{"id":5266,"date":"2018-01-28T11:07:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T11:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/?page_id=5266"},"modified":"2021-06-13T09:43:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T09:43:56","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Contact:<\/h2>\n

Mitchellmeade81@gmail.com<\/h4>\n

Please email me if you have any queries, suggestions for the website and its content.\u00a0 I am sure that there are some errors and would be grateful for any advice.\u00a0 To also state the obvious I am interested in any items that you have of the Matildas and Socceroos.\u00a0 Please send an email if you think I might be interested.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Evolution of the Collection<\/h2>\n

How did I come to create a collection of cards, stickers, programmes, tickets and other related items of Socceroos and Matildas?<\/p>\n

It is my experience that non-collectors find it illogical as to why anybody would create a collection unless it was for investment purposes. Whereas collectors, have many reasons, including the thrill of the hunt, something that connects us to our past\/and or our interests and for those of us who are not artistic it is alternative creative process.\u00a0 We all share a common understanding of the process and excitement that comes with collecting even when we collect different things.\u00a0 Usually we have a number of collections and each collection often evolves in terms of breath and depth over time.<\/p>\n

The genesis of this collection started around 2008 when my then nine year old son together with other children at his school began to collect English Premier League Match Attax cards.\u00a0 This bought back memories of my childhood when I collected Scanlen’s Aussie Rules Football cards.\u00a0 My parents would only buy enough packs so I had at least one player from each team and then use them to create a league ladder.<\/p>\n

For a while I continued to support my son in buying packs of Premier League cards and his younger sister who began to collect AFL cards.\u00a0 After a while they moved on to other interests, but I didn\u2019t!\u00a0 I had the card collecting bug!\u00a0 For about a year I collected my AFL team Essendon,\u00a0 NRL team Melbourne Storm and EPL team Tottenham Hotspurs. I then noticed the Match Attax cards included a number of cards of Socceroos playing in the Premier League!<\/p>\n

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Cards<\/h3>\n

Having been fortunate enough to go to the three Socceroo group matches at the 2006 World Cup I thought I would enjoy collecting cards of the \u201cGolden Generation\u201d.\u00a0 At the time I was thinking that it was a bit different to the popular club or individual player collection.\u00a0 I defined the Golden Generation as any player that played at least one match in the World Cup Qualifying matches against Uruguay or the 2006 World Cup. Those players in alphabetical order are: John Aloisi, Mark Bresciano, Scott Chipperfield, Jason Culina, Brett Emerton, Vince Grella, Zeljko Kalac, Joshua Kennedy, Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill, Tony Popovic, Mark Schwarzer, Josip Skoko, Mile Sterjovksi, Archie Thompson, Tony Vidmar, Mark Viduka & Luke Wilkshire.<\/p>\n

Initially I was only aware of English Topps Match Attax Trading cards. With many of the Socceroo\u2019s playing on the Continent I soon discovered a wide range of Panini cards, rare Futera One of One Autographed cards and that Australia’s premier card company Select were producing a Socceroo & A-League set. The biggest and best surprise was the strong tradition of many clubs on the Continent producing cards for all players in their squads.\u00a0 T<\/span>he cards are larger than those of the commercial card manufacturers with the standard being portrait and 10cm x 14cm.\u00a0 The major advantage of these official club cards is that for players not usually in the starting XI or even regularly in the match day squad, there is still a club card produced.\u00a0 It is also worth noting, with the current focus on Rookie cards these official club cards are also likely in many cases to be a players original “Rookie” card. Some of the clubs also took the opportunity to have more innovative designs, but certainly Scott Chipperfield\u2019s Basel club didn’t! However given the cards sometimes lack dates, his receding hairline has helped determine the year of production (Pictured Left).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Stickers<\/h3>\n

With the focus on the Golden Generation cards it wasn’t long before I discovered stickers! Through Topps Merlin, England has for a long time been more the home of stickers than cards. The numbers of stickers for each team is usually greater than cards and often some players that appear on cards do not appear on stickers and vice versa so that there is usually at least a sticker or card of a player in the Premier league. English stickers are nearly always a simple portrait picture.\u00a0 On the Continent, stickers were also produced but depending on the league not every year as in England.\u00a0 In my view the Panini Spanish stickers (Aloisi) and French (Sterjovski) produce a superior design that is Landscape and includes both a portrait picture and an action shot.<\/p>\n

The World Cup sees not only Panini produce the offical sticker collection but the Swiss edition has a coloured border. There are also many other manufacturers primarily from Eastern Europe and South America whose numbers seem to expand exponentially every World Cup.<\/p>\n

To Panini’s credit in 2011 they produced their first official stickers for the Women’s World Cup and have continued ever since.\u00a0 These stickers are the first to feature the Matildas. In my view the best stickers are by Tschutti Heftli a Swiss Company, that commissions different artists to design stickers for each team.\u00a0 The stickers for the 2018 Australian World Cup squad are both the most unusual and best stickers in the whole collection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Programmes, Tickets\u00a0 & Other Items<\/h3>\n

It’s all Mile Sterjovski fault! Many of the Socceroos Golden Generation played for overseas clubs. One of my objectives was to obtain at least one player card or sticker from each of these clubs.\u00a0 Mile joined Derby County in 2008 and played in both the English Premier League & Championship.\u00a0 In 2008 & 2009 Topps did not produce any cards or stickers where he featured.\u00a0 A clear gap in the collection. Then a Sterjovksi ebay search came up with a Derby County Programme with him on the cover (Pictured far left). The collection gap closed and a whole new area of the collecting opened up! The collection expanded to include Australian international programmes and club programmes where an Australian is featured on the cover. Programmes have significantly expanded the collection where there are usually more programmes produced in a season than cards and stickers.\u00a0 More importantly programmes, particularly in the UK are produced for nearly all league and many non-league matches.\u00a0 The epilogue and irony of story, is that a few years later I purchased a Mile Sterjovski Derby County card (Front and back pictured near left) that was originally an insert in a Derby County Programme!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With Australia no longer producing Match Day Programmes I have supplemented the collection with match day tickets and team sheets.\u00a0 In some cases, I have managed to obtain media tickets and passes and even menus! More recently the avenue of collecting match day tickets is disappearing with ticket companies only sending a digital barcode or QR code. For recent\u00a0 internationals I have taken to collecting promotional digital flyers and sometimes even printed ones.\u00a0 Over the years, primarily at club level other items have been produced such as metal dog tags, gambling chips, pods\/mini-caps, small badges on cards and even tattoos!\u00a0 \u00a0 Probably the most interesting “other items” in the collection are a 1972 Socceroos Patch, the 2000 Matildas calendar, a 2014 New York Red Bulls promotional flyer featuring Tim Cahill. a VIP pass to the England Australia friendly in Sunderland (which I attended but not as a VIP!) and the Australian Captains banner from a 2018 friendly against the Czech Republic (See collage of items left).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Contact: Mitchellmeade81@gmail.com Please email me if you have any queries, suggestions for the website and its content.\u00a0 I am sure that there are some errors and would be grateful for any advice.\u00a0 To also state the obvious I am interested in any items that you have of the Matildas and Socceroos.\u00a0 Please send an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5266","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5266"}],"version-history":[{"count":88,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14053,"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5266\/revisions\/14053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mitchellmeade.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}