Photo: South Hobart, the cup winners, on 21 August 2010 [PlessPix]
The
2010 season in Tasmania was a momentous one for South Hobart.
The
club was celebrating its 100th anniversary, having been founded in
1910, and was one of the oldest surviving football clubs in the country.
Photo: The Governor's reception for South Hobart at Government House [PlessPix]
A
reception was held at Government House and a formal dinner was also held. The guest speaker was noted Australian and
SBS football identity Les Murray. A book
was also produced detailing the 100 years of the club. It was written by Dr Dianne Snowden.
Vicki
Wood had been installed as the club’s new president in 2010, while her future
husband, Ken Morton, was in his third year as senior coach of the club.
The
season was a huge triumph for Morton and the club as the seniors collected five
trophies and went on an unbeaten run of 34 games to set a new Tasmania record.
Photo: South Hobart, the league champions [PlessPix]
Morton was named the Premier League coach of
the year.
Ronnie Bolton, of Clarence United, won the
Women’s Coach-of-the-Year Award.
Josh Fielding, the Glenorchy Knights
midfielder and captain, made it back-to-back wins in the Vic Tuting Medal when
he won the 2010 award, which was presented at the Hellenic Hall.
South Hobart’s first trophy of 2010 was the
Steve Hudson Cup in the Launceston pre-season tournament.
They won their second trophy when they beat
Glenorchy Knights 4-0 in the final of the southern Premier League section of
the Summer Cup competition at KGV Park.
Knights offered little resistance in the
final and South goalkeeper Sam Kruijver had little to do.
Former Knights player Jonathon Ladic gave
South Hobart the lead on the half-hour to make it 1-0 at the break.
Tom Roach added the second seven minutes
after the resumption, while Kostas Kanakaris made it 3-0 in the 62nd
minute.
Kanakaris put the icing on the cake when he
grabbed his second of the night and South’s fourth in stoppage time at the end
of the match.
Andy Brennan netted twice and Jo Yeong-Sun
once as South overcame Glenorchy Knights 3-0 in the Reserves Summer Cup final.
Photo: The South Hobart squad and support staff [PlessPix]
The Women’s Summer Cup final saw the
Tasmanian Institute of Sport trounce Olympia Warriors 6-0.
Rani Cavaretta netted twice, while Brooke
Mason, Jessie Williams, Lucy Foote, with a penalty, and Ellie Gavalas collected
a goal apiece.
South Hobart won the Forestry Tasmanian
Southern Premier League title by finishing a massive 19 points ahead of
second-placed Tilford Zebras.
It was South Hobart’s third league
championship in a row.
The next trophy the club collected was the
Milan Lakoseljac Memorial Trophy, Tasmania’s State-wide knockout cup
competition.
They beat Clarence United, the holders, 2-1
in the final at KGV Park in Glenorchy.
The fifth trophy won by South Hobart in 2010 was
the State Top-Four title. They beat
Forestry Tasmania Northern Premier League champions Northern Rangers 1-0 in the
final through a goal by Tom Roach.
South Hobart’s pre-season preparations under
coach Ken Morton had been meticulous and included games in Melbourne against
South Melbourne, and also in Wollongong.
It was this sort of thorough and professional
preparation that served them well in the season and which saw them claim the five
pieces of silverware on offer.
Jonathon Lo finished as South Hobart’s and
the league’s leading marksman. He netted
18 goals.
Exciting young striker Andy Brennan also
proved a huge success for South Hobart.
The 16-year-old finished as the league’s equal second-ranked scorer with
14 goals in his first season at senior level.
Photo: Jack Johnston was Tasmania's only FIFA referee [PlessPix]
The 2010 season was also notable because of a
new Board member at Football Federation Tasmania.
Jack Johnston, a commissioner of police and
the only Tasmanian to have been a FIFA referee, was appointed to the FFT Board.
Photo: John Boulous, the FFT CEO [PlessPix]
John Boulous was also announced at the new
FFT CEO towards the end of the year and his contribution over the next few
years was significant and was to include the introduction of the Victory League
in 2013.
Lucy MacGregor made her mark on junior women’s
football in 2010.
The 13-year-old midfielder performed very
well for Australia at the AFC Festival of Football in Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam.
The Australian Under-13 Girls national team
won seven games, lost two and drew one.
MacGregor scored three goals in the
tournament in her role as an attacking midfielder.
MacGregor had been one of two Tasmanian
players invited to attend national trials for selecting the Australian
side. The other was Isabella Gee, who
missed out on final selection but was placed on the reserve list.
Three Tasmanians -
MacGregor, Gee and Caitlin Stalker
- had been initially identified
at the National Junior Championships for Girls and were selected in the
All-Star team after that tournament.
The Tasmanian Institute of Sport met Taroona
in the Women’s State-wide Cup Final.
The game ended in a 1-1 draw and it stayed
like that in extra-time before the TIS won the penalty-shoot-out 5-4.
The teams were:
Tasmanian
Institute of Sport: Plummer;
Vienna-Hallam, Daley, Stalker, O’Brien, A Ayton, Williams, Gavalas,
Foote, Edwards, Cavarretta, Macgregor, Bird, Connolly [Interchange applied]
Taroona: Catheral;
Ormandy-Neale, Konings, Manuela, Prescott, Tolman, Cretu, H Ayton,
Bremner, Fyfe, Tarbath, Raymond, Collet, Parsell [Interchange applied]
In the Women’s State championship final,
Taroona beat Clarence United 3-2.
A Tolman (14th and 61st)
and S Cretu (47th) scored for Taroona, while M Gillbee (17th)
and M Dixon (21st) replied for Clarence United.
The teams were:
Clarence
United: Ven Der Niet; Herbert, Goss, Brighell,
Pagano, Undy, Kannegiesser, Ridler, Bolton, M Dixon, Edwards, H Dixon, Gillbee,
Roy, Archer, McLeod [Interchange rule applied]
Taroona: Catheral; Ayton, Tarbath, Fyfe, Bremner,
Tolman. Parsell, Ormandy-Neale, Cretu, D Raymond, Konings, H Manuela, Prescott,
Collet, Wilsdon, Farquhar [Interchange rule applied]
Photo: Olympia's new artificial pitch at Warrior Park [PlessPix]
Olympia Warriors, who avoided relegation from
the Premier League by the skin of their teeth announced that they had almost
completed their new state-of-the-art pitch at Warrane and that it would be
ready for action in the 2011 season.
The club had a new headquarters at Bligh
Street in Warrane and it featured a building which would serve as a club house,
complete with dressing rooms, referees’ room, canteen, a meeting room and board
room, a storage room and gymnasium, an artificial pitch complete with
floodlights, and a grass pitch and two grass training pitches at the rear.
The club had already invested $300,000 in the
project and it announced it would spend another $100,000 by the time things were
up and running at the start of the 2011 season.
The club had a 20-year lease on the facilities,
which used to be a hockey ground and was then leased by Clarence United, who
were unable to utilise it for the previous five years.
The surface at Bligh Street’s Warrior Park
was made of layers of material, including sand and recycled rubber tyres and
micro-filament, to a total depth of 60 millimetres. The artificial grass itself was about 10
millimetres in height and no watering was required.
The new pitch met FIFA regulations and normal
football boots rather than runners were required to play on it.
“This is definitely a benchmark for Tasmanian
football.,” said Olympia Warriors president, George Mamacas.
Mamacas said the ground would also be
available to others, but that Olympia would have priority.
He said there would also be a corporate area
in the building beside the ground where sponsors and other VIPs could be
entertained and from where they could watch games.
“The whole complex is Olympia Warriors’ for
the long-term future and we’ve got a big capital investment in this and it
should see us in good stead for the next 50-odd years,” Mamacas said.
The pitch was just over 100 metres in length
and just over 60 metres in width, which made it slightly bigger than Taroona’s
ground at Kelvedon Park.
The Tasmanian State side was also in action
in 2010.
They entertained A-League club Central Coast
Mariners on a Tuesday night at KGV Park.
Central Coast Mariners won 3-0 before a crowd
of 1,768 through goals by Simon (76th minute), Bozanic (80th)
and Kwasnik (90th+2).
The Tasmanian side was coached by Steve
Payne.
The teams were:
Tasmania: Pitchford (Kruijver 46) - Pennicott,
Iseli, W Abbott, Scott - B Eaves (Roach 46), Marchioli -
Brennan (Lo 46), Mann (D Brown 46), Kanakaris -
McKenna (Hamlett 60)
Central
Coast Mariners: Ryan
- Bojic, Griffiths, Wilkinson,
Bozanic - Hutchinson, McGlinchey (Porter 78), Lewis
(Rose 60) - Mrdja (Kwasnik 68), Perez (Simon 65), McBreen
The
2010 season also saw the passing of three stalwarts of Tasmanian football.
Alistair
Rattray, who had played for Australia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and
starred for Caledonians, passed away aged 85.
He had been a founding member of Caledonians.
Rattray was a member of the Tasmanian side
that succumbed 11-0 to England before 6,000 spectators at North Hobart in
1950. He was named as one of Tasmania’s
best players in that match.
Adrian
Harmsen, one of the finest footballers ever to grace the game in Tasmania, also
passed away in Hobart in 2010 aged 90.
Harmsen was one of the
finest players of his generation.
He was a member of three
Tasmanian premiership-winning teams
- with Metro twice and South
Hobart once.
He represented Australia
against New Zealand in 1954.
He was a Tasmanian
representative seven times and captained the State side on three occasions.
Harmsen was the best-and-fairest
player at the senior interstate series in Adelaide in 1954.
He was the leading
goalscorer in Southern Tasmania for four consecutive years.
He was never cautioned by a
referee in his career, which is quite extraordinary.
Harmsen
was a teacher of languages and was highly respected in academic and education
department circles.
The other loss in 2010 was Luciano Longo, the
former Juventus centre-half in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Luciano was the father of Dominic Longo, one
of Tasmania’s best-known players who went on to play for the Joeys, the Young
Socceroos, the Olyroos, Cercle Brugge in Belgium, and Marconi in the NSL.
Luciano was a commanding figure on and off
the football pitch and he was synonymous with Juventus during those two
decades.
He was of large stature and was powerful in
the air, but a gentle man off the pitch.
In 1959, he was selected to play for Tasmania
against the visiting Scottish club, Heart of Midlothian, but injury prevented
him from playing.
Hearts beat Tasmania 10-0 before a crowd of
3,000 at North Hobart Oval.
The ‘gentle giant’ was also a Southern
Tasmanian representative when South won the round-robin series in 1961 against
the North and the North-West.
South beat North-West 6-0 in the semi-final
and then downed North 5-0 in the final.
Longo was also a member of the 1961 Juventus
team that withdrew from the association and played against Launceston Juventus
on alternate weekends at what is now Queens Walk in a competition involving the
State’s two Italian clubs.
Juventus eventually rejoined the association.
Luciano was again selected for the South in
1963 and they won the intrastate series by overcoming North-West 3-0 and the
North 2-1 in the final at South Hobart.
Longo captained Juventus in 1963 when the
title was decided on the last day. With
one round remaining, Hobart Rangers had 28 points and Olympia and Juventus were
level on 26 points in second and third places, respectively.
Rangers only needed a draw against Juventus
in the final game to win consecutive titles.
But, Juventus beat Rangers 3-2, while Olympia beat Wayatinah 4-0.
That meant Olympia and Juventus finished
level on 29points and superior goal-average gave Olympia the title.
It was the first time that any Tasmanian
league title had been decided on goal average. [Note: Goal average is
different to the current system that is used, namely goal-difference.]
I remember Luciano Longo being interviewed on
the Channel Six (the precursor of WIN TV) sports show by Harry Ward on the
Sunday afternoon and arguing passionately in favour of a play-off between
Juventus and Olympia to decide the title.
He said that was how it was done in Italy if
two teams finished level on points, as indeed it was.
But, Tasmania tended to follow British
practices and the title was Olympia’s.
Longo played for Tasmania against Victoria at
Olympic Park in Melbourne before a crowd of 9,500 in 1964 and the Victorians
won 7-1.
He missed out on selection later that year
for Tasmania’s game against Western Australia at South Hobart, a match which
Western Australia won 5-3.
The 900-strong Tasmanian home crowd booed
their side off the field at the end in protest at the team selection and some
late changes that had been made due to injuries.
That signified the end of an era and Longo
retired from the game not so long after.
2010 was also the year when two Tasmanian
players finally came face-to-face in an English professional match.
And, they are both goalkeepers.
When Tranmere Rovers of Division One and
Accrington Stanley of Division Two met in a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy cup tie at
Rovers’ Prenton Park before 2,020 fans, Accrington’s Alex Cisak (ex-South
Hobart) got to meet Rovers’ Simon Miotto (ex-Launceston Juventus).
Photo: Simon Miotto, another example of a Tasmanian not appreciated in his home State and who found respect overseas [PlessPix]
Miotto, who was 41, was the reserve keeper
for Tranmere, but he was also the club’s goalkeeping coach. He was on the bench for the match.
The teams drew 1-1, but Accrington won the
penalty shoot-out 5-3.
