David A Grant: Meeting which changed soccer in South Australia

SOUTH Australia first staged a soccer team representing Australia in 1923 — but the game in this state travelled a long and bumpy journey to get there, as DAVID A GRANT reports.

Socceroo captain soccer player John Kosmina, left, in action against Italian giant Juventus at Football Park in 1984.

SOUTH Australia first staged a soccer team representing Australia in 1923 — but the game in this state travelled a long and bumpy journey to get there, as DAVID A GRANT reports.

John Acraman arrived in South Australia, from England, in 1847. Widely regarded as the Father of South Australian Football, and inducted into the SANFL Hall of Fame in 2002, he was instrumental in bringing decorum to the chaotic early days of football in Adelaide.

A sports enthusiast, he despaired at the lack of organised recreational activity in the colony and, in 1854, imported five round footballs. He also had the first recorded goalposts erected in South Australia.

In the 1850s, football in various forms — for there was no universal set of rules — was being regularly played in Adelaide’s parklands but no clubs existed as such; just teams of people playing scratch matches.

They came from a variety of social groups including St Peter’s old collegians, British migrants, soldiers barracked in Adelaide and others with a common interest in “hunting the leather”.

Among the civilians who played were the teams of North Adelaide and South Adelaide. In those days of Corinthian amateur sport, players dutifully represented their residential locality, in this case north or south of the River Torrens.

Aurelio Vidmar (10) heads ball into goal for Socceroos against South Africa in 1994.

As for the soldiers, they were regarded as being especially rowdy and their rambunctious supporters were termed “barrackers”, from which the use of the word barracking — to support — comes.

Mr Acraman’s teams were abiding by the laws of a form of football known as the Harrow rules — a close relative of Association Football, shortened to “soccer”. They used crossbars, two posts, round balls and a very limited use of the hands.

From teams eventually came clubs, which included Port Adelaide in 1870, and the newspapers of that era consistently report that football is played between teams comprising of around 15 players, implying a kinship with rugby.

Playing numbers aside, great debate ensued with regard to exactly which rules to heed. Points of contention ranged from the question of whether the ball could be handled or not, to whether the deliberate “hack”, or trip, should be permitted.

So, on May 10, 1873, at the Prince Alfred Hotel, attached to the Adelaide Town Hall, a meeting was held between the delegates of the Adelaide, Woodville, Kensington, South Adelaide and Port Adelaide football clubs.

The purpose was to draw up a code of agreed laws and the outcome was a move away from the Harrow rules to what was known as the Kensington rules — a locally developed football game.

But matches continued to be farcical with clubs still unable to agree on the finer aspects of the game’s laws.

Once more, on 20th July 1876, at the Prince Alfred Hotel, a meeting was held to decide, once and for all, on a uniformed code.

The outcome was to abandon both the Harrow and the Kensington formats and to adopt a set of laws more closely related to the game played in Victoria.

The round ball and cross bars were to be abandoned in favour of the oval ball and “upright posts of unlimited height”. Handling the ball was fully permitted.

Socceroo captain soccer player John Kosmina, left, in action against Italian giant Juventus.

Soccer in South Australia was being irrevocably cast aside in favour of what was becoming the Australian game, imported from Melbourne.

It is conceivable that if the outcome of that 1876 meeting had been different, Port Adelaide might now be competing in the Australian soccer A-League and not the Australian Football League.

Regardless, for soccer in South Australia, all was not lost. The game’s popularity was spreading with the stream of migrants and the laying of railway tracks. The round ball was still being kicked as far away as Petersburg (now Peterborough) and Tailem Bend, despite having lost the original dash for popular place in SA.

Soccer also maintained a stubborn foothold in other states with interstate games organised between NSW and Victoria in Melbourne in the early 1880s. However, it wasn’t until the 1890s that there was significant revival in Adelaide.

In 1894, soccer, by then known as British Association Football, was resuscitated following a meeting at the Terminus Hotel, (now the Strathmore Hotel) on North Tce. Internal games were organised and matches arranged with the crews of visiting ships. In 1902, a formal competition was launched.

Frank Storr was a founder member of the South Australian British Football Association, the organisation formed to finally establish structured competition for the game in SA. The first meeting was held at his tailor shop at 94 Gawler St in Adelaide.

The game caught on again and clubs emerged. Among them were Sturt, Adelaide, Cheltenham, Army Medical Corp, Woodville, Scottish Corps and Wallaby. This last one was uniquely a club for Australian-born players.

Socceroos and Tajikistan line up at the Adelaide Oval. Picture: SARAH REED

In early 1904, the visiting England cricket team had just completed the Ashes tour and was prepared to depart for home from Adelaide. After a resounding loss and with a day to spare as a result, a South Australian soccer side played the English cricket team at Adelaide Oval.

The cricketers soundly beat this early state side 7-0, in what was possibly the first soccer match on that hallowed turf. England skipper, Reginald “Tip” Foster, a dual-international having captained England at both cricket and soccer, scored a hat-trick.

Many soccer clubs disbanded during World War I, and the code was also struck by the losses of youngsters recruited to the war effort.

Interest in the game again lifted when peace returned. A national team to represent Australia debuted in 1922 and Adelaide hosted its first international match — of sorts — on October 5, 1923.

A touring team of players, mostly from Hong Kong but billed as China, played out a 2-2 draw in front of a reported crowd of 9000 at the Jubilee Oval.

The oval, now part of the Adelaide University grounds, sat at the corner of Frome Rd and Victoria Drive, next to the River Torrens.

This match was followed two years later by a visit from the Canadian national side on July 12, 1924.

In front of 6000 spectators, Australia was beaten 4-1 having played a man down for most of the match after losing Gilbert Storey early on to injury. These were the days prior to substitutions being permitted.

Sydney-born James “Judy” Masters, a veteran of Gallipoli and Pozieres, captained the Australians, playing in green shirts and white shorts. No South Australians were selected to play.

Originally published as David A Grant: Meeting which changed soccer in South Australia