ABSTRACT
Tom Stannage was responsible for this piece, too. Returning to the UWA History Department from Cambridge, he began commissioning writers for a comprehensive history of Western Australia and, as a former leading Australian Rules footballer, he was alive to the role of sport so invited me into the project. It was another fascinating journey into the historical record, uncovering a local sporting press dating from the later nineteenth century to supplement the relatively limited (from a sports standpoint) standard press. Bill Mandle, Australia’s principal sports history pioneer, revealed the sporting dimensions of papers like Bell’s Life, the Sportsman and the Town and Country Journal, but there was scarce use of the localized sporting press. Indeed, there was no serious work on Australian local or regional sporting experiences, although Wray Vamplew was beginning a similar piece on Adelaide.
