John McGuirk joined the Annandale Soccer Football Club at the beginning of the 1915 season, one of a number of new recruits to the club. At the end of the season, this 22-year-old shop assistant, born and bred in Manchester would also be recruiting for a much larger conflict than any he would encounter on the football field.
He was just one of fifteen from the club to join the fight by season’s end. Hardly an imposing figure on the football field at a time when size mattered, McGuirk weighed in at a mere 53kg and stood just 1.62m tall. His frame would probably have made him more suited to today’s game, but play he did, and on Monday August 30, 1915 he made the trek out to Holdsworthy from the inner west to sign up.
John was assigned to the 20th Battalion of the AIF’s 6th re-inforcements and shipped out for the fight just two months later aboard the Euripides landing in France on December 11. Any plans for a future in the game probably ended on August 14 of 1916 when Private McGuirk received a gunshot wound to his left knee while fighting in Dieppe. The injury took him away from the action for four months.
1917 passed relatively without incident for soldier McGuirk after being redeployed to the field ambulance, but he found himself in hospital again due to an unnamed illness just before Xmas. Then in April of 1918 he was back in hospital as a result of a shrapnel wound which had him out of action for three months. Just three weeks later he was promoted to Corporal and was, yet again, in the firing line and back in hospital. McGuirk had become a magnet for enemy fire.
Corporal McGuirk returned home in March of 1919 and promptly disappeared from the public record, and one assumes never played football again.