SANFL Budget set to celebrate a century

IT is one of our rituals at the footy. Open the “Budget” to the team page, take note of the umpires for the match … and scribble the goalkickers while marking the quarter-by-quarter scores.

The SA Football Budget today is in the hands of long-serving journalist, admired author and truly devoted follower of SANFL football, Peter Cornwall.

“From avid reader and collector to the magazine’s editor,” says Cornwall, “and the leader of a crusade to keep it going, maybe even for another 100 years.”

The SA Football Budget reaches a centenary next season – its 100th volume, its 100th season of publishing, at a time when the splashing of ink on paper is being challenged by small screens carried in the fans’ hands.

But the SA Football Budget is more than 100 years old. Confused? Peter Cornwall deals with the mystery of a centenary that has taken more than a century.

It seems to have been around forever and next year there will be evidence to that effect as we all have the chance to celebrate Volume 100. But exactly how old the Budget is and what volume number should be on the cover has been one of the program’s eternal mysteries.

There’s even been confusion over the past decade.

The SA Football Budget first appeared on May 2, 1914, declaring: “The aim of this booklet, in its humble way, will be to boost the popular winter game for all it is worth. It will feature the names and numbers of players in each team and will afford other such information as required for the guidance of the thousands who follow the game.”

Long before the days of mobile phones and SANFL apps with all the latest facts and figures and match-day stats, the introduction of guernsey numbers alongside the listed names in the Budget was the only way to identify players. And from the start fans took along a pencil to record goals and behinds kicked by players. In the big-scoring days of the 1930s, you would often run out of room for the goals – it’s unclear how you could have fitted the 23.6 kicked by North Adelaide great Ken Farmer against West Torrens in 1940.

From 1919-1926 the magazine was renamed SA Footballer and, although it was not published by the SA Football League, it was “authorised” by the league. In the 1920s it was an impressive 32-page magazine. In 1927 the SA league celebrated its 50th anniversary, changing its name to the SA National Football League. The league took over the publication of what was again called the SA Football Budget.

That’s when Volume 1 came in. But the confusion has continued. Incredibly, the volume number on the cover has been wrong for 42 of the 99 years since then. And it all goes back to the decision to use Roman numerals for the volume number from 1927-70.

In 1971 the editor decided it was time to switch to natural (Arabic) numbers, and the volume number went from XLIV – which is 44 for the non-Romans, and clearly the editor was one of those – to 46 the next season. While it’s been a battle to get it right since, Volume 100 for next season is spot on.

During World War II and through to 1962 the Budget was an eight-page program with little more than a preview of the games, team lists and colts teams (they were the games played before the league matches in those days). The previews in the 1940s and ’50s were written by big names in SA football Steve McKee, ‘Buck’ Ashby, ‘Bo’ Morton and Roy Brown.

When Woodville and Central District were added to the league to make a 10-team competition in 1964, it was a 24-page booklet. In 1966 you paid just five cents for a Budget. The following year you had to shell out 10c – but for a 36-page program in pocket-sized format, its cover coloured each week in the different teams’ colours.

The SANFL celebrated its centenary in 1977, and the Budget played its part. Its cover became full colour, and it featured a fold-out colour poster. And it went to 52 pages – and from 20c to 30c. “No longer is the Budget just a program … now it’s a magazine!” it proclaimed.

In 1982, editor Bernard Whimpress made the Budget magazine size, with 36 pages and it cost 50c. By 1985 it was 90c – but 48 pages. “Welcome to the expanded, new-look SA Football Budget, the publication synonymous with SA football,” wrote editor Tim Boylen, who four decades later is the Budget’s proud publisher.

The Budget has proved a great starting point for young sports writers who have gone on to bigger and better things, including Michelangelo Rucci, Roger Vaughan and Dion Hayman and it has given fans the chance to reminisce thanks to well-known footy historians and statisticians Ern Koloschke, John Wood and John Lysikatos. Long-time Adelaide sporting journalist Gordon Schwartz added his expert view for years and the likes of Robert Laidlaw, Peter Argent and Steve Barrett have been contributors literally for decades.

Nowadays it features a popular SA History page and regular flashbacks to great moments in the league’s proud history. It’s important the Budget is not also consigned to SANFL history.