From the publisher:
Chronicles of Australian Soccer details the development of football (or soccer as it was then known) in Australia in a period where records barely existed – from 1859 to 1949.
It does so within a context of Australia’s geographic and cultural isolation, and the attitudes towards race and class.
Finding some of these records has meant years of dedicated research to track clubs and games from every part of the country, presented chronologically.
Peter Kunz has written a truly phenomenal account of Australia’s soccer history which is of value to the football anorak as well as those interested in Australian history in the latter part of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century.
Also included is a 130 page appendix listing all clubs up to 1949, and 16 pages of black and white historical images (some never seen before).
The author:
Peter Kunz is a retired Canberra-based librarian and researcher who has worked for cultural institutions such as the National Library of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive.
From the late 1960s he played amateur soccer in Canberra and was also a soccer referee and a correspondent for the Soccer World newspaper in the 1970s.
He was a keen supporter of the defunct Canberra City and Canberra Cosmos NSL clubs.
His principal interest has been historical research, which has led to investigation of the early development of soccer in Australia as well as the curation of Australian soccer memorabilia.
Son of an Australian mother and a Hungarian immigrant, Peter’s formative years were spent in Sydney in the early 1960s watching and supporting the St George-Budapest soccer club.
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