Alfred James Elderfield was born in England around 1894. He played for the newly formed Brunswick United club in 1915.
Receiving a serious gunshot wound to the thigh in France in January 1917, he played no further combat role and returned to Australia in September 1917. The injury seems to have been so serious as to rule him out of playing again because he is absent in the postwar Trove newspaper sporting archive.
He married Eileen Myrtle Harris in 1919 and they had three children during their marriage. Having witnessed in sequence the early deaths of his daughter, son and wife he moved to Brisbane where he died in 1970.