Toowoomba British Football Association Honour Board
Toowoomba British Football Association honour board is an important lost artifact in the history of Australian soccer. It was unveiled on Wednesday 10 May in 1918 in Herriott’s rooms, Ruthven St, Toowoomba, where the association held their meetings over several years. While the honour board has subsequently become lost, the names of those added the board were recorded by the Darling Downs Gazette on Thursday 9 May 1918. Those names are an important record of those who played the game in Toowoomba and the surrounding area during a decade in which the game was often under-reported. It is also a testament to soccer’s contribution to the war effort.
The Gazette stated the names were drawn from past and present members of the association. Further research shows these included some who had moved away from Toowoomba prior to enlisting as well as several curiosities regarding the names on the list.
Firstly, the list was not comprehensive with several known players in the Toowoomba missing. Park Rangers duo Frank Cartwright and Charles Ware, for instance, are absent despite teammates appearing on the board. Given the number of players who enlisted and were absent when the honour board was compiled, holes in contemporary memory may be forgiven.
There were also errors in the fate of players. George Skuse was listed as killed, whereas he survived the war and returned in 1919. It was in fact his elder brother James who died on the battlefield. James McManus was listed as killed, leading to the Gazette admitting this was an error a few days later. Tragically, McManus was killed in August.
Another curiosity is that almost half of the names, at the time of writing, cannot be connected to the game in Toowoomba through newspaper reports or other sources from the preceding years. This is understandable, given many enlisted as soon as they reached 18. As school football was largely unreported during the decade, many players were simply too young to rate a mention. Even those who were slightly older would have found senior games hard to come by as the game died down from 1915 due to the war.
The biggest mystery is the roughly 30 players who do not have AIF records and whose war service cannot be traced. It is possible some enlisted in foreign forces, as James Yule did with the New Zealanders, though his probable relative W. Yule cannot be traced either the Australia or New Zealand military.
Others on the board may be like W. Tregea who provided his service in other ways, having gone to England to work at a munitions factory. James Bouel did not enlist until after the honour board was unveiled but his name appeared due to his work over several years at the military hospital at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane.
Even with these mysteries, the Toowoomba British Football Association honour board is an important snapshot on the state of the game during the war years. The honour board gives modern readers a rare glimpse into the social backgrounds of those who played soccer in the Darling Downs in the earliest decades of the 20th century.
Crossmatching the list of names with military records shows the players were mill workers, rail workers, journalists, labourers, clergymen, clerks, accountants, farmers and salesmen. They had been born throughout eastern Australia and as far away as Scotland, England and Germany.
Many of these names were of players who fought in trenches, led camels in supply trains, became trainers in camp, processed army pay and saw service in Gallipoli. Some were killed. Some survived and returned to the game. Others had their lives changed forever. More work is needed to uncover the lives of some of these names, and to discover the fate of the honour board itself. We can thank the Darling Downs Gazette for allowing these names to be handed down the generations.