I am interested in reading and watching all manner of football related histories, including documentaries, whole games, and all the discussions about them. I am used to the voices of past commentators, such as Peter Landy and Lou Richards, and of the different ways they used to talk. Like how Lou Richards used to say, “Gee, I’d hate to buy real-estate off that umpire, that looked like a very small 15 metres”. Or how Sandy Roberts used to use analogies such as “all the players swoop down, like seagulls on a left-over lunch”. I’d be able to recognise most any game over the last 65 years within a few seconds of watching it, whether the identifiable feature was a certain player, a grandstand or a sponsor the players were wearing. If there was one place I’d frequent, it was op shops and second-hand market stalls.
These places sold any number of football print media, such as magazines, reports, and old football cards. Here you could find stuff that just isn’t readily available, even with the internet. Like a report from 1968 about the grand plans for the yet-to-be opened VFL Park.; or the 1986 VFL season review, the year Ross Oakley took the top job in football; and, lastly, player’s biographies.
For me, this made second-hand better than a new release. Op shops had biographies of players from decades ago, and their books were also released decades ago, usually while they were still playing or shortly after their retirement. So the sort of things they spoke about would be observations about their team mates or other sides. These are things that probably wouldn’t have been said if the book had been released years afterward. All of their observations, when written, were current and not written in retrospect. It feels very different from that perspective. There are new football books all the time, and I’ve read a lot of them. Some just feel like they are repeating the same information and stats while others are more in depth. That said, I will continue to comb through second-hand dealers and stalls, looking for another magazine, biography or report.
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