These are a number of articles I wrote for the FFV for Anzac Day in 2015. They went missing until found recently by Tony Persoglia on the Wayback Machine. I hope to write more such articles soon.
Behind the lines
Victorian soccer and WWI
Yet the truth is far from that.
Sporting contests between Australian troops and their allies blossomed in all theatres of war for purposes of morale, fitness and recreation (not to mention gambling). Australian rules, rugby and cricket were popular games. But there is an argument to be made that soccer was even more prevalent; first because it was far easier to find an opponent from within the British troops, second because soccer was a much more popular game in pre-War Victoria than historians sometimes acknowledge, and third because soccer players tended to enlist with almost unanimous enthusiasm.
Evidence suggests that 1500 soccer devotees were at the Broadmeadows training camp in March 1915. Discoveries such as this photograph convinced me to investigate the position of soccer in the Victorian community and the Australian armed forces between 1914 and 1919.
Participation
Soccer enjoyed a migrant-fuelled boom in pre-war Melbourne. Participation more than doubled between 1908 and 1912 and kept rising before the war. Harry Dockerty, the man most responsible for the game’s Victorian regeneration in 1908 was not afraid to be boastful for the game he loved. So researchers must consider his statements on soccer participation carefully.
Dockerty suggested at various points during the war that soccer’s pre-war playing numbers were between 500 and 550. On 21 October 1914, Melbourne sporting newspaper, The Winner claimed 597 registered players in the Victorian Amateur British Football Association.
When it came to enlistments in the armed forces Dockerty had maintained in the early war period that around 40 per cent of Melbourne players had enlisted in the initial push while after the war much higher percentages were claimed. The Argus reported in 1919 that the Association claimed “90 per cent of the players had enlisted for service abroad or at home.”
Unfortunately all Association records from the period have long-since disappeared. (One of the few existing remnants of the period is the Dockerty Cup itself, along with some team photographs.) The quandary was how to confirm or rebut the claimed figures, which were:
- between 500 and 600 players in Victoria,
- 150-200 enlistments before the end of 1915,
- around 300 further enlistments throughout the war.
The only thing for it was some hard slog through the archives.
We went through every soccer article we could find (mostly match reports) in the Argus and The Winner in 1914 and 1915, extracting the names of players and their teams. Each report listed the goalscorers and the better players as well as noting injuries and other matters. Lists of players were found but only occasionally.
The data collected therefore is necessarily incomplete. Those poor souls who never scored and never shone remain largely invisible in our method. Rarely are first names given, though first initials are sometimes included. Moreover, spelling of surnames seemed not to be a major priority for reporters. Even star players, like the Northumberland and Durham’s goalkeeper Robison/Robinson, were subject to misnaming.
One final irritation was the fact that own goals were represented as being scored by the unfortunate player who scored but were not registered in the list of scorers as an own goal. If not careful we could name a player in the wrong club.
The research process benefitted from the discovery of what we refer to as ‘motherload’ documents. The first was published on 28 April 1915, soon after Gallipoli but too soon to represent a response to that event. The Winner released a list of the names and clubs of 143 enlisted players.
The second vital list was the 1919 Age publication of the names of the 34 Melbourne Thistle players who enlisted and the eight of that number who perished in the war. From these sources and within the limitations outlined above we expected to uncover the names of perhaps 80 per cent of Victorian soccer players in the years 1914–1915. So we were confident of getting around 400 player names – as long as Dockerty had not been gilding the lily.
As it turns out Dockerty’s figures were inaccurate; but he was understating them. Using our admittedly incomplete net, we have already gathered more than 500 names of Melbourne senior soccer players. Additional to these are 22 referees, and the 150 non-metropolitan players discovered in places like Mildura, Geelong and Kyabram.
To this figure needs to be added the 40 or more Wonthaggi players yet to be identified and named. One of our main findings is that there were probably more than 800 soccer players in Victoria in the pre-war period. Moreover, a total figure of 1000 players is not out of the question.
Other perhaps tangential findings include: Melbourne soccer players were mostly of Church of England or Presbyterian faiths while Catholics represented a 10 per cent minority against their national proportion of over 20 per cent; very few soccer players were from the professions, most being skilled tradesman or labourers.
Enlistment
The second part of our task has been to investigate enlistment numbers. As it stands we have established that just under 40 per cent of the players on the database enlisted.
We have done this via a triangulation method between the names we have gathered and the databases available at the Australian War Memorial and the ‘Australian Anzacs in the Great War’ project at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
Some of the names are easy to find. The enlistment and death of Lieutenant Goodson, a star player with Thistle were easy to confirm; the path of W. Anderson from Albert Park remains much more difficult to trace (given that 42 Victorian enlistees were named W. Anderson). Nonetheless we are not fazed and some ingenious detective work correlating age, birthplace and residence by Athas Zafiris has seen us identify a number of difficult cases.
Another process of identifying enlistees included looking at the date of embarkation. If a player's name kept appearing in news print in, for example, August 1915, it would eliminate the men with the same name who had already left Australian shores before that date. It is a painstaking process, yet we will continue with this detective work on dozens of individuals.
Another significant problem is the fact that a great number of Victorian soccer players who were British by birth returned to Britain to enlist very early in the war. Many of the names on our database fall into that category and obtaining costly access to the British databases will be the next stage in this part of the project.
Killed in Action
This is the most harrowing part of the story.
Soccer players not only enlisted in high numbers, many of them also paid the ultimate price, either dying in battle or later from their wounds.
The database reveals that of the 250 identified as enlisting, 52 died at the front. Of these, nine were from the Irymple club and eight from the Melbourne Thistle club.
Through our research, we found five stories telling the stories of these clubs and individuals from the Victorian soccer scene who gave so much to the war effort, which will be posted on ffv.org.au in the week leading up to ANZAC Day 2015.
You can read them below.
Conclusion
While the project is continuing with a great deal of work yet to be done, we have established some important facts and arguments.
The first is that more adult men played soccer in pre-war Victoria (800–1000) than had previously been assumed. The second is that Victorian soccer players enlisted at a rate at least equal to that of the general population (40 per cent) but probably at twice that rate (around 80 per cent). Finally enlisted Victorian soccer soldiers suffered a mortality rate (20 per cent), a good deal higher than the general morality rate across the Australian Imperial Forces (15 per cent).
The next stages of this project will include an assessment of those who returned after the war. Did they stay in Australia? Did they play soccer again?
Soccer boomed once more in 1920 and exploded through the early 1920s. To what extent was it a game heavily influenced by veterans and their commemorations? A vital question will be: How did soccer seem to lose contact with the Anzac legend to which it had contributed so much?
1. The Irymple nine
Pre-war soccer had not only grown in the metropolitan region. It took root in the country as well. It’s a fact little known that Mildura had a developing competition in this period. Even when soccer was in decline in Melbourne in the 1890s, Mildura kept the flag flying for a few years, engaging in local scratch matches and playing irregular competition with South Australian town, Renmark.
The Mildura competition before the war involved two or three teams. While Merbein dropped in and out, the Mildura and Irymple clubs kept up a steady battle for the four years between 1911 and 1915.
Made up of many British migrants but, perhaps unusually, also many native born, the competition was a passionate little outpost of Victorian soccer, cruelly interrupted by the war. Not cruel because it interrupted a sporting competition; that is merely unfortunate. But cruel because of the damage it inflicted on a community.
Little Irymple, Mildura’s satellite settlement was ravaged by the war. Early in our research I found the image of the Irymple team in 1913 (courtesy, Mildura Rural City Council Library Service).
In a mix of awe and horror we noticed that five of the players (the ones asterisked) were killed in the First World War. It was confusing because in the stories of sporting sacrifice, soccer enlistments and deaths are rarely mentioned. Other sports that make a bigger deal of Australian war dead leave soccer in the shade on ANZAC Day.
Further research has intensified the scale of this tragedy. The club actually lost 9 (possibly even 10) of its members. To this extent it may well be the Australian soccer club that lost more players than any other. More than the eight lost each by the Perth Caledonians and Melbourne Thistle. The following are the Irymple dead.
- Percy Hamlin Beckett (pictured)
- R Brown (pictured)
- Jas Campbell (pictured)
- F. Campbell (pictured)
- Jack Hart
- David Lindsay Morrison (pictured)
- Robert Samuel Page
- William Jefferies
- Thomas Edwin Surgey
- B. Wadham. (Either he or his brother played soccer for Irymple).
Like many clubs in many sports across rural Australia, members enlisted with gusto. Fate was to decree which battalions they joined and casualties were often determined by this luck of the draw. Some communities ended up being more unlucky than others in the way their volunteers were channelled into particular theatres and campaigns of war.
It would be appropriate if the terrible luck of the Irymple nine were to be acknowledged by the Victorian soccer community.
2. The Lowe brothers from St Kilda
Tales of brothers at war have a powerful emotional appeal. The movie, Saving Private Ryan is a good example of the way stories can be woven around the tragedy of brothers leaving to fight a war and the impact this has on their families and communities.
In Michael McKernan’s Victoria at War, the early focus is on the Whitelaw family from Briagolong from which six sons enlisted. Four of them died as a result of being at the front. It provides a disturbing preface to the accumulated tragedy his book documents.
Within the Melbourne soccer community there were many pairs and some trios of brothers who went off to fight but perhaps Bert, Tommy, Alexander and Hughie Lowe represent Victorian soccer’s biggest fraternal commitment to the AIF.
The Lowe family emigrated to Melbourne from Aberdeen in 1901. The four boys each came to prominence as players with the strong St. Kilda club. In 1910, Tommy became club captain at the ripe old age of 21. Alexander was appointed treasurer and assistant secretary and also kept goal for the club at the age of 20 in 1913. Hughie, the youngest, was only starting his senior career, playing for the 2nd team at the outbreak of war. The oldest, Bert, played for the club and represented it as a delegate to the association.
While each brother eventually enlisted, Hughie beat the others to the punch by travelling to Britain to join up very early in the war. As a result of this haste Hughie was caught up in the fighting in the Dardenelles and died less than six weeks into the Gallipoli campaign on 3 June 1915. J. W. Harrison reported in the Winner:
M. ('Hughie') Lowe has lost his life in the service of the Empire, having died from wounds. I know that Victorian followers of Soccer in general will join with me in extending sympathy to the bereaved family. The late Soccer player in question has died as he would have wished — in defence of King and Empire, a sentiment which has dominated the members of the Sportsmen's Battalion formed far across the seas.
Hughie is buried at Chatby War Memorial Cemetery (Row M, Grave No. 100), Egypt.
The other brothers all returned safely, Tommy and Bert both being decorated with medals for bravery. The three survivors resumed playing with St Kilda but it is safe to assume that the loss of Hughie weighed heavily on family and club alike. His death also left another significant gap (of the more than 70 killed and countless injured beyond recovery) in the booming culture that had been Victorian pre-war soccer.
3. The 1914 Dockerty Cup
The last Dockerty Cup before the Great War
Unbeknown to most at the time, the Dockerty Cup Final of 1914 was to be the end of a brief and exciting era in Melbourne soccer. It concluded eight years of rapid growth in the game in terms of both quality and public interest. The final, played at Middle Park, was probably the last full-strength and meaningful competitive soccer fixture in Melbourne until after the conclusion of the First World War.
While the Dockerty Cup was held in 1915, it was considered to be a degraded competition because of the number of players lost to enlistment. Perhaps it is fitting then that the 1914 final was played over a gruelling and scoreless four hours – including extra time, the replay and further extra time – a stalemate to foreshadow the mind-numbingly futile military campaigns to come.
Played between the then emerging strength of Northumberland and Durhams, and dominant premiers Melbourne Thistle, the game included many of the stars of Melbourne soccer at that time, some who had represented Victoria in interstate games – Thistle’s Guthrie and Raitt – as well as those who had played in the ‘internationals’ between Scotland and England – N&D’s Robison and Thistle’s Goodson among others.
After the indecisive replay, it was decided in something of an anti-climax to allow the clubs to be joint holders.
Of the 22 photographed players who took the field, at least 12 enlisted in the AIF, eight from N&D. At least two, Arthur Goodson and Brodie from Thistle were killed at the front. It is unclear which of the two Brodies is in the photograph. Both played for Thistle and both were killed.
These were massive losses for both clubs. The same kind of losses were felt across all clubs in Victoria. Many clubs had occasion to mourn the death of one or more of their own and all lost substantial numbers to enlistment.
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| An image of the 1914 Mirboo North soccer team which includes the unidentified Shoesmith and Preston. |
After working their passages out from England as cabin stewards, they had worked for a week in the Wonthaggi mine before finding themselves starving on the streets of Melbourne. Their plight was widely publicised and the men received some offers of employment, eventually finding themselves at Mirboo North where they obtained labouring positions and soon settled into the community.
A year later, the two men, whose real names were Thomas Shoesmith and William Preston played in the very first game of soccer at Mirboo North, on August 22 1914. The match was a fundraiser for the war effort and a chance for the region’s immigrants to play their game. Shoesmith was the stand out player for his team. Shoesmith and Preston enlisted in the AIF soon after.
While they embarked separately, both had left for Egypt before Christmas and met up in time for the Gallipoli offensive. Shoesmith was extremely fortunate in battle, surviving when those around him were falling. Preston was not so lucky, shot in the head by an explosive bullet in July 1915 while his mate looked on. He was buried at sea.
Shoesmith was repatriated to Mirboo North in 1916 where he received something of a heroes’ welcome. The local newspaper reported that:
"Signaller Shoesmith has, perhaps, seen more fighting than any of the men who left this place, or, in fact, of any who left the Commonwealth.
"He had five solid months of it – and the first five months at that. He had dozens of narrow escapes, and he says he cannot hardly realise that he is safe and in Australia again.
"He had his water-bottle broken by a bullet, on another occasion his pouch was pierced by one, and his haversack was also hit by one.
"He was also struck on the face by shrapnel.
"He was eventually put out of action as the result of a shell exploding close to where he and three others were.
"The four were buried."
Even though he had been playing what he saw as the ‘greater game’ of war, Shoesmith nevertheless had kept the round-ball game in his mind. The newspaper reminded its readers that he ‘was a soccer player of some repute. He hoped the war would soon be over and that Mirboo would again have a football club, and a team of returned soldiers.’
Unbelievably, after all his trauma and injury, Shoesmith returned to the front, fighting in France. Here, he struggled with chest infections and bronchial problems and was repatriated once more in 1919. In 1921 he requested a piece of land in the Soldier Settlement scheme and applied to bring his sweetheart out from England.
It is here that the evidence trail dries up, but we suspect that this is a story worth tracing to its conclusion.
5. A Gentleman of the game
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| Studio portrait of 2nd Lieutenant Arthur Godfrey Goodson, 24th Battalion of Learmonth, Vic. He embarked with the 9th Reinforcements on 16 February 1916. Courtesy, Australian War Memorial. / |
Born in 1886 and educated at Leeds Central High School in England, he went on to take a Bachelor of Science at Leeds University where he excelled at sport, gaining a double blue for football and track sports. In 1913 he took a position as a science tutor at Scotch College in Melbourne where he was admired by the boys and masters alike.
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