Around this time last year John Harms published a fortieth year anniversary history of the AFL/VFL Players’ Association. His research was aided enormously by the early work of Braham Dabscheck, an academic who went on to be a leader in the area of understanding player associations, organisations, and unions (around the world). Braham now writes for the Almanac. To add to those St Kilda laments, we feel it’s timely to publish one of his early papers. [Thanks to Braham for making this original research paper available, and to Jay Carmichael for his diligent editing/conversion job – Ed]