The first iteration of a Sydney Football Club (SFC) came into being in 1908, inside half a dozen years it had come to be one of the most formidable footballing outfits in the city. The modern version won the A-League in its inaugural year, but that is where the similarities end.
Among the players photographed in the team line-up in 1912 was a recently arrived immigrant from the mother country, George Shipston Leverton, miner and footballer. Within just a few short years he would add soldier, husband and father to his CV.
Born in Nottinghamshire in 1889, Leverton was a miner first and foremost. As a young man he worked in one of the more than a dozen coal mines in the district and like so many other working men, his recreation of choice was football. He brought that passion for the game with him to Australia in late 1911 and had found himself a part of SFC for the 1912 season.
When the call to arms came George threw his name on the list of new recruits, but at 26 he was one of the older men enlisting. He was assigned to the 5th Field Artillery Brigade and embarked for the front landing in Suez four days before Christmas in 1915. Shipston was transferred between units a number of times, even finding his way to a trench mortar company for a short stint. It was as a gunner that he excelled and removed from trench life it was ultimately as a gunner that he survived the war.
Demobilised in April of 1919 – but not before he was selected to play for the 2nd Australian Divisional Artillery against Thuin in January – he was married to Orange born Emily Bedford before Christmas. Some ten years his junior the couple were married in Paddington and had produced two sons in short order. Only the second, Ivor survived to adulthood.
George died at the age of 50, his widow outliving him by over 30 years, never remarrying.