Hammy McMeechan, newly arrived from Scotland to play for Slavia, later Melbourne Croatia and the Socceroos, read Dyer's column. ''I had to,'' he said. ''When I first came out, I couldn't believe it; even the women talked football back home, the women didn't care about soccer. They went shopping. But if you want to talk to people here, you have to be interested in football.'' On World of Sport, McMeecham's clubmate, Dave Meecham, issued a challenge. It was accepted. The Sporting Globe was ecstatic. ''We've been waiting for years for this, and it's here at last,'' it said. ''Soccer v footy. Captain Blood has already warned Slavia that it's going to be 'on', and this means one thing - it's going to be the roughest, toughest soccer match Victoria has ever seen.''

The enmity was partly hyperbolic. In preparation, the teams trained together, convivially. ''They were good guys. We had a laugh with them,'' said McMeechan. ''I was very taken with Kevin Murray: lovely guy. Paul Vinar [132 games for Geelong], he was quite good. Stuey Magee [216 games for Footscray and South Melbourne], he wasn't bad. ''Compared to the rest of them, he was quite good. He'd no' have got a game with us, though.''

In the city insurance office where he worked as a clerk, McMeechan's workmates noted in the paper that he was up against Collis. ''You won't get a kick,'' they said. ''He's the Brownlow medallist.'' Retorted McMeechan: ''It's no' Aussie rules we're playing, it's soccer.'' Marching girls, a beauty contest and footraces set the festive scene. Some remember the contest as rugged. ''Not in the least,'' said McMeechan. ''They were trying to clatter in with their tackles, but they didn't know how to tackle.'' Collis, mildly but confessionally, begs to differ. ''It was a little spiteful in that we, with our technique [laughing], couldn't resist the opportunity of a hip and shoulder here and there,'' he said.

''The other boys had tricks of their own. One of them was to put a foot over the ball as you were about to kick it, so your shins would make contact with the soles of their boots. That didn't improve relations. We didn't see it as very manly way of going about things. But it was effective. It was also effective in stirring us up!'' It also led to what retrospectively might be seen as the game's most telling happening. Barassi launched at a Slavia player called John Auchie. ''If you know soccer,'' said McMeechan, ''if you go in and kick the ball and I put my foot behind it, it's like kicking a wall. That's all he did.'' Barassi tripped, fell, limped off. He was about to embark on his bombshell transfer from Melbourne to become playing coach of Carlton, where he began to make his legendary coaching name, but did not again touch the heights as a player. Years later, when they crossed paths again in a King Street newsagency, Barassi told McMeechan that the injury he sustained that day eventually forced him to give football away.

Elsetimes, McMeechan ran on to a through ball, but with Collis bearing down on him quickly and deftly backheeled it to a teammate. On a whim, he kept sprinting, towards the corner flag. ''He [Collis] kept chasing me,'' he said. ''The more he kept chasing me, the more I kept running. I don't think he realised I didn't have the ball.'' At the flag, he turned to face Collis, making a gesture as if to ask: ''What will you do now?'' The crowd laughed roisterously. ''You should have seen the look he gave me,'' said McMeechan, adding ruefully: ''I should never have done it.'' Collis, coyly, said he could not remember it.

At half-time, it was 3-0. Chastened, the VFL team asked if they might play Australian rules in the second half. Slavia coach Brian Birch, a Busby babe, demurred. ''Look at my players,'' he said. ''Hammy's the biggest, and he's 5'6'' [167 centimetres]. We could never beat you at your game.'' So, honourably, they played it out, until it was eight-bloody-nil (in merely two, 25-minute halves, too). ''We had reasonable control of the ball during the game, but we didn't have much idea of how to score,'' said Collis. ''It was a reality check as far as the difficulty of scoring was concerned. That's pretty obvious to everyone when you see a match finish at 0-0. We weren't the only ones who had difficulty scoring.'' It is the aspect of soccer he dislikes still. McMeechan admired the VFL team for its sporting attitude. ''They must have realised after two or three training sessions that they couldn't play soccer,'' he said. ''Fair goes to them: I don't think I would have liked to try and play their game, not in front of all those people, and make a fool of myself. That was a big thing for them to do.''

Between these co-existing codes, there is never quite war, never quite detente. Warlords on both sides continue to rattle their sabres, but once in a while, a little mutual enlightenment prevails. Looking back at Olympic Park, Syson concludes: ''The most important lesson is that for too long, many Australians failed utterly to understand the technical skill and artistry of the world game, and the physical qualities needed to play even at a moderate semi-professional level.'' McMeechan framed it another way. Slavia played that day with an orthodox soccer structure, he said. The VFL team was ''a goalkeeper, and 10 ruck-rovers''. The result: eight-bloody-nil.

The years have passed. Too many who played that day are dead. The football landscape has changed: it is more cluttered, but also more vibrant. ''Fifteen years ago, I said Australia would beat Scotland,'' said McMeechan. ''Some of the boys laughed at me, but they've since proven it.'' In the effort to popularise the game, McMeechan said televised European soccer had made all the difference: it had allowed the indifferent and the hostile to see what the fuss was all about. Collis finds soccer seeping into his consciousness. ''With Australia starting to exert some influence in the world, that's interesting,'' he said. ''And I've held the view for a long time that soccer is poised to take some bigger strides from a participation aspect. I can see that it's a very mother-friendly sort of game.'' From ''a girls' game'' to ''mother friendly''; so might soccer's changing status be charted. Collis adds more. ''With the way our game is played these days, I can see it falling into soccer's hands. Fellows going head-first into packs: it's difficult to look at, and I think dangerous. I can see a time coming when there's a serious head or neck injury that may make people think again. But players are just expected to do that these days. There's a lot I don't like about our game at the moment.''

''The game that never happened'' won't ever happen again: professional stringencies preclude it. But thanks to Syson, it has happened this year, and in soccer's inimitable way, prolifically: on a soccer website (Das Libero), an AFL website (Footy Almanack), in Victoria University Bulletin of Sport and Culture, and in the Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos. ''What do you want with Neos Kosmos?'' McMeechan's puzzled newsagent asked him. He could have replied: ''To make sure it happened.''