Almanac Book Review: ‘Australian Soccer from the Beginning’ – Ted Simmons OAM

September 16, 2023 by haysoc Leave a Comment

Australian Soccer cover.PNG Ted Simmons, OAM, Australian Soccer from the Beginning, PB Publishing, Gisborne, Victoria, 3437, 2023. ISBN 9780648557968, RRP $45.00.

The capstone to Ted Simmons long and distinguished career in journalism and research was launched in July this year in Sydney to coincide with his 95th birthday. For much of his working life he was the source of information on soccer through his role with Australian Associated Press. Journalists, historians and practitioners in the game relied on the basic data he helped provide. Several years ago he began putting the historical information he had accumulated into this book that tells a story of the game from the mid-nineteenth century to around the demise of the National Soccer League and the return of Frank Lowy in the early years of the twenty-first century.

The coverage is organised by state and territory which reflects the way the game was governed for much of its history since the mid-nineteenth century. The book also gives almost equal weight to the women’s and men’s games in each. The fact that soccer was the first of the football codes to organise national annual competitions for men and women in the 1970s is perhaps not given the analysis and prominence that pioneering deserves.

The book is published in an unusual format A4 Landscape and weighs 1.4 kilograms, so it is a weighty tome in more than one sense. High quality coated paper ensures that the illustrations, many of them appearing here for the first time it is claimed, are shown at their best quality. Many take up a full page and several of the more recent ones appear in full colour. Its physical dimensions mean this is a book for the coffee table rather than the bookshelf. PB Publishing deserves credit for taking on this contribution to the long history of the game in Australia with its wide geographical coverage and almost equal treatment of men’s and women’s football.

The author, Ted Simmons, also covered Davis Cup tennis, Australian cricket tours and men’s FIFA World Cups as well as the 1956 Melbourne and 2000 Sydney Olympics. He received a host of awards including Soccer Australia’s 1999 Sports Journalist of the Year, the Australian Sports Medal (ASM) in 2000 for services to athletics and an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2006 for 50 years’ service to journalism, sport and the community. Ted was also inducted into the Football Australia Hall of Fame in November 2011 and elected to the FFA Panel of Historians in February 2012.

The book can be purchased Here.