Football stories

The moments, players and stories that make football more than just a game.
How the Matildas Got Their Name
How the Matildas Got Their Name
Everyone says the Matildas are named after "Waltzing Matilda". The real chain runs through a Commonwealth Games kangaroo, a Canberra blackboard and a 25-cent SBS phone poll that was quietly... Read more...
Socceroos: The True Story of How Australia’s Men’s Football Team Got Its Name
Socceroos: The True Story of How Australia’s Men’s Football Team Got Its Name
A 1972 World Cup campaign logo, a kangaroo in football boots, and a Sydney columnist who never got over losing a reader poll to the word Emus. The true story... Read more...
Eddie Krncevic: 23 Goals in Mauve at Anderlecht
Eddie Krncevic: 23 Goals in Mauve at Anderlecht
He was 188cm tall and played like a man who had never once been in a hurry. Eddie Krncevic won a league title in Zagreb, three cups in Belgium and... Read more...
Peter Wilson: The Socceroos Captain Who Disappeared
Peter Wilson: The Socceroos Captain Who Disappeared
In 2000 a street in Sydney was named Peter Wilson Street. Peter Wilson didn't come to the opening. He captained Australia at its first World Cup, shares the Socceroos captaincy... Read more...
Scorpions, Shirts And the Socceroos: A 2026 World Cup Diary
Scorpions, Shirts And the Socceroos: A 2026 World Cup Diary
We spent 23 days chasing the Socceroos across Mexico, Canada and the USA at the 2026 World Cup. The football was only half the story — the other half was... Read more...
Frank Parsons: The Greatest Strike Rate in Socceroos History
Frank Parsons: The Greatest Strike Rate in Socceroos History
Fifteen goals in seven internationals. A hat-trick on debut, another a fortnight later, then six in a single afternoon in Auckland. Frank Parsons has the most preposterous strike rate in... Read more...
World Cup 2026: The Spectacle That Turned Spectators into Speculators
World Cup 2026: The Spectacle That Turned Spectators into Speculators
Some of our crew were on their sixth World Cup. We went to watch football. We came home having spent a year behaving like day traders. Read more...
Socceroos 2026: Our Second-Best World Cup
Socceroos 2026: Our Second-Best World Cup
Written off before a ball was kicked, the Socceroos finished 22nd of 48 across the USA, Canada and Mexico — their second-best World Cup on record once you adjust for... Read more...
Ray Baartz: The Socceroo Who Never Got His World Cup
Ray Baartz: The Socceroo Who Never Got His World Cup
Rale Rasic coached Australia to its first World Cup and spent the rest of his life insisting Ray Baartz was the best footballer this country has produced. Baartz never played... Read more...
The Alston Turn: How a Socceroo Beat Cruyff by Five Days
The Alston Turn: How a Socceroo Beat Cruyff by Five Days
On 14 June 1974, in a half-empty stadium in Hamburg, a semi-professional Australian striker dragged the ball behind his standing leg, spun 180 degrees and left one of Europe's best... Read more...
Banned: When FIFA Kicked Australia Out of World Football
Banned: When FIFA Kicked Australia Out of World Football
For three years in the early 1960s, Australia wasn't just absent from world football — we were banned from it. Kicked out of FIFA over a boatload of Austrian and... Read more...
The Socceroos Spew Kit: How a Disaster Became a Classic
The Socceroos Spew Kit: How a Disaster Became a Classic
Australia's so-called spew kit was savaged at the time and is now a cult classic. The full story of the 1990–1993 Socceroos shirt by KingRoo — the design, the players,... Read more...
Every 2026 FIFA World Cup Kit Reviewed: All 48 Teams Home and Away Kit
Every 2026 FIFA World Cup Kit Reviewed: All 48 Teams Home and Away Kit
Strip Tees verdict on every home and away jersey at the 2026 FIFA World Cup — all 48 qualified nations, rated and reviewed. From Japan's sakura masterpiece to Haiti's missed... Read more...
Every Premier League Crest Ranked
Every Premier League Crest Ranked
Every Premier League crest ranked 20 to 1 for 2025–26, judged on the design alone. Clip-art shields, squandered icons, and the badge that gets it perfect. Read more...
Tour of Duty: The 1967 Socceroos in Vietnam
Tour of Duty: The 1967 Socceroos in Vietnam
In November 1967, seventeen young Australians were flown into a war to play football. They trained on the roof of their hotel, kicked a ball into a minefield, refused to... Read more...
Socceroos 2026 World Cup Squad Prediction
Socceroos 2026 World Cup Squad Prediction
In January 2023, we tweeted that Australia would reach the 2026 World Cup Final. We named the XI. We committed. Three years, two Achilles tendons, and three defections later —... Read more...
Football Clichés – The Stories Behind Football's Greatest Sayings
Football Clichés – The Stories Behind Football's Greatest Sayings
Football clichés aren't just empty sayings. They're part of football's shared language. Discover the stories behind the game's greatest phrases and shop the Cliché FC collection from Strip Tees. Read more...
Football's Uncomfortable Relationship With Mainstream Australia
Football's Uncomfortable Relationship With Mainstream Australia
Football is the world's game — so why did Australia spend a century treating it like an uninvited guest? From the legitimising power of England's cricket tours to the Anglo... Read more...
World Cup Logos Ranked
World Cup Logos Ranked
Every four years, a nation gets to tell the world who it is — not in words, but in a logo. We've gone through all 22 FIFA Men's World Cup... Read more...
Viva La Revolución: How Ange Postecoglou Changed Australian Football
Viva La Revolución: How Ange Postecoglou Changed Australian Football
We started Strip Tees in 2018 because we were football fans who couldn't find shirts that reflected how we actually felt about the game. Ange Postecoglou is the reason we... Read more...
Why Jackson Irvine Is My Kind of Footballer
Why Jackson Irvine Is My Kind of Footballer
Jackson Irvine turned up to sign for Celtic in a Nick Cave t-shirt. That was it for me. A love letter to the Socceroos captain, St. Pauli's heartbeat, and the... Read more...
Battle of Santiago: The Wildest World Cup Ever
Battle of Santiago: The Wildest World Cup Ever
The 1962 World Cup in Chile produced the most violent match in football history. Police dragged a player off the pitch four times. A referee said he wasn't officiating football... Read more...
Every EFL Championship Crest, Ranked
Every EFL Championship Crest, Ranked
All 24 EFL Championship club crests for the 2025–26 season, ranked worst to best by a designer who has spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about this. Brutal, honest,... Read more...
The night Australia finally broke the curse: remembering the Socceroos’ historic win over Uruguay in 2005
The night Australia finally broke the curse: remembering the Socceroos’ historic win over Uruguay in 2005
On a warm night in Sydney in 2005, the Socceroos finally broke a 32-year curse and changed Australian football forever. From the trauma of Montevideo to Mark Schwarzer’s impossible saves... Read more...
Mark Viduka’s four-goal masterclass at Elland Road turns 25
Mark Viduka’s four-goal masterclass at Elland Road turns 25
  Twenty-five years ago today, Mark Viduka scored four goals against Liverpool at Elland Road. Leeds won 4–3. Viduka scored all of them. And if that sentence doesn't do something... Read more...
The Socceroos World Cup 2026 Squad: Young, Hungry, and Ready to Shock the World
The Socceroos World Cup 2026 Squad: Young, Hungry, and Ready to Shock the World
A new era of the Socceroos is dawning — younger, faster, and built to survive the furnace of a North American summer. With Popovic at the helm, this predicted 26-man... Read more...
My Life in Football: How the Beautiful Game Found Me
My Life in Football: How the Beautiful Game Found Me
A lifetime of missed signs, wrong turns, and happy accidents — how I finally realised football wasn’t something I found. It was something that had been under my nose all... Read more...
China v Australia 1923 — when football broke through the White Australia policy
China v Australia 1923 — when football broke through the White Australia policy
In 1923, Australia had a law designed to keep Chinese people out. That August, 47,000 people turned up at the Sydney Showground to watch a Chinese football team play the... Read more...
Jimmy Mackay's 1973 Thunderbolt: The Goal That Made the Socceroos
Jimmy Mackay's 1973 Thunderbolt: The Goal That Made the Socceroos
Seventy minutes into a World Cup play-off in Hong Kong, a Scottish-born midfielder from Edinburgh took three steps and hit a football harder than any Australian had ever hit one.... Read more...
Art FC: Football Badges of the Great Artists
Art FC: Football Badges of the Great Artists
Some collaborations make total sense. Football and boots. Football and beer. This isn't one of them. Nobody asked for Van Gogh FC — so naturally we made it, along with... Read more...
Alf Quill: The 868-Goal Man Australian Football Forgot
Alf Quill: The 868-Goal Man Australian Football Forgot
An estimated 868 goals in 24 seasons — the biggest number Australian football has ever produced. So why can't anyone name Alf Quill? The story of Wallsend, Crystal Palace, and... Read more...
Mark Viduka, good feet for a big man
Mark Viduka, good feet for a big man
Mark Viduka was a walking contradiction. Built like a wrecking ball, moved like a dancer. One of the best strikers in the world, and almost entirely unbothered by the fact.... Read more...
Captain Socceroo: Johnny Warren and Australian Football
Captain Socceroo: Johnny Warren and Australian Football
Australian football has always searched for one figure to drag it over the hill. David Hill restructured it. Frank Lowy funded it. Ange Postecoglou made the country believe. Only Johnny... Read more...
Best Football Crests in Australia, Ranked Worst to Best
Best Football Crests in Australia, Ranked Worst to Best
We judged all 55 professional football crests in Australia and New Zealand — every AFL, NRL, A-League and Super Rugby badge, ranked worst to best and scored across seven design... Read more...
The 2023 Matildas and the Pioneers of Australian Football
The 2023 Matildas and the Pioneers of Australian Football
In October 1979, an 18-year-old Julie Dolan walked the streets of Sutherland Shire posting homemade flyers through letterboxes, hoping someone might show up to watch Australia's first women's international. About... Read more...
Why Cult Heroes Matter More Than Superstars
Why Cult Heroes Matter More Than Superstars
We make shirts about the round ball game — the world game, the one that was called wogball for decades while the back pages looked the other way. But Australian... Read more...
William "Podge" Maunder: The Newcastle Teenager Who Scored The Socceroos First Goal
William "Podge" Maunder: The Newcastle Teenager Who Scored The Socceroos First Goal
At precisely 45 minutes on 17 June 1922, in Dunedin, an 18-year-old kid from Newcastle stepped up and changed Australian sporting history forever. His name was William "Podge" Maunder. Most... Read more...
"We're Not Like the Sokkah" — How Australia Tried to Keep Football in Its Place
"We're Not Like the Sokkah" — How Australia Tried to Keep Football in Its Place
A Richmond fan, a Channel 7 camera, flares on Swan Street, and five words that contain the entire history of how Australia used a word to keep a sport —... Read more...
Lisa De Vanna: The Life of a Matildas Legend
Lisa De Vanna: The Life of a Matildas Legend
She scored four goals at a World Cup, made FIFA's team of the tournament and was shortlisted for World Player of the Year — then came home to a shift... Read more...
Reg Date: Australia's Greatest Goalscorer You've Never Heard Of
Reg Date: Australia's Greatest Goalscorer You've Never Heard Of
He scored over 1,600 goals, captained Australia, and was rated the best player of his generation by Joe Marston. So why doesn't everyone know Reg Date's name? Because football in... Read more...
From Russia with Love (and Vodka): A World Cup Travelogue
From Russia with Love (and Vodka): A World Cup Travelogue
It’s hard to sum up Russia in a tidy sentence — partly because it’s massive, and partly because it managed to slap me silly with surprise on an almost hourly... Read more...