Robert Stewart Kearnan was born in Portland, SA, in 1894. Portland was the old name for the south western corner of Port Adelaide. He was a member of Adelaide soccer club’s reserve team in 1911 when they won the Reserve League title. 1912-13 saw the speedy forward alternating between his club’s first team and reserves. Both teams won their respective leagues in 1912, but Port struggled in 1913. Kearnan left the Seasiders in 1914 and joined the second division club Corinthians, perhaps to ensure regular first team football. Robert Kearnan married Ruby Kelly in September 1914.
He enlisted in the AIF on 14 th July 1915. He was 21 years old and gave his occupation as “clerk”. Their baby daughter was only four months old at the time. Sent as a reinforcement to the 10th Battalion, Kearnan’s front line service in France was limited by regular bouts of serious illness including influenza and severe meningitis. So poor was his health that he was sent home in September 1917 and discharged as medically unfit in January 1918.
Unsurprisingly, his playing career did not continue after the war. Robert Kearnan died in Adelaide in 1957. In a tragic aftermath to his return to Adelaide, Bob and Ruby’s daughter and only child died in 1922, aged only seven.