John William Kendal was a referee, major soccer administrator and writer in Brisbane during the early 1910s. He was the chairman of the Queensland British Football Association (QBFA) for much of 1915, the second of three successive chairmen to enlist. He had previously been the association’s secretary before resigning in early 1913. Kendal was also the Queensland representative and vice-president of the Commonwealth Football Association, Australia’s first national soccer body. Throughout this time, he was often noted as refereeing games.
Uniquely, Kendal was the city’s only known soccer writer of the early war years. As “Locker-on” he penned a series of articles in the Daily Standard over several months in 1915. Before Kendal, Brisbane newspapers printed fixtures and results, with some description of select senior grade games, but lacked the personable, almost gossipy aspect of soccer writing. This contrasted with Ipswich and even Toowoomba where members of the press had a close social relationship with players and clubs. While much of what Kendal wrote regarded the fall-out of refereeing decisions, he penned one of the few articles in the Brisbane press which named soccer players involved in the war, when he wrote on 18 June 1915 that three Hill End players had been killed in action. He also charted over several weeks the difficulties of teams fielding eleven players, at a time the sport lost many players to the war.
This brief period of wider coverage stopped suddenly when Kendal enlisted on 20 September aged 31. He was attached to the 1st Field Ambulance and arrived in France in March 1916. Not much is known about his war. In fact the next entry in his record after arriving was dated 10 January 1917 and simply stated, “Still doing duty with unit.” This was followed almost exactly a year later by, “with unit”, with only a period of leave noted in the interim. Kendal was a qualified accountant, and it is unknown what his role in the Field Ambulance entailed. The 1st Field Ambulance belonged to the 1st Brigade, and was responsible for each step of an evacuation, including interim medical posts. Kendal was discharged in early 1919 and returned to Australia.
After the war, Kendall briefly returned writing about soccer under his “Looker-on” pseudonym before becoming the chairman of the Queensland Football Association. He tendered his resignation in July 1921, in protest to the possible affiliation of the newly formed Queensland Ladies Soccer Association. By this time the Brisbane newspapers had greatly increased their coverage of the wider aspect of the game, in the vein he pioneered. This allowed “Right Half” to criticise Kendal’s stance on women’s football in the Telegraph on 4 August 1921. Kendal later became patron of the Brisbane Junior Football (Soccer) Association, and became involved with the Thistle club. He would regain chairmanship of the Queensland Football Association in 1924 but resigned the next year when he relocated to Bundaberg, where he later became the honorary secretary of the Bundaberg Soccer Association in the 1930s.