For decades, Australian football has been hunting down an object described as "the greatest domestic treasure there is": a small, hand-carved wooden box containing the ashes of two cigars smoked by the captains of Australia and New Zealand after their first 'A' international match on Australian soil in June, 1923.
Known as the Soccer Ashes, this precious relic was the first trophy that was ever contested between the two trans-Tasman rivals, and forms a key chapter in the larger history of the Socceroos.
The trophy was the brainchild of New Zealand team manager and trophy-maker Harry Mayer, who was convinced the two nations needed to play for something physical, something real, like what they had in cricket.
Mayer designed the casket with a combination of woods — New Zealand honeysuckle and Australian maple, to be precise — and adorned its lid with iconic national imagery, a kangaroo and two silver ferns, symbolising the relationship between the two nations.
Inside the box, nestled into deep blue velvet lining, was a small silver-plated razor case that belonged to Private William Fisher, then-secretary of the Queensland Football Association, who'd carried it with him during the landing at Gallipoli in 1915 — the event that began the ANZAC legend.
For 30 years, Australia and New Zealand contested the Soccer Ashes, with the trophy travelling back and forth across the Tasman, paying homage to their wartime origin story.
But in 1954, the trophy completely disappeared.
Rumours swirled as to the trophy's whereabouts, with some fearing it had been thrown away or destroyed entirely by someone who did not appreciate its significance.
And were it not for the ongoing efforts of historians Trevor Thompson and Ian Syson — who, with the backing of Football Australia and some government funding, spearheaded a project to track down the trophy in 2019 — it may have faded from Australian football's collective memory, too.
Until now.
69 years after its last known sighting, the Soccer Ashes have finally been found.
Discovered by the family of former Australian Soccer Football Association (ASFA) chairman Sydney Storey, who helped run the game between 1922 and 1966, the trophy was identified amongst a treasure trove of football memorabilia, documents, photos, and other items as they sorted through old boxes in his garage after his death.
The sheer volume of artefacts meant the family took over a year to actually go through each box and verify their contents, but once they realised what they had on their hands, they immediately got in contact with FA.
"The large shed was literally full of relics of past days, and not easy to move around in," Storey's son Peter said.
"Most of these boxes had sat there untouched, decade after decade, until we started to go through them.
"There were so many historical, classical last-century items in the garage — even in the house — and the items we came across were of great interest. These included team photos, annual reports of the ASFA, an ASFA's official badge, newspaper clippings, souvenir soccer match leaflets.
"And, importantly, found inside a well-sealed box, a wooden football match souvenir, which we identified as the Australia-New Zealand Soccer Ashes trophy.
"At that time, we didn't realise that people might have been looking for it, or that it was of any interest, rather than just something 100 years old."
Why Storey kept the trophy and all the other memorabilia hidden away remains a mystery.
Thompson, who authored the book Burning Ambition: The Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes, thought Storey may have wanted to keep it safe as a political tug-of-war occurred between the old administration and newly arrived clubs and federations that were being created following post-war migration in the 1950s.
Thompson had reportedly tried to contact Storey about it 20 years ago, having narrowed down the suspects given their role inside Australian football at the time, but was rebuffed by the family.
For Syson, who first learned about the Soccer Ashes back in 2009, its disappearance was more than simple forgetfulness; it was a symptom of a broader cultural transition that football went through during the mid-20th century.
"It's an interesting phase in Australian soccer history, where 1954 is very much the beginning of the end," he said.
"Concern about representative football begins to decline as club football becomes much more important. The continental Europeans come into Australia and they bring professionalism, they bring quality, they bring in close[r] grounds. But they also bring club focus, to the detriment of other considerations such as international football.
"At this point, the idea of Australia and New Zealand as being an important contest starts to decline. I think we lose track of the Soccer Ashes because we lose our game's focus on that international contest."
However, FA are determined to fill in the gaps of Australian football's history.
They hope to rediscover many more objects imbued with cultural memory that have faded into the dusty boxes of the game over the past century and install them at a new national Home of Football, which is slated to be built in the next few years.
Recognising its own past has already begun. Last year, FA celebrated the Socceroos' centenary, lining up a pair of friendlies against New Zealand to mark 100 years since their first 'A' international, which took place in Dunedin in 1922.
And there are already calls for the Soccer Ashes — or a replica of it — to be used as a trophy once again, and for the trans-Tasman clash to occur every year to not only mark the occasion, but to also recognise the game's rich, storied past and ensure it does not slide into insignificance, as it has so often threatened to do over the past century.
"This trophy is symbolic of something really important, and its discovery is also really important as well," Syson said.
"Its absence was a symptom of Australian soccer's tendency to forget itself, and for the surrounding culture not to care at all.
"This trophy is replete with sacred significance to a country that is so obsessed with its ANZAC mythology. For that to go missing, it says a lot about the way this game manages to shoot itself in the foot all the time.
"And so maybe this is a sign that the game can correct itself, can fix itself, can remember itself — if there's enough people caring about it, if there's enough people taking an interest in the history.
"It means so much for the game."
