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Joe Davidson (The Australian Star, 1908. Credit: Trove,
National Library of Australia)
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Sydney
Cricket Ground, 5 September 1908
It
was one of the biggest Australian club football games in years. The final of
the 1908 Gardiner Cup, the knockout competition for clubs in New South Wales,
pitted the top two sides in Sydney against each other. The NSW Football
Association had even secured the famous Sydney Cricket Ground for the showpiece
fixture.
Wearing
dirty red jerseys was Glebe, surprise winners of the First League, out to do
the double. They hadn’t lost a game all year.
Their
opponents, in royal blue, were Pyrmont, runners-up to Glebe in the League by
one point and out for revenge. Prior to this season Pyrmont had won the League
three years straight. In the Cup they were beaten finalists for the last two
years.
This
was the era of district football, where players lived in the area represented
by their club. Pyrmont drew their players and supporters from the ranks of
workers from the many industries in the area including the Colonial Sugar
Refinery, the Pyrmont power station, scores of iron foundries and mills, and at
the nearby wharves. With origins going back to the Scottish-influenced Pyrmont
Rangers club of 1885, Pyrmont had the strongest following of any club in
Sydney.
There
was a chill in the air on that dull and wet September afternoon as the teams
walked out onto the field. They stopped in front of the pavilion and gave three
cheers to Sir Harry Rawson, the Governor of New South Wales. Although the
weather had kept the attendance down, the atmosphere was super-charged by the
sound of the pipers of the Scottish Rifles. According to one newspaper, by kick-off
the spectators were ‘making a deuce of a row.’
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Pyrmont District Football Club, winners of the Gardiner Cup, 1908.
Joe Davidson is the first on the left in the second row. (
The Australian Star, 1908. Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia)
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Glebe
started well, forcing an early save from the Pyrmont keeper. But the Blues
settled down, thanks to some incisive attacking runs by their speedy outside
right, Joe Davidson.
At
the end of one of these runs, Davidson crossed to Bill Carey who slotted home
to open the scoring for Pyrmont.
Shortly
after, Davidson took off down the wing again. His cross found Carey who made it
2-0. Davidson was tearing the Glebe left side defence apart. He had an assist
in the third goal and by half-time the match was as good as over. Davidson also
set up the only goal of the second half as Pyrmont romped to a convincing 4-0
victory.
The
Governor presented the Pyrmont captain, Lyons, with the Gardiner Cup amidst
great applause. This was a fine moment for one of the great clubs of early
Australian football.
The
accolades for Davidson’s performance came from all quarters. The Arrow
said, ‘No cleverer outside right play has been seen in Sydney for at least two
years’, while the Sydney Sportsman told its readers, ‘the hero of the
day was Pyrmont’s outside right, Davidson, whose fine line work was responsible
for every one of Pyrmont’s goals.’
Clearly
here was a man at the top of his game in a team at the top of its form. So who
was Joe Davidson, Pyrmont’s lightning-fast right winger?
In
the second half of that 1908 Gardiner Cup Final, Glebe switched their burly
English centre-forward Smith to fullback to counter Davidson’s pace. Down 3-0
at the time, it was a tactical switch made far too late but did help keep the
score down. When the lighter Davidson got up slowly after a heavy challenge
from Smith, one of the spectators made the remark, ‘it is only a Coon that can
stand a knock like that. It is marvellous that he didn’t break his neck.’
The
c-word was bandied around a lot, especially by the Sydney Sportsman.
That same newspaper also less crudely described him as ‘the coloured outside
right of Pyrmont.’
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Headline from the 1908 Gardiner Cup Final. (The Sunday Sun,
September 1908. Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia)
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The
Star Performer
Davidson
was born in Brisbane in 1884. His mother was originally from England and his
father was a seaman from Jamaica. It’s not certain when the family moved down
to Sydney but by 1896 they were living in a house in Mill, Street Pyrmont,
within earshot of the tugboats of Sydney Harbour.
Pyrmont
boomed during Davidson’s adolescence. By the early 1900s it had became the most
densely populated and industrialised suburb in Australia. Central to this
growth were the miles of wharves stretching from Pyrmont around to Darling
Harbour and Miller’s Point.
With
a burgeoning population including many migrants, soccer became the dominant
local code. Joe Davidson would have played the sport all his mates were
playing. To use a contemporary example, Davidson taking up soccer in Pyrmont was
as natural as Dally Messenger taking up rugby in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
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Pyrmont and The Hungry Mile c.1900, Joe Davidson’s stamping ground.
(Credit: City of Sydney Archives)
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Davidson
first appeared in footballing reports during 1903, playing for Pyrmont’s third
grade team when he was 18 or 19 years old. According to the newspaper Referee:
‘The Third Grade team has some very promising players, notably Davidson and
Cameron.’
The
following year Davidson was playing first grade. In a game against Balmain he
‘had numerous shots at goal, but met with hard luck.’
In
1905 Davidson was temporarily dropped to second grade but soon regained his
place in the senior team where became a regular for the next five years. The
first report of Davidson scoring a goal, from a header, came in a game against
Granville. More goals would follow including a hat-trick against South Sydney.
It was a breakout season for Davidson and to cap it off, Pyrmont won the
league.
The
following season, 1906, Davidson played in his first Gardiner Cup Final.
Pyrmont had already won the league and were looking to do the double at the
expense of Glebe. The match was played before a crowd of 7,000 paying customers
(and many more sitting on the cliffs overlooking the ground) at the Epping
Racecourse and was one of the biggest in the history of Australian club soccer
at the time.
Pyrmont
were defeated 3-2 but Davidson was given plaudits for his play. The Sunday
Sun reported that ‘Davidson put in some very fine centres during the game.
Nearly every match this player figures in he shows improved form.’
The
1907 season saw Pyrmont win their third premiership in a row. They won through
to the Gardiner Cup Final courtesy of a Davidson goal in the semi but lost the
final to Newcastle outfit Broadmeadow.
Among
the singers at the end of season presentation night that year was none other
than Joe Davidson.
Davidson’s
off-field talents weren’t confined to his vocal cords. At the start of the 1908
season, he was on Pyrmont’s committee and was the club’s delegate to the New
South Wales Football Association where he served on the football council.
On
the field, Davidson registered Pyrmont’s first goal of the season. In one match
report The Australian Star declared he ‘was the star performer of the
afternoon. His dribbling, shooting and passing was much admired by the crowd,
and he has considerably improved since last season.’
As
already noted,1908 was a memorable year for Pyrmont, the disappointment of
finishing second in the league being made up for with their Gardiner Cup
triumph. Davidson, who had played well all season, was rewarded with selection
in the Sydney Metropolitan team that defeated a representative team from
Newcastle 2-1 at the Sydney Sports Ground.
In
1909 Davidson missed selection for New South Wales, but played for the Sydney
Metropolitan team against Western Australia at the Sydney Showground. In the
league, Pyrmont carried all before them, dropping only one point on the way to
a fourth premiership in five years. They narrowly missed out on the double,
losing the Gardiner Cup final 3-0 to Adamstown in a replay after the first
match was drawn.
Again,
Davidson had a good season. The Arrow reported ‘He was very agile
and fast against Sydney, skipping nimbly over his tackler’s feet, and his
centre kicks invariably put his opponents goal in danger.’ In a review of the
season, George Vander wrote in the The Star: ‘Good, speedy, and
clever wingmen are extremely rare in Sydney at the present time, the best being
undoubtedly Allen (Sydney) and Davidson (Pyrmont).’
Joe
Davidson was still one of the top players at the best club in Sydney at the end
of 1909. But the hugely successful Pyrmont club was about to self-destruct,
taking Davidson’s career with it.
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The Western Australian team of 1909.
Davidson played against them for the Sydney Metropolitan X1.
(The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 1909.
Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia) |
The
Lost Years
Shortly
before the start of the 1910 season, Pyrmont advised the New South Wales
Football Association that they were disbanding and withdrawing from all
competitions. The club had many grievances with the association, but cited in
particular that the medals awarded to the Cup winners, Adamstown, were of
better quality than the ones Pyrmont received for winning the league.
The
Pyrmont players turned out for nearby teams but it proved difficult to break
into established combinations. Davidson made one appearance in a friendly for
the Balmain club but that was the extent of his football involvement for the season.
It wasn’t a completely forgettable year for Davidson though - he married local
girl Annie Rose in October 1910.
In
1911 a newly formed West Sydney club was cobbled together from the Pyrmont and
Ultimo clubs. But this proved a disaster. Early in the season only six players,
all ex-Pyrmont including Davidson, turned up for a premiership match against
Granville and were thrashed 11-1. This result must have weighed heavily on the
minds of such proud players. Unable to get a full strength team together, West
Sydney forfeited nearly every game that year.
Davidson
drops out of the picture entirely in 1912, and in 1913 plays in just the one
match for Glebe where he ‘failed to exhibit any of his old time form’. Since
the disbanding of the Pyrmont club, Davidson had played just four matches in
four years and was out of form, his career as good as over. That couldn’t keep
him away from football. In June 1914 the Arrow announced that Davidson
‘is now a knight of the whistle’ - a referee.
At
the end of 1914 Davidson played in a referees exhibition game. As a match
official, his greatest moment was as a linesman in the wartime 1915 Gardiner
Cup Final. It was a game played in front of a big crowd including wounded
returned servicemen and a draft from the Devonshire regiment.
Still
as keen on the game as ever, Davidson was spotted in the crowd at the final
domestic match of the 1916 season. Then, in 1917, he enlisted in the AIF.
From
the Hungry Mile to the Sportsman’s Unit
On
Joe Davidson’s enlistment papers he lists his occupation as a wharf labourer.
Having lived near the waterfront at Pyrmont since at least the age of ten, it
was likely he was a wharfie all his working life.
It
was a tough occupation. For most of this period the work was casual and
prospective workers would turn up at ‘pick-up points’ and hope to be selected
by a Stevedoring company’s foreman to work on one of the ships. If not chosen
they would trudge to the next pick-up point. If they missed out entirely they
would go without pay. It was for this reason the whole area around the Darling
Harbour waterfront was known as ‘The Hungry Mile.
They toil and sweat in slavery, 'twould make
the devil smile,
To
see the Sydney wharfies tramping down the hungry mile.
These lines from the 1930 poem The Hungry Mile by
Ernest Antony evoke a period and lifestyle Joe Davidson would have known only
too well.
For those lucky to find it, the work was back-breaking.
They lifted heavy loads, worked long hours and had few breaks. Some of the
wheat bags they hauled on their backs weighed over 150kgs. For a wharfie,
injuries and even death from workplace accidents came with the territory.
In August 1917, waterside workers joined railway workers
in what would become Australia’s biggest strike.
Unionists clashed with strikebreakers at picket lines at
railway depots and on the wharves. Waterside workers stayed out until early
October.
The strike split the community along sectarian and class
lines. It came at a time when a general war weariness had set in, the 1916
conscription referendum had failed, and enlistments were down to a trickle.
To help boost recruitment, the government introduced the
concept of Sportsman’s Units. Sportsmen were encouraged to enlist as a group
and recruiting officers were despatched to sporting events to address crowds
during breaks in play. Often the speakers were heckled by annoyed sports fans.
On 15th October,
shortly after the wharfies went back to work, Joe Davidson reported to the
Darlinghurst recruitment office. Hand-written in blue ink on the front of
Davidson’s enlistment papers are the words: ‘Sportsman’s Unit.’
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Newspaper propaganda for the Sportsman’s Unit.
(The Barrier Miner, September 1917. Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia)
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One shell every 10 seconds
In December 1917 Davidson left Sydney on the Ulysses.
He passed through Egypt, Taranto in Italy, Cherbourg in France, and Southampton
before arriving at an army camp in England. During training, Davidson’s
leadership abilities were recognised with a promotion to acting Lance Corporal.
He left England for France, joining the 18th battalion in the front
line near Ville-sur-Ancre in May 1918.
What would life have been like on the front line for Joe
Davidson? On the night of the 27 May, a week after he entered the trenches, the
battalion’s position came under heavy fire, mustard gas shells falling amongst
the men at the rate of one every 10 seconds. A few days later nearly 2,000
artillery rounds rained down on them in the pre-dawn darkness. There were night
patrols across no man’s land and machine gun and small arms fire. It was a
precarious existence.
Then on 22 July Davidson reported to a field
hospital with a broken wrist. It was not a battlefield wound however. On the
casualty forms it was stated ‘injured accidentally - soldier not to blame.’
Could he have injured himself playing soccer behind the lines? Also picked up
in x-rays was an existing leg fracture – if this was something picked up during
Davidson’s soccer career then it could explain why he played so little after
1909.
The wrist injury was debilitating enough for him to be
sent to an army hospital in England. From there he was repatriated to
Australia, arriving back in Sydney in December 1918.
In 1920 Davidson appears in the Sydney sports press
again. A journalist from the Arrow said: ‘At Wentworth Park I ran across
Joe Davidson, recently returned from active service. With Pyrmont he was the
fastest outside right that ever dribbled a round ball.’
The following year, the Arrow advised its readers
that Davidson ‘is suffering from a fractured arm’, possibly a reference to the
wrist injury he had picked up on active service.
Glebe Island Wharf No.2, July 1947
In early July 1947, a foreman from the NSW Stevedoring
company entered the hold of the steamship SS Yearby, tied up alongside
the Glebe Island wharf. The ship had been taking on a load of wheat and the
wharfies had been working long hours getting her ready. On his night-time
rounds he found a worker he described as a ‘dark man’ lying unconscious on the
floor with a cut behind his ear. It was Joe Davidson. He was taken to Sydney
Hospital in a bad way.
A few weeks later Davidson had made a partial recovery, enough
for his doctor to suggest he could soon return to work. But on the morning of
25 July 1947, the one time lightning fast right winger was found dead at his
home in Pyrmont.
A lively time of it
Joe Davidson’s football career was played during the early
years of the White Australia Policy and when racial fears had surfaced during
the 1908 visit of black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson. The question comes to
mind - was he subject to racial abuse from the terraces?
In Davidson’s case there is mixed evidence. During that
memorable Cup Final of 1908 the Sydney Sportsman reported ‘Davidson, who
is black, was getting a lively time of it from the crowd’, yet after he was
flattened in a challenge by Smith, he was ‘loudly cheered’ when he got to his
feet.
At a match in Newcastle in 1907 the Newcastle Morning
Herald and Miner’s Advocate reported ‘J. Davidson (Pyrmont) was frequently
applauded for his brilliant play.’ The fact that the soccer community was small
and close-knit might have mitigated against the type of virulent racial abuse
suffered by black Englishman Walter Tull while playing for Tottenham Hotspur in
the same period.
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Pyrmont vs Glebe, 1903, the year Davidson broke into
Pyrmont’s third grade team. (The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 1903.
Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia) |
The old-timers
When a reporter spoke to Davidson at a match in Sydney
in 1920, he said ‘Davidson asks me to announce that he lost his military medal
and discharge, and is anxious to regain them.’ He was obviously proud of his
war service. In 1941, at the age of 57, he wrote to the AIF records office requesting
he be issued with a replacement set.
As a man, Joe Davidson was popular amongst his peers. In
1921 he was invited to a dinner in honour of Gardiner Cup winners from the
past. Here he rubbed shoulders with men who had played in the very first soccer
matches in Sydney in 1880.
In 1929, an old-time footballer by the name of Lockie
Richards organised a team to play a benefit match in Corrimal. The match was in
aid of Wollongong football identity “Snowy” Richards, who prior to World War 1
played for Balmain and had represented New South Wales against New Zealand.
Richards contacted many of his old colleagues to take part, including the then
45 year-old Joe Davidson.
Led by the Corrimal Citizens’ Band, the players marched
in procession down the town’s main street to Memorial Park.
The game finished 3-3 and was well attended, many
spectators commenting on the skills of the old-time players.
Great reminiscing was had at the function after the
game. ‘The present day players had nothing over the old timers’, said one
speaker. Snowy Richards captured the mood of the night when he said ‘Tonight is
a reunion,’ and he hoped ‘one to be long remembered.’
In the midst of the back-slapping and tall stories it’s
not hard to imagine Davidson doing some football reminiscing of his own.
Perhaps he mentioned to one or two old-timers about a day at the Sydney Cricket
Ground when he set up all four goals in the Cup Final and how his team was
presented with the trophy by the Governor. There were many experiences Davidson
could draw on: as a player, club official, referee, spectator, and matches
played during his war service.
Davidson did more
than just reminisce. During the evening he performed a number of songs to loud
applause. His final number was Every Nation has a Flag but the Coon. It was
an intriguing song choice. An overtly racist minstrel song from America dating
back to 1901, it was meant to be performed by white singers. Sure Davidson was
entertaining his audience but you get the feeling he was playing around with
the racist trope. What ever the motivation, the performance stole the show. The
Sydney Sportsman said ‘but nothing, not even the hops, went down so well
as Joe Davidson’s version.’ He was both a born entertainer and fine sportsman.
Whether delivering a song or whipping in a cross from the right wing, Joe’s
timing was always impeccable.
Paul Nicholls
