to be of no account so long as the schoolboys continued to play soccer.

But then someone in the Australian camp had a brain wave, and before the soccer officials woke up to the strength of the campaign launched against them a very powerful movement was in full swing to dethrone the so-called 'foreign' game in favour of the one fashioned and perfected in Melbourne, and till then making little headway in the West, notwithstanding the influx of Victorians into the State after the discovery of gold. The man who figured most in the van of this campaign and who came rather like the bull in the arena to the unsuspecting soccer officials, Was J. J. Simons. Others assisted him, but he it was who aroused the excitement and resentment of the soccer officials by the pertinacity of his efforts to win through with the scheme. The soccer officials fought him by pen and speech, and interview with the schools authorities, but their attempts to stem the rising tide or favour for the 'Victorian' code were in vain.

With free guernseys, free balls, and plenty of enthusiastic coaches and organisers, the campaign was carried on with unusual fervency, and zeal in the avowed interests of Australian nationalism. But the scheme did not end with the schools; it was carried over into the ex- Scholars' region with, extraordinary success, and it was a clever and effective move to give these bands of enthusiastic youngsters titles after Australian explorers and statesmen. Against this wave of fervour for the new game the soccer code very soon began to languish, and its senior and junior leagues began to find themselves lacking in recruits. By about 1910, with immigration slackening off, some of the senior soccer clubs found themselves in difficulties and in some cases had to be abandoned.

When the war broke out there was a very limited number of players available outside the actual clubs of the day. When the struggle for supremacy was raging, about three schools had teachers who stuck very loyally to soccer— Claremont, Fremantle and James-street, which adopted a kind of mixed attitude and played both games. Afterwards, as the result of some concession by the schools authorities, the soccer game has managed to keep a certain amount of affection among a section of the boys of several schools, and to-day it may be conceded that the round ball, while not so common in the school playgrounds as in the years around 1900-4, has its relative place in the scheme of juvenile pastimes. Looking back over these 30 years the writer, as one of the soccer officials of the 'nineties, doubts if without the enthusiasm of J. J. Simons, the Australian game would ever have made its position as secure as it did.