Philip Mosely, Soccer
in New South Wales, 1880–1980, Sports & Editorial Services Australia
with The Vulgar Press, Bannockburn and Melbourne, 2014, xvi + 392 pp.., $39.95
(paperback), ISBN 978-0-9751970-9-7
Soccer in New South Wales, 1880–1980, besides the original
thesis includes two chapters from Mosley’s Ethnic Involvement in Australian
Soccer: A History, 1950–1990 (National Sports Research Centre, Australian
Sports Commission, Canberra, 1995) and ‘A Biographical Sketch of John Walter
Fletcher’, who turned out for The Wanderers in the first ever game played in
New South Wales against the King’s School rugby squad on Saturday 14 August
1880, and was New South Wales’ first leading soccer administrator (Appendix A,
291–300). This volume is a further reflection of the scholarship and writings
on soccer that has recently blossomed in Australia, such as Roy Hay and Bill
Murray’s A History of Football In Australia: A Game of Two Halves (Melbourne,
Hardie Grant Books, 2014); and worldwide with the increasing number of soccer
(or football) books being published.
Soccer in New South Wales, 1880–1980 is a monumental study,
an example of unparalleled scholarship. Its first strength is the breadth of
its research. Mosley has consulted a wide range of sources, turned over
thousands and thousands of pages in doing the fundamental work necessary to
understand the serendipitous course of soccer in New South Wales. The text is
also liberally spiced with contemporary photos of various persons, teams and
memorabilia associated with the progress of the game. Second, Mosley writes
with a clear and engaging style which makes the material easily accessible for
both popular and academic readers. He is to be congratulated in how he manages
to weave so many different strands into a coherent whole which makes for
fascinating reading.
Mosley’s account begins with the first match played at
King’s School as identified above. Having such a game at one of Sydney’s
prestigious private schools is indicative of how the game in New South Wales
was introduced by the educated upper classes usually associated with the
emergence and growth of Rugby. The game quickly became more democratic as
worker immigrants from the ‘old dart’ formed local clubs and searched for
nearby teams for competition. This was particularly true with the emergence of
soccer in Newcastle, with miners turning to soccer as a major forum for both
sporting and social interaction. Newcastle has long been a stronghold of soccer
in New South Wales.
Mosley also documents the emergence and growth of soccer in
other regional areas, its take up by different religious groups, factory teams,
mid-week leagues and after the Second World War and the influence of immigrant
groups from different parts of Europe. He also situates the discussion of
soccer’s progress as it competed against rival football codes, Rugby League,
Rugby and Australian Rules Football in establishing a foothold in schools
(private schools favoured Rugby Union, Roman Catholic schools favoured Rugby
League and state schools favoured soccer), access to grounds and stadia and
press, and later radio coverage. He also documents the various splits and
confrontations that occurred at the administrative level. Australia has been an
immigrant society. Prior to the Second World War, most of these immigrants came
from Britain, after the War from Europe. Different generations of the ‘old
brigade’ found themselves being challenged by ‘new chums’ who formed their own
teams and believed they had a superior style of play to Australian locals and
wanted to find their place in the sun. Major administrative splits occurred in
1914, 1928, 1943 and 1957.
Mosley examines in some detail the emergence of so called
ethnic clubs associated with European migration after the Second World War.
Besides the split of 1957 which this engendered, he provides information on the
important transitional role that these clubs played for so many new arrivals,
the antipathy expressed to New Australians after the War, explanations of the
violence that sometimes occurred between both players and supporters of rival
ethnic groups, how the ‘Continentals’ improved and broadened the quality of
play and spectator interest, Australia being banned by FIFA for the non payment
of transfer fees for 31 European players from 1959 to 1963 which was associated
with a boom in attendance, and how once European immigration dried up after
1961, most ethnic clubs were forced to employ English and Scottish players with
an attendant loss of spectator interest in the local game.
Mosley also provides information on tours by overseas teams,
and how these were used to drum up enthusiasm for the game in New South Wales
and Australia more generally. He also has material on how the game was played,
changes in style which mainly followed British influences until the arrival of
the Europeans, and various experiments with rule changes and attempts to make
the game more popular. While Mosley is interested in the commercial success of
soccer, he also wishes to emphasize that for the majority of its participants,
it was a vehicle for recreation and social interaction. Playing soccer, for
him, is something that was just great fun.
We should all be thankful for Ian Syson and Roy Hay for
inducing Philip Mosley to make his Ph.D. thesis available to a wider audience.
His research of almost three decades ago has aged well. This book will be
regarded as the definitive work on the history of soccer in New South Wales for
many years to come.
Braham Dabscheck
Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne
First published, Soccer & Society, Vol. 18, No. 4, July 2017, Pages 593-594
Book can be ordered from Dennis Jones and Associates
First published, Soccer & Society, Vol. 18, No. 4, July 2017, Pages 593-594
Book can be ordered from Dennis Jones and Associates
