Australian Football

AustralianFootball.com Celebrating the history of the great Australian game

 

Acknowledgements

A massive undertaking such as australianfootball.com is naturally depended upon the efforts of many people, including those whose past work this site has built upon, and those whose recent work has created the current incarnation.

First and foremost I would like to thank John Devaney, whose research and writing over many years created the foundation upon which this site has been built. John’s passion for the Australian game and desire to tell its true history inspired the website ‘Full Points Footy’ and subsequent books from Full Points Publications. That body of work stands as a testament to John’s dedication to the task and enduring commitment to the game he loves. We hope that his contribution to the literature of our game commands the recognition it deserves.

Many thanks are due to Paul Jeffs of AFL Tables, who has generously allowed us to use the V/AFL stats data he has tabulated over many years – and done so in such a well-organized and an easy to use manner. Of course that body of work itself relies on the tireless efforts of many official and unofficial stats gurus over the years and to these stalwarts we also give our thanks.

Further to the above mentioned, there are a range of people who have contributed to the site over several years and for that we are truly grateful.

Another big thanks to Oliver Gigacz (Twitter: OliverGigacz) for his continued work on the day to day running of the site and for keeping data up to date.

I would also like to thank Greg Wardell-Johnson for allowing us to use data from the wafl.com.au website that he and Steve Davies have put together over many years.

For SANFL material, Mark Beswick, whose work on the history and stats of that league is well known, has assisted us whenever required. Thanks also to RA Boyle of bigfooty.com who kindly permitted us to reproduce his incisive SANFL match reports.

Stephen Wade has made our task of bringing old football content to life via the Trove project (see below) much easier and for his contribution we are thankful.

Another big thanks to Col Hutchinson for supplying AFL dates of birth (DOB) and death (DOD), and for his overall support of the site.

For many scores and additional data covering various leagues I’d particularly like to thank James Hothersall for a wealth of valuable information. It is greatly appreciated. So too, for the VFA, acknowledge is due to the research of Andrew Robinson (http://www.thegapchessclub.org.au/vfa/) and Wal Williams, as well as the generosity of John Ficarra in allowing us to accessible his considerable VFA archive. Dave Eastman is also doing valuable work on the VFA and other leagues on his site hardballget.net. Thanks also to John Truslove for WAFL scores and goal kickers and Julien Peter Benney for numerous WAFL corrections.

Acknowledgement is due to the best club history site on the net, blueseum.org, followed by Demonwiki and redlegsmusuem (Norwood FC), to the wonderful Boyle’s Football Photos from Ken Mansell and Michael Riley, as well as Ric Gauci’s WA Footy Facts.

Thanks too to Rob Meredith from footyjumpers.com and Damien Green from 'Australian Rules Football Cards' for allowing us to reproduce images from their respective sites

With respect to the creation and launch of the current website and its ongoing development, many thanks are due to the team at Slattery Media, led by the doyen of Australian football publishers, Geoff Slattery. Geoff has been a great supporter of the project from its inception and has helped to guide its editorial development and bring the site successfully to launch. In so doing, he has gone above and beyond the call of duty, a testament to his love of footy history and culture.

Thanks are due also to Charlie Happell, whose hands-on editorial work was of great assistance in bringing order to content that at various times threatened to overwhelm us. Following on from Charlie has been Andrew Gigacz (more commonly known as 'Gigs'), whose great knowledge of all things footy has been an enormous benefit to the initial launch of the site, and, its ongoing development. Gigs continues to play a critical role in the day to day running of the site in his capacity as contributing editor.

On the IT front, David McIntyre, James Troi, and Neha Maheshwari did a marvellous job of building the website and the database on which it stands, and continue to improve the site on an ongoing basis. Jamie, in particular, has been at the forefront of laying the foundations and building anew and his work will surely stand AF in good stead to achieve its ambition of scaling to a new level of comprehensiveness.

Institutional acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is due to the wonderful project that is Trove, the National Library of Australia's (NLA) initiative to digitize and make accessible online its vast repository of content, most notably newspapers and magazines. Hidden within that inventory is a literal ‘Treasure Trove’ of material relating to the history of Australian football, and AF has made and will continue to make use of this material to provide as comprehensive a record of the game’s past as is practicable.

In much the same way, the vast publicly created resource that is Wikipedia, and its thousands of contributors, also deserves acknowledgement. This massive collective undertaking includes a wealth of football-related content, much of which cannot be found elsewhere. As such we have made liberal use of this resource as a supplement to our own material and in accordance with the terms of use have adapted and modified the content where applicable.

A similar social media phenomenon that deserves like praise is You Tube. If it's on film it'll probably show up on that channel sooner rather than later, and we are making full use of that reality to source footy videos that would be unavailable to us otherwise.

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.