Australia
Here are the captains of the earliest Australian national football teams. In 1922 and 1923 it was Alex Gibb. In 1924 there were Judy Masters and W. Maunder. Judy Masters was a man, by the way, given names James William. Maunder's given name was incidentally also William but he was known as "Podge". Then in 1933 there was George Smith and finally in 1936, Alex Cameron. And all of them seem apart from football to have one thing in common. That was coal.
1922 was a late international start. It was almost forty years after Canada for example, given that soccer was in Ontario and Australia started not just early but at much the same time. Australia's football timeline says the organised game arrived first in Melbourne in Victoria in 1881 with the formation of four clubs. What kind of clubs, middle- or working-class, is hard to tell, although the former is more likely. It might even have arrived earlier still. In 1876 in the fifth, official international ever played, the fifth against Scotland, Arthur Savage, born in Sydney, was in goal, and for England. That was before he returned to Australia and was, it is said, an organiser of and perhaps player in the first fully documented football match, seemingly a one-off, in 1880 in Parramatta in inland New South Wales. That therefore would make down-under third only to England and Scotland or perhaps just fourth to Wales to stage the organised game.
But Savage's contribution would not really lead to football becoming embedded. True in 1881 the "English Football Association" had been set up in Sydney and 1883 saw its affiliation with, it is said, the "British FA" but since no such thing existed then or exists even now, it has to be assumed that the "English" FA was meant. Moreover that same year also saw the first inter-state match, Victoria versus New South Wales, in addition to which in 1884 back in Melbourne a group of "gentlemen" had, it is said, seemingly taken matters a little further still. They met to form the Anglo-Australian Football Association, which was fine except for three things.
Firstly, the new association was certainly not Australian-wide. It might have seemed to mark the first move towards central control but that is about all. It would be another thirty years before the Commonwealth Football Association was formed in Brisbane in 1911 bringing the State FAs together, another ten on top until its replacement in 1921 by the Australian Soccer Football Association, based in Sydney, after which came FIFA membership in 1956 and the formation of the Australian Soccer Federation in 1963. The new body was needed because in the meantime there had been a slight stoochie with FIFA over the poaching of overseas players, and presumably not paying for them. It was reminiscent of the American Soccer Wars but at least was overcome without the almost complete collapse of the game as had been the case thirty odd years earlier in the USA.
Secondly, it was neither Anglo or an association. The chairman of the meeting was a W. Niven,. The motion of formation was put forward by a C. Kier, probably Crawford Kier, Glasgow-born in 1858, who had arrived in Melbourne as a clerk in 1879 and would return to Scotland as the manager of a glass business, dying in Uddingston in 1890. And the motion was seconded by an F. Lowe. That is two of three Scots so far. Then its resultant committee included Kier and Lowe, had as Secretary and Treasurer J. C. Teare and the other members were Smith, Buchanan, Niven once more, Brough and Keef. That is it was at least half-Scots with this question of Scots input in Australian football constantly underplayed. Moreover Kier was elected as Captain, i.e Team Captain, and Lowe as Vice-Captain, which points to it in fact being a football club, and not the first early one to use "Association" in its title.
And thirdly, the Australian middle-classes would mostly turn away from soccer in favour Rugby Union and Aussie Rules. It left the working-class, particularly the coal-mining working-class was to carry the flag, which fortunately was also raised in 1884 with the formation of what would be Judy Master's home club, Balgownie Rangers. Balgownie was a place where coal was king, a pit-village three miles north of Woolongong, now a Woolongong suburb, and its football was not only proletarian but also with a strong, Scottish miners' input from its very first kick.
Balgownie remains the doyen of Australian teams, that is the oldest still playing. In 2016 it was 5th in the District League, First Division. However, it would not be alone for long. Coal was being mined elsewhere. Ten miles north of Woolongong is Coledale, the hometown of George Smith, who would begin his career halfway between the two at another mining town, Corrimal. In northern New South Wales the pits were centred around Newcastle. In time Bill Maunder and Alex Cameron would hone their skills there, whilst Alex Gibb showcased his on the pitches in Queensland in the towns that grew up around Brisbane and the pit-villages of its hinterland, all places where wee, hard men, more often than not Scots, had coal ingrained weeks of hard graft but at the weekend the pleasure of "kickin' the leather". It was a game that made some of them heroes. It even was enough to take at least one back to British league football and it was the source of one of the great stories of unfulfilled cricketing greatness. Here are their tales.
Queensland