HISTORY OF DOUGLAS UNITED

Douglas United Football Club started life as Mossman Soccer Club with games played at the Mossman High School field.

The first competitive game was held in 1968, coached by ex Dutch International Peter Hills. In 1977 Peter Hills, Vic Bertoncini, Sam Brischetto & Ray Rex formed a Junior Club with 5 teams.

In 1978 Ray Rex formed the senior division of the club & successfully coached the emerging club for its first 3 years, winning two Second Division premierships and the coveted Bush Pilots Cup.

Dave Watson, an English International, succeeded Ray Rex & coached for a year, followed by Australian Indoor Goal Keeper Paul Kennedy.

Volunteers and keen parents of soccer kids worked hard to secure the grounds located at Cassowary Park in the 1980’s, which the cricket club at the time.  After much effort – in particular the Rex & Bertoncini families - and assisted by Douglas Shire Council & Mossman Central Mill, the Cassowary soccer pitch was created.

The pitch is now regarded as one of the best in North Queensland.
Victor Bertoncini and his business were major sponsors of the club in its early days. Bev Gwynne spent many years coaching and sitting on the Executive committee; Joe Noli served 10 years as Club President.

Other local identities involved in the formation and development of the club included the Assmans, Mantus, Duncans, Brichetto, Scarcell, Maranos, McGuckins, Verris and Rasmussen families.

Fund-raising by club members and the various committees throughout the ensuing years, along with the assistance of grants from various organisations has established a clubhouse with facilities that include a member’s bar & kitchen, team change rooms & a caretaker’s residence.

The main playing field, under night lights, allows evening training & games. A training field (with lighting due to be completed in 2008) & several Rooball and Junior playing fields rival the standard set by our counterparts in Cairns & the Tablelands.

The club has demonstrated a strong commitment to be involved with the local community and to provide an environment to deliver access to playing football both locally & intra-club.

The promotion of the most popular sport in the world has been achieved through community participation, sponsorship and funding grants.

SOCCER IN AUSTRALIA

Australia was settled as a British penal colony in 1788 and it's likely that some of the thousands of convicts and soldiers brought basic football skills with them. In a jail without bars and bounded by endless bush, there was plenty of room and opportunity for a kick around. Transportation finished in 1840 in NSW but the British continued to dominate culturally for another 100 years or more.

It's fair to assume that people were kicking a round ball on the Australian goldfields in the 1850s. However that was also when rugby was catching on in the northern colonies and Australian Rules was invented in the south. Association football was formalised in England in 1863, but by the time the first recorded soccer match in Australia was played in Sydney in 1880 (between the Wanderers and the Ring's School), the jig was up.

Successive waves of European migrants brought on-field finesse to the traditionally roughhouse British form of soccer, but they also ingrained it as a minority sport in the Anglo Australian sporting culture. Even by the first interstate match between Victoria and NSW in 1883, the southern media compared it unfavourably to Aussie Rules.    By Ricky Onsman