Norm Verrall’s family had an association with the Dinmore Bush Rats and Ipswich soccer for over 100 years. His uncle Herber first played for the club in the late 1890s while his brother Arthur Verrall became a Queensland representative in 1912. Much later John Verrall, who played for St Helens, also received state recognition in the 1960s while Lloyd Verrall was Bush Rats president in the 1990s and beyond. For his part, Norm Verrall was part of the Bush Rats team which won the junior (lower grade) premiership in 1911. The next year he moved between the senior and junior team.
Verrall was a 24-year-old labourer when he enlisted in Toowoomba in May 1917. He arrived in England in August and then onto France in January 1918 with the 41st Battalion. Verrall’s active service was short. Four months after arriving in France he contracted trench fever and was invalided back to the UK. Here he married Robina Sharp from Glasgow in October.
Verrall was appointed as a Ship’s Police Staff member for the voyage back to Queensland, where the couple initially settled Bundamba. Their first daughter died at birth in 1920 before a second was born four years later. Verrall lived in Dinmore for several decades, working as a labourer. He died in July 1984 aged 81 and was buried in Ipswich General Cemetery.