Sydney Olympic FC

1957: Pan-Hellenic – The Beginnings

In the late 1940s and 1950s, there were several small Greek teams for the purposes of socialising and giving a sense of home for the newly arrived migrants. These teams included: Taxiarchis, Atlas, Astro, Pansamiakos, as well as several others. Many people wondered about uniting all of these smaller teams to establish 1 strong Greek team in order to participate in the NSW Soccer Federation. The founding date of the club is set as 28 November 1957, as this was the first meeting of Club Founder Christos Giannakoulias at his home in Alexandria, together with Elias Michalopoulos, Giorgos Lagoudakos, Emmanuel Karras, Dimitris Vlachos, and Stelios Papageorgiou. It was decided there that the newly formed team would be known as Pan-Hellenic, as it represented the shared journeys of Greeks from all over the world who migrated to Sydney and not just from Greece and Cyprus, but also from various other places like Egypt, Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Anatolia, and Asia Minor. The club was established as Pan-Hellenic Soccer Club and its initial strip was blue and white vertical stripes.

1958–60: NSW 2nd Division

In its first season in 1958, Pan-Hellenic found itself in the NSW 2nd Division, which at the time was split into 2 groups – Western & Eastern – After topping its group, Pan-Hellenic faced off with Budapest, who had topped the other group, in the Grand Final, which Pan-Hellenic won 3–1. This still was not good enough…