When expatriate AFL club the Vietnam Swans started playing an annual friendship match south of Ho Chi Minh City on Anzac Day, they had no idea they were playing on sacred ground — the very same field where Australian soldiers had played footy decades earlier in the midst of war.
The Swans played their first friendship match in Vung Tau at a stadium in the port city on Anzac Day in 2010, inspired to mark the occasion after a match against the Thailand Tigers on that day the year before.
Stan Middleton, Vietnam War veteran and unofficial historian of the Vietnam Football League, at home in Pakenham in Melbourne’s south-east. Credit: Penny Stephens
It wasn’t until the club caught the attention of a Vietnam War veteran back in Melbourne that they realised the historical significance of their friendly annual footy match at Lam Son stadium – now best known for its greyhound racing – and the soldiers who had gone before them almost half a century earlier.
“Three weeks [after the 2010 friendly], a comment was posted on the [club] website by a guy named Stan Middleton,” the Vietnam Swans’ then-president Phil Johns recalls.
“He said: ‘Do you realise that there was a fully-fledged footy competition called the Vietnam Football League from 1966-71? We played on the same ground that you played on. Except back then, it wasn’t a greyhound racing track. We have photos and scorecards.’
“Bang!” said Johns. “A match that was only three weeks old suddenly had a history of 44 years.”
Middleton was 22 when deployed to Vietnam. His nine months in Vung Tau continue to define his life.Credit: PENNY STEPHENS
Middleton, who lives in Pakenham, played in the Vietnam Football League while serving at Vung Tau in the late 1960s, and has since become the league’s unofficial historian.
Vung Tau served as an Australian logistics base during the Vietnam War.
Middleton arrived there in August 1967 as a 22-year-old “nasho” (national serviceman), supplying ammunition, clothes and spare parts at the Australian 2 Composite Ordnance Depot (2AOD).
“Pretty much straight away, I heard about the football competition, so I made myself available and got a game,” he said.
Middleton’s time in Vietnam involved making a delivery to Ho Chi Minh City (then called Saigon) during which he and a colleague were shot at by a sniper while sunbathing on the truck, and drank hot American beer while watching a huge Viet Cong attack on a wharf.
Stan has become the touchpoint for other veterans who played in the Vietnam Football League, receiving photos taken after he left Vung Tau.Credit: Penny Stephens
“‘We might not be here in the morning, may as well drink this’,” he remembers his pal saying at the time.
Thankfully, they both made it back “to normal life”, which is to say Vung Tau.
Football was crucial to helping Middleton and the other nashos keep a sense of normalcy during the war.
“Everyone suffered homesickness when they were over there – we were only young,” he said.
A photo from Stan Middleton’s meticulous archive, supplied by fellow Vietnam veteran Barry Burgess.Credit: Penny Stephens
“When you got to the football, you forgot everything else.”
The league ended in 1971 as Australian troops began to withdraw from Vietnam, and the Vung Tau base closed down in 1972, the same year conscription ended.
By then, hundreds of men had braved the sticky heat to compete on the Lord Mayor’s Oval, known locally as Lam Son stadium.
Middleton left Vietnam in May 1968, just before his team won the first of two premierships staged that year.
In his later years, he has become the league’s unofficial historian.
“In 1998, I organised a reunion at my place. [I tried] to find a few footy players to stay with us, and I thought I might find a couple,” he recalled.
“Six weeks later … I had about 70 people with a lot of football players and extras from our unit.
“That’s when we realised something we’d been missing for a long time: We’d been living together seven days a week, and we lost that when we came home.”
Stan Middleton with his wife, Sinh, in 2008. They met on one of Stan’s reunion tours to Vietnam in 2002.Credit: Rebecca Hallas
Fifteen years after Middleton’s intervention, the Anzac Friendship match has forged powerful bonds between the club, veterans and the local Vung Tau community.
The club’s Anzac tradition continues this year, albeit in a different location: the Vietnam Swans will play the Cambodia Eagles at the Thanh Long Sports Centre in Binh Chanh, Ho Chi Minh City, on April 26.
Middleton’s Pakenham home now serves as an unofficial museum for the Vietnam Football League, with rows of carefully curated photo albums proudly on display.
Since 1998, he has also organised several weeks-long reunion tours of Vietnam with other veterans.
Stan’s 2AOD VFL team during his season with them in 1968; he is shirtless in the bottom right corner.Credit: Penny Stephens
He has earned an OAM for his services to the veteran community, and helped raise $160,000 for the local Vietnamese people who brought food and friendship to the Australians during the Vung Tau camp years.
Now, aged almost 80, Middleton said there was a simple reason for his continued dedication to the league, and to Vietnam.
“It’s been such a big part of our lives.”
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