PAUL MCCARTHY First Use of the Ball: Celebrating football in Kapunda since 1866. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
With beautiful design and sparkling text, this book is an ideal example of a club history.
When I first heard of the Kapunda Football Club celebrating 150 years of its history my private response was, ‘Oh, no.’ For two reasons. First, sporting clubs are notorious for making spurious claims so that that they confuse a group of blokes in a suburb or town getting together to kick a footy or stage a game of cricket with the actual formation of a club. Neither event marks such a beginning. Second, Australian Rules football clubs established outside Victoria before 1877 were mainly playing merely a form of football and not that which evolved into the Australian game.
It is refreshing on looking at the striking cover of First Use of the Ball to note the carefully worded subtitle, Celebrating football in Kapunda since 1866. Better than this, however, is to turn to author Paul McCarthy’s short (but highly intelligent) Introduction in which he states that the club has had a continuous existence under the same name for 150 years and is thus ‘a long-standing social institution and part of the town’s rich heritage’. The author goes on to discuss how reliance on the local newspaper, the Kapunda Herald, as a source shaped his approach – including the presentation and style of the book. He adds that this means placing the club within its community and linking it to the development of the game elsewhere and against a background of national events which shaped the community.
As a genre, sports club histories (like other local histories) are often poor. Written by enthusiastic amateurs (or worse) by enthusiastic amateur committees, they are frequently disjointed, isolated and lack any sense of connection to the world around them. More often than not they come into being to record a century or half-century of existence. In days gone by they were often unbalanced, revealing a tyranny of the present, and ignoring important information from their early years. Since the microfilming of newspapers and especially since the availability of Trove the stories now often drown in detail; there are facts aplenty, but precious little analysis or interpretation of those facts. Massive tomes are bunged together, the fruit of exhaustive labour, but the repetition of match-by-match, season-by-season, accounts makes them unremittingly dull.
This book is an outstanding exception.
Two explanations can be advanced. McCarthy’s sparkling text of no more than 50 000 words, encompassing much of the life of the town and district, as well as the club, is the first. The second is the brilliant design of the book by Danny Menzel, a former player as well as a local graphic designer. It is unfair to consider the book other than as a superb package. Turning pages offers glorious visual delights to complement the history being told. Two especially impressive double-page spreads show panoramic views of the Kapunda Copper Mine in 1875 and the main street of the town in 1900.
It does not take long to realise that McCarthy is in command of his material. In the first chapter we read of the ‘Kapunda’ club having to be ‘“formed” and named each year as there was no continuity of players and officials from year to year’. It is continuity of a sort.
The book is organised chronologically into eight main chapters covering eras between 10 and 25 years and a ninth titled ‘Barrackers and Characters’, which is lighter in tone. All the chronological chapters open with a Timeline in which key events are documented in dot-point form and a Snapshot that neatly summarises each period.
The snapshots give a strong flavour to the eras, with the opening paragraphs revealing the author’s economy of style. An example from the Depression years provides an illuminating sketch of the town and its amusements:
Life went on in Kapunda at a slow pace. The Kapunda Sports of 1930 advertised £200 in total prize money for the wheel race and the Sheffield. The St Patrick’s Day Sports was as big as ever. Twelve train carriages took the locals to Henley Beach for the annual beach picnic. The High School struggled for numbers with an enrolment of only 50. Football was probably one of the few bright spots through these years.
Kapunda does not play in a main association until it joins the Barossa and Light League in 1908 and it has to wait until 1921 before it wins its first premiership. Thereafter premierships are covered skilfully, usually on a single page, showing premiership tables, finals scores, team photographs, match summaries and best players. Statistics are kept to a minimum but all the important information is conveyed.
As the narrative unfolds we learn of the personalities and legends of the club as well as family links. Thus James Smith Pearce, whose photograph from 1879 has appeared in many publications, is revealed as the son of local MP James Pearce, with the picture having been taken by James Uren of Kapunda. Among other names that follow and receive special profiles are those of Bill Truscott (an early backbone of the club); interstate star Bert Hawke; Jack Maguire who kicks 30 goals in a match against Nuriootpa; Jack Dermody, the town’s greatest player, who captains the state in 1937; Jim Hayward, Ken Tucker, Phil Schell, Richard Anderson, Colin Mickan, Jason McKenzie. Mark Pitman, Brad Taylor and Jonathan Giles (who has represented three AFL clubs). The families honoured include the Burgesses, Rawadys, Haywards, Jarmans, Schells, Higgins, Mickans, Ryans and Leslies.
Paul McCarthy arrived in Kapunda in 1974, played in the club’s premiership side that year, and taught History at Kapunda High School until 2007 as well as becoming a club life member in 2011. Three of his sons also played junior and senior footy for the club so the book is an insider’s story. An insider’s story that reaches out to other voices.
In the 1890s ‘Rover’ was the Kapunda Herald’s football reporter and 50 years later the same nom de plume was employed by a second ‘Rover’, Ron Goerecke, the club secretary, who in frequent reports is accused of hyper-extending his metaphors:
Play in the first half resembled the brilliance of a rosella, and in the second reached the determination of a crow; the whole game containing few sparrows but many red breasts … in a high-flying engagement at the Tanunda aviary last Saturday. A robin can fly high, but a magpie can soar much higher … Tanunda 12.11 Kapunda 8.12.
A final chapter with contributions by Mickey Randall and Richard Mickan provides humour although the most uproariously funny page is that termed ‘A flippant look at the minute book’ from which one sample will suffice:
About the cabaret. Combine with Netball. Yes, it’s politically correct. But they’ve got to do some work. They will. Profit split. Not same as last year. Talk to your cousin. Your turn to get it straight. Ticket price. Thirty a double. I vote forty. Got to make a profit. Everyone pays. No freebies. Let’s settle on thirty-five. Who set up. Us. Who cleans up. Them. Ring Sue.
First Use of the Ball was written for the KFC and its members will be its primary audience but it would nice to think that it will also have a substantial readership in the Barossa Valley and outside. It certainly deserves to be read by football historians and particularly those contemplating writing club histories as it is an ideal model for such a task.
Paul McCarthy First Use of the Ball; Celebrating football in Kapunda since 1866 Kapunda Football Club, 2016 HB 144pp $55.00
Bernard Whimpress is an Adelaide-based historian who usually writes on sport and most recently edited a cricket anthology, Baggy Green: A selection 1998-2010 (2016).
You can buy this book here.
