This month Greg Stock speaks with Frank Parsons (Pt 2)

(Once again thanks to John Punshon for all his assistance!!)

GS : In 1951 England toured Australia. You played against them both for New South Wales and for Australia. Were you at the 'infamous' 17-0 flogging of Australia.

FP : " I had a beer every second time they scored. I was in the members bar and it was a terrible day. Mud up to their ankles and our fellas couldn't handle it at all. Datey played that day and they told me I was dropped and Reg was in because I couldn't play in wet weather (laughing) and that was fair enough and I didn't miss that game at all. There was no replacements in those days you were either in or out. I finished up spending the afternoon with George Russell in the members stand."

FP : "The wet weather was a lot to blame because we'd played them in the dry and they beat us 4-1. I scored that goal and it was the only time my name has been up on the board at the Cricket Ground (laughing) and I hit the bar in the second half. But we had a few chances and they scored four good goals and that was the difference between the teams. 17-0 was not an indication that we were so far behind really. I can still remember them waltzing around Cec Drummond. Cec was only back most of the time with his sliding tackles and they'd just stop and let him go and he'd go two metres past them. They were so agile and they had wet weather football down to a fine art as they should coming from England. Though I'd like to be playing football today under the conditions our players have with their gear and their balls and the grounds. Its so totally different. You pick up a ball today and feel it and it makes you want to kick it. Its a different piece of equipment to the old leather ones we had. They'd not only get wet but they'd also expand and get bigger with the water going into them filling up the leather."

FP : "I wouldn't have either. If there were any politics in the game in those days I would have been excluded by them (laughing). The last representative game I had was in 1952 against Victoria. Reg played in that game, in fact we played together and we really should have beaten Victoria in that game. They had the migrant groups coming in then, playing good football and I was in quite a bit of trouble on that particular day.

I found myself very close to goal, in the wet and I thought I might have had a chance to score a goal when I was hit in the face with a hand full of mud. I just lost everything. I couldn't see anything and I wiped my face and looked around and the first thing I saw was a Victorian face that far away from mine laughing at me. So unfortunately I hit it. That's the first time I've done that and the last time in a game. The first time I had actually hit anybody so of course that started a donnybrook. People came over the fence the mounted police came out and the only two people who came to give me a bit of assistance was number one Reg Date and number two the rubber who was from Australian Rules. So between the three of us we kind of staved off the opposition until the police came with their horses and got everyone away. But then of course I was sent off and that was fair enough too.

I did the wrong thing so I was sent off. Anyway, that evening we were coming back to Sydney and out at the airport was the referee with his two little girls of six or seven and he was wanting to be friendly. I just didn't want to talk to him very much and I said I don't mind you sending me off but why didn't you send the other fella off. He just looked at me and said 'You're going home tonight, I have to live here" (laughing). So that was the end. When we got home I was expecting to go before the committee and in fact I even wrote to them after a while and said I should be given the chance to appeal against anything that you may decide to do. But they didn't call me in and nothing happened at all."

FP : "I was on the outer and if there was a tour the next day I wouldn't have been in it."

FP : "Controversy. The old Leichhardt team knew what happened. I was at the stage where I was a bit browned off at Leichhardt because I'd been given a pretty bad trot with finances.

It started when we went to South Africa we were promised the world and Leichhardt paid a bonus of 80 something pounds. Harry Robertson and I got just 6 pounds instead of the 80. When I complained they said we decided we'd give you a pound per game. The others had played so many extra games and been loyal but before they went away all the other players that went were looked after by their clubs and given a bit of a bonus except the promise that we would be looked after. So that didn't make things too good as did the next couple of years.

But in the last year I was pretty anxious. We had two kids in those days and I was pretty anxious to get a home and I started to work with a friend up at the hotel at Fairfield. I then hurt my shoulder against Bankstown and I had to have a couple of weeks off.

While I was off I still went up to the pub and earned my couple of quid up there and Jimmy Scullion one of the officials at the club came up to the hotel on a Satuday afternoon while I was working and said 'You're fit enough to pull beer'. I said ' Oh yes, I'm not too bad' and he said 'if your fit enough to pull beer you'd better come and play next Saturday'. I said 'Snowy Parkes (the club doctor) can have a look at my shoulder but I don't think I should be'.

Anyhow I went back and played and did what was needed. At the end of the season I was given an offer, by the old Bankstown group, of a house. They said there is a nice two bedroom cottage you can have rent free while you play for us. We were in a one bedroom flat at this stage with two kids. So I was very anxious to do that so I went back to Leichhardt and said this is the situation, Bankstown are prepared to have me transfer to them and give me a house where I can move in with Nancy and the two kids. Harry Miller was the secretary.

I got to know Harry before he was interested in soccer and in fact I introduced him to the Leichhardt club. I said to him this afternoon and there was a game on at Lambert Park and I wasn't playing and he was going around to a meeting. He said your application for transfer is going to be heard today, I said 'oh well give it a good hearing I need it'.

He came back an hour or so later and I said how did it go? He said the committee have decided if you want to play football there is always a game for you at Leichhardt. Under those conditions I said I have retired. I went back and worked at the pub, got enough money bought myself a house and that's it."

FP : "At that stage I got interested in what was happening with the ethnic groups. I heard a bit about Hakoah and read a little about what they were doing. They a good side in those days playing in the metropolitan league and they had won it so many times they were getting sick of playing the same teams and winning so easily. Then of course soccer in NSW was controlled by a Scottish group that would not tolerate anybody trying to break in and I decided I'd do what I could to help the other mob. And that is how I got interested in the federation."

FP : "We started working on it at the end of 1955. There were meetings going on before they started the competition. Coffee shop meetings mainly but the big meeting was at Walter Sternberg's. That was the one where all the cards were put on the table and we agreed, yes it was a goer."

FP : "It was something I was determined to do. My whinge was always about players playing the game, they retired and drifted away and we never saw them again. Players that I looked up to as a young fella, when I started to play with Adamstown for example, blokes who were ten years older than I was that you'd expect to still see around had disappeared. Didn't go to football, didn't take any interest in football, wouldn't come and help. Nobody wanted to go and get them and bring them back. Not only administration, but they could have started coaching."

FP : "Yes! I was glad I had the opportunity. I didn't realise that I'd finally be an administrator of the code, I just thought I'd act as a go-between, get in and pass a message. I worked with the (Sydney Morning) Herald for a while, the ABC and whatever I could do I did for soccer.

Eventually I was asked to go onto the NSW Federation committee when they had their first meetings at the old Sydney Hotel. That would have been the beginning of the second season, 1958. We went from there to down to Hellenic House, and it was there until I gave it away in the seventies."

FP : "Enjoyable, generally speaking, but there was a lot of frustration. Stuff you just wouldn't believe. You always think that you're right, I know, and I used to think that I had a few ideas that were possibly right but you couldn't get anything through that body if it meant the clubs didn't get the money. Any money that came into the federation the clubs had to get, because the clubs controlled it. It was their vote at the meetings that decided what happened about rules and money.

I used to get so fed up with the fact that I wanted to put money into bricks and dirt but as soon as you got a little bit of money in the kitty you'd have it read out at the AGM and somebody would move that so much be paid to each club and away it would go. We had some sizeable amounts, a pittance now. We'd get 20,000 pounds and think we were doing pretty well and 15,000 of it would be gone in five minutes at a meeting and you'd be left with just enough to keep it going until next year.

Then of course we had the ethnic trouble which was a bit frustrating. The last thing I did was to repremand the Croatia and Yugal sides who were well known for their donnybrooks. And I know that one side was more culpable than the other. There was always one that led the way but I just felt that the pair of them were a bit of a nuisance to the federation and until they were gotten rid of nothing would happen.

So I did get the others to agree that the names be changed and one would be Ryde and the other would be Liverpool. We'd been out and had a look at grounds around Liverpool and the mayor was quite happy about them coming out and establishing under a new name but I finished up leaving the federation over another donnybrook. Not with them but with the Greek side when they had a riot over at Drummoyne. As soon as I resigned they were given their names back and they played the first game of the new season out at E.S.Marks Field and a lady was stabbed and it was back to square one. I am pleased now that they have done what they have done.

While they haven't excluded anybody they have changed the names and even though everybody knows who belongs to who as far as the ethnic groups are concerned there is a chance that they'll settle down and broaden their base. If they can broaden their spectator base and get away from just one group everything will be alright in soccer. While they're just the one base things are pretty tough."

FP : "Yes it was. The first team I took away was the NSW team to New Caledonia. A year or so later I organised a student team to go over there because I was in pretty close contact with Guy Fawkes, who was (and still is) half the administration of soccer in New Caledonia. Then the NSW team went to New Zealand after playing on the islands and it was just a natural follow on to what I did. When Everton came out (in 1964) I managed that team and we had a good side. In fact we probably should have beaten them with guys like Jaros and Baumgartner. A good side except for a couple of unfortunate misses. So when 1970 came along I was there."

FP : "Rale Rasic was the coach and Les Scheinflug his understudy. There were a few bugbears there but it was a good side. They were absolutely at their peak in Greece and hit top form. They'd played pretty well in the islands and across to Hong Kong and Iran and did well in Israel but they played their best football in Greece. They had the Greece A team running in circles. From my point of view that was the best that Australia had played up to that stage."

FP : "That was the start of it. They'd missed out on getting to the World Cup in '70 and that was the start of the build-up for '74. It was the eleven that were kept and there were quite a few that dropped out before they got anywhere near '72 but the nucleus was there. Rale knew the ability of his players much better at the end of that tour than he did at the beginning and he knew which ones he could put together as a team. I don't think he added too many to the starting eleven he took away to Germany in '74.

We went to Germany and had a look at their games and we were beaten by the two German teams fairly comfortably but we weren't disgraced. We weren't quite as fast or hard and strong on the ball. You get fellas like Beckenbauer to know that when you were contesting a ball with him you were contesting one and a half players as he was good as one and a half players.

But the boys did very well. The sad thing about all that was Rale Rasic getting done when he came back. It was the end of his reign and it shouldn't have been. It should have been the start of the next four year period. But politics again. Rale was single-minded and knew what he wanted but unfortunately what he wanted wasn't what the president wanted."

FP : I never hear from anybody and have never been invited back to anything since I left Sydney. Never. History would show I am probably the only ex-president NSW that has not been made a life member (laughing). These were things that most of those who went before and after me would ask for and expect at a meeting and I never would. I remember Michael Cleary said to me once when they were opening the hall of fame, he said "You write down everything about your history and I'll put it forward". I said no, I won't, I don't do that.

FP : "No. I know there is one in Newcastle as I have been asked to do a few things for that.

I don't see the value in things like that. I know they're important to some people but I don't think you should put yourself forward. Why would I want to write a story about myself and send it somebody to put my name on a certificate. I don't see it as my right and not an obligation, but that's my belief."