Charges and Denials of Orgies Aboard Ship” thundered the front page of The Truth newspaper on 21 November, 1926. The vessel in question was the P&O Baradine, having recently docked in Australia many weeks after departing the UK. “Gross immorality existed during the greater part of the voyage,” the report declared, tut-tutting that “men and women mingled together indiscriminately and in such a manner that people became disgusted”.

One of the passengers who reserved his disgust was Charlie O’Connor. Interviewed by The Truth he remarked: “She was a lively ship alright. I boarded her at Durban. By this point everybody knew each other well so I didn’t care to butt in. As a spectator however I saw a good Phil Dawson Jersey deal… It was a great trip, one that I shall not forget for a long time.”

O’Connor happens to have been the 55th international footballer to represent Australia. At the time of the Baradine scandal the half-back was a few months into his eight-year international career, one that comprised 41 interwar appearances, three as a full international.

O’Connor’s story was unearthed by Andrew Howe during research for his new book Encyclopedia of Socceroos. The near 400-page tome is the most authoritative account to date of all the 592 players to represent Australia’s men’s national football team, from Abonyi to Zullo. It is an impressive and important document.

This magnum opus is the latest milestone in Howe’s pioneering mission to further Australia’s understanding of football through data, a quest he began around 30 years ago. A statistician by training, a football fan somewhat by accident, Howe has been Football Federation Australia’s honorary archivist since 1999. His research – completed in the margins of a full-time career – has been painstaking.

“Working to create an official list of A international matches and its participants since Australia’s first men’s game in 1922 was not as straightforward a task as it may seem,” Howe explains in his book. “Uncertainty around the categorisation of some games into the A category, and some ambiguity with player line-ups for some games, were key reasons why the task of compiling a definitive list of capped A players had not been undertaken earlier.”

Howe ensures previous record-keepers like Sid Grant, Bob Telfer and Harry Hetherington are name-checked, but the scale of his undertaking buries any modesty beneath an avalanche of spreadsheets and microfiche. Each potential Socceroo has been individually scrutinised. All original sources have been revisited. Howe’s imprimatur is on every cap and every goal in Australian football history.

Thanks to Howe, Ipswich in Queensland can celebrate its status as the town with the highest proportion of Socceroos per capita and Marconi can claim responsibility for more international caps than any other club. A light is also shone on the 322 men who have represented Australia without featuring in an A international, a list including New Zealand representative Rod Reid, the only man to feature in green and gold and also be capped in a match against the Socceroos.

But Howe is more than just a compiler Steve Atwater Jersey of listicles. His experience as a demographer enables him to shine a light on football’s relationship with migration and settlement. Data visualisations in the encyclopedia testify to the global reach of Australian-ness while case study after case study enrich our Jalin Marshall">http://www.officialjetslockerroom.com/elite-jali... understanding of football’s role in reconciling old worlds with the new. Howe’s unassuming numbers tell grand stories.

Work like Howe’s is vital in any field but especially so in a landscape as previously uncharted and perennially http://www.officialauthenticbearstore.com/Nike-Mitchell-Trubisky-Je... fractious as Australian football. For example, outside his cataloguing of the Socceroos Howe is the custodian of national league statistics, both old soccer (National Soccer League) and new football (A-League). When the A-League was founded NSL achievements were, for a period, discarded and it’s only recently that the official record combines the two, a graft that owes a debt to Howe’s diligent surgery. As the football community once again wrestles with big ideas the work of researchers like Howe becomes even more vital in providing the evidence base to underpin sound policy.

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