Is anyone home? The echo of AAMI Park on a Tuesday evening

I certainly enjoyed researching his life and was lucky to make contact with his grand daughter. Bob was described in several reports I came across as one of Australia's all time great captains. I'll let you know when I finish my book.

Lionheart- I met Bob Lawrie on many occasions, he was headmaster at a school up Ipswich way but his playing career was long over. He was a thorough gentleman and had 2 sons who played the game, Glenn with Coalstars and Iain at Brisbane Lions. Iain also played with Australia at under-age level. I lost touch but I believe Ian died at a tragically young age. jb

Thanks JB. A pity I can't link you to the newspaper reports of the day, my access is a subscription service, view only. Some interesting match reports but I see that Dynamo are described as not relying on a couple of good players, but on good team play. They seem to score in the opening minutes fairly regularly. In that home season in Moscow, according to one report, 19 wins, two draws and one defeat, 73 goals to 13 against. The Australian player I researched is Bob Lawrie.

Lionheart - I well remember the Dynamos tour of England and Scotland in 1945. The goalkeeper, Tiger Khomich was an ex-paratrooper who kept goal with the same agility and bravery and became a huge crowd favourite. Years later I was to read an intervIew with the "world's best keeper" , Russian Yashin, who unashamedly admitted his everlasting gratitude to his first coach------yes-----Tiger Khomich. Even then the Russians were up to "tricks" and in a fog shrouded Ibrox Park in Glasgow the Rangers player Gillick,had the referee stop the play and count the Russian players on the field,------there was 12 !!!!!!!!!. To get back to tactics ,the well known ex-player Meiklejohn, then a writer for the Daily Express, stated that if he had been playing against Dynamos he would not have known who to "mark" as the players seemed to switch positions constantly, a tactic that became known as Arkadiev's "organised disorder". closely related to Meisl's theory of the" Viennese whirl" a pre war system used by Austria. Ah the memories. Cheers jb.

Agree. Especially as games are now streamed so they do not need to fit it in with TV scheduling. No excuses really.

Cheers JB, and thanks. I do write military history and am working on a major project at present writing biographies, includes a few sportsmen, one footballer. I came across that Moscow Dynamo tour to the UK researching in London newspapers, the write ups are very praiseworthy. I was also introduced to a few books from Fair Play publishing on local football history which I will read in time. But it's great that you share your knowledge of the game's history. Keep it up.

Lionheart As you probably have guessed I am no youngster and to be honest due to my age I have been lucky enough to see some great teams playing over those years so when I read a comment being made about Puskas, Kocsis, Hidegkuti, (Hungary),Hamrin ( Sweden and Fiorentina), De Stefano Gento, Del Sol (Real), not to mention a host of English players like Finney,Charlton,Mathews & Wright . The advantage of having seen these players and many others is that when I read a textbook on football and it gets into the development of the game over the years I can follow the writers assertions simply because I have seen many of those teams play. The funny thing about football discussion and it's history is that it closely follows a subject I took at college when I studied workplace practices and human movement. The man recognised as being the "father" of modern coaching, Austrian Hugo Meisl is that he too was a student of human movement and allied to the exiled English coach Jimmy Hogan is thought to have started the investigation as to how teams can be formated to suit the available players they had. This is not a new science.Meisl had an Austrian team in 1937 who used a deep lying centre forward, Sindelar, a system closely copied by Man City with player Don RevIe in the 1950's. Another example is a system credited to another Austrian coach Rappan, who, when given the Swiss national team to manage decided his players were not good enough to take on the top teams so deployed his players into the first move towards catenaccio in 1938. As you are aware the Italians 'perfected" that system in the mid 1950's.The Russians, behind their Iron Curtain, are also known to have dabbled with this constant movement as early as 1945 when Moscow Dynamo visited the UK and never lost a game. The history of our game is a fascinating subject and one I would recommend you get yourself into, so that your comprehension of the game and the players reach a new level Cheers jb.

JB I really do appreciate your historical comment. For someone who is a late starter to the game, they teach me a great deal about the years I missed. I would encourage you to consider a few articles about the game's history, an aspect that no one covers here. I found Fair Play publishing recently, and was surprised to see the number of books written about our football history, though well short of the other codes.

BT I put to you that Arok's figures as a coach stand comparison with any set of figures generated before or since For your memory, under his stewardship the Socceroos between 1983 and 1990 generated the following P 93. W 44, D 23, L 26, F 146, A 90. (Work that out to "games per year" and compare it with present Socceroo appearances!!!!!). Re his unorthodox training methods have you ever heard of the "mad" coach who took Australian middle distance runners under his wing, put them to work on sand dunes in Victoria and created a team that blitzed world, and Olympic records. Some say he was in fact a miracle worker. If you really want to denigrate Arok's achievements you have to go to the top echelons of football's management in Australia at the time who had a constant problem with financially supporting Arok's efforts. That's what ultimately caused Arok's departure from our shores. jb.

I dont have a clue what your talking about. Arok Socceroos played a lot of matches against big sides, they didnt get the attention they deserved. The three match series against England would be sold out and massive these days the time it wasn't that big. There was huge new wave in immigration from England in the 90's and 2000's . Les Scheinflug foolishly left Arok in charge of the team going to a youth world cup and was made to look like a dunce. Losing to New Zealand only to have Arok get two draws against and a one nil loss. Arok was great on fitness, defense, marking , skills development on the other hand, he appeared on TV how he was helping young players and that was with running with a parachute on a beach at 5am. The NSL at the time went to a conference system so the sides doubling didnt help with standards and crowds were miniscule. The standard was nowhere near the A-league in the NSL technical wise and few imports, and I think the technical standard is even higher now, because there was a much greater emphasis on physical ability at the start of the A-league. I though Sydney showed great first touch, great passing, the best in those standards in the A-league, shooting deserted them and I think age is one of the reasons, shooting being explosive we saw Sturridge with a horror shot , Diamanti has been misfiring all season, age and injuries restrict ones ability to get shots off, Garrucio on the other hand his scorpion kick shows what a younger player can do. The old players are not ball watching just lazy and dont move a lot, or in the case of Amini he does an Israel Folau and runs faster in attack than he does in defence.

Initially, the victory owners failed to come up with the necessary capital. The FFA had to fund them for that first season. The truth is, the ethnic clubs were not welcome, that was made abundantly clear.

OK I'll bite. If you want specifics. City member with my 18 year old son. Tuesday nights he plays futsal. His game was on at 7.15pm finished around 8pm, I had to take him because he's still on his Ls, the A league game started at 7.45pm. I live approx 35 kms from the city in the northeast of melbourne, usually we catch drive to a station and catch the train in. How do you or the A-League expect me to get there on a Tuesday night? As it was, we left straight way got on Paramount and saw Evans kill a perfectly good and open game. TBH we were both rooting for CCM in the end after the first howler and with Kisnorbo's allergy to the sub off his bench. I hate winning like that and am still filthy at what happened.

Scheduling a game on Tuesday night was never going to work. Never. Go back to 'normal' slots - Friday night, Sat arvo/evening and Sunday arvo. The TV providers won't like it, but at some point even they have to realise nobody cares anymore. Even for the stay-at-home fans - who even knew there was a game on? On a Tuesday night!

Strange, the same excuses, parceled differently, keep raising themselves in columns concerning small crowds, bad scheduling, poor media attention, poor refereeing practices, even going back as far as "banning" NSL clubs from the embryo league way back some 17years ago.!!!!!! Most of these "excuses" can be discussed at length but it always surprises me somewhat when the standard of football ,being the main selling product, continues to be ignored while obviously deteriorating.. Why is this constantly ignored? In the past 17 years we have never once attracted the attention that the Arok Socceroos. did in those years 1984 to 1990 when the Socceroo team was made up of players playing in the local NSL, players with "known" names and, most importantly ,available for selection to play for the national team while being available for training camps etc. almost a necessity in today's team building. So today we have dyed in the wool club supporters constantly complaining about the competition and how it is NOT working and yet a simple exercise in player analysis shows that our football is marred by error after error going on unabated, poor first touch, poor passing, atrocious shooting, ball-watching, static movement, you name it and it's there to be seen and that ,to me , is why the fans are slowly drifting away. So to me, instead of batting the officials ears with complaints. the coaches should be hell bent in getting their players to improve their skills, so improving the standard ,so improving the attraction. Cheers jb.

FFA made a deal with the Vic government not only to introduce a second Melbourne team, but it had to play at AAMI in order for it to be built. Thats why they were talking to Heart exclusively. Why couldn't South Melbourne come up with the zero dollars for a license in 2004-2005. They just needed to have more capital than the 2 million raised by Lord Victory and the A-league license would have been theirs. The answer is they were enamoured with the big money that was being made in a booming Greece at the time built on borrowed money.

Your last two sentences summed it up well.

Why Tuesday night? Does the AFL have games on a Tuesday night?

This kind of reeks of sticking the boot in for the sake of sticking the boot in. Some kind of act of valour to the burned Mariners... Your headline states it - Tuesday night. 8pm kick off. On a School night. On a work night. Of course only the diehard were there. Not even the Victory would attract 5000 with those conditions. Argue the toss if its a similar state on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. Or better still - look at traditionally massive clubs like WSW and ask where there crowds have gone? Why are they exempt from this chat? Where are their bandwagoner fans?

We're still moving out of a pandemic footing. You can already see, rightly or wrongly, one by one all states are removing restrictions. As for Melbourne Heart/City, well, it entered some 5 years after the Victory, who by that stage had won 3 Premierships and 2 Championships, so Melbourne's 2nd teams was always going to start behind the 8 ball. South Melbourne Hellas should have won that 2nd Melbourne license. By now we would have had a vibrant, meaningful Melbourne derby, and Lakeside would have been rocking, no matter what day or time games were played - the faithful would have showed up to support their historic club.

Good points Grem. What in heavens name is going on with this competition? A 5:20 kick off on a weeknight? I mean who makes these decisions? The games have just become a jumble and a blur and it's impossible to keep up. Cannot wait for some stability and proper scheduling and proper home and away. What we have at the moment is just farcical.