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Synopsis

The year is 1909, when organised association football in Perth is in its 14th season, under the banner of the British Football Association of Western Australia (BFAWA).

It is also the year of the first interstate tour* undertaken by a senior WA soccer squad, at a time when the only mechanical means of travel out of the State was by ship.

Fifteen players, a decidedly autocratic tour manager, together with four supporters embarked on a remarkably successful 10-game, 49-day pilgrimage, consisting of seven games in the soccer hotbeds of New South Wales, a game under torrential conditions in Victoria and two amazing matches in South Australia, which saw 16 goals being shared.

A mere three representative games were played by a WA representative side before the 1909 crusade, yet they still managed to achieve a level of success that was totally unprecedented. Three matches were won, just two were lost and five were drawn. All ten friendlies took place within a 31 day period and by the time the tenth came around, the players were either severely fatigued or injured - or both!

'The Soccerites' describes in fascinating detail how the tour came to fruition after months of disappointment, the games played, tourist attractions of the time, through to its exhausting, yet surprising conclusion.

*The Junior British Football Association of WA were in fact the first to venture east when they took a group of Under-21's to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1905.