Representative Teams
The first association football matches involving a Men's team representing Victoria date back to 1883, where under the auspice of the Anglo Australian Football Club, a Victorian selection hosted two 'tests' against New South Wales at the East Melbourne and South Melbourne cricket grounds. As far as we know, some 258 matches have been played over a 126 year period, with the final match involving Victoria resulting in a 3-2 win against Northern New South Wales at the Wanderers Oval in Newcastle in 2009. While records for all of the matches played between 1883 and 2009 are not complete, the efforts of historians John Punshon, Mark Boric and Doug Butcher have done much to paint over the cracks.
The birth of the Victorian Women's Soccer Association in 1973 resulted in the debut of Victoria at the inaugural National Championships the following year. Between 1974 and 1998, Victoria played in every edition of the tournament, winning it on four occasions and providing a fertile breeding ground for a number of now iconic internationals. Victoria was also represented in the first incarnation of a domestic national league, with the Ansett Australia Summer Series and Women's National Soccer League staged between 1996 and 2004. With thanks to Shaun Jones and Mark Boric, squads for all of the teams competing in these competitions can be found within these pages.
While junior representative teams have represented Victoria in both Boys and Girls competitions for well over half-a-century, Football Victoria is still in the process of building an accurate picture of our results at National Junior Championships. If you have any tournament programs, team photographs and match results from any of our junior teams at national events, please forward them to history@footballvictoria.com.au.