Colin Groom was an important figure in Toowoomba football who was killed in action in 1917.
His importance came as a writer and player. Groom’s father, Frederick Groom, owned the Toowoomba Chronicle, in which young Groom regularly wrote about soccer over many years. As a player, Groom came up through the schoolboy ranks before moving to junior (lower grade) and senior football with Western Suburbs. Groom was selected in the Toowoomba representative team in 1912. Elder brothers Sydney and Littleton were also long-term players, with Sydney seen playing as early as 1907.
Groom enlisted in 1916 and joined the 26th Battalion in France. He was wounded twice before the end of the year with the second occasion serious enough to require evacuation to England. This led to his uncle L. E. Groom, federal MP, and sometime minister of the wartime Australian Government, to write to Base Records to enquire about Groom’s location. The politician had interceded regularly during the war to assist worried Toowoomba families negotiate the Australian military bureaucracy, but this time it was personal. Groom, though, had recovered in the interim and returned to his unit in December 1916, only to be killed in action on 26 March 1917 during fighting in the regions around Amiens.
The Darling Downs Schools’ British Football Association paid tribute to Groom during their meeting in April 1917 and Groom’s name was added to the Toowoomba British Football Association honour board in 1918, alongside that of his brother Littleton, who also died in the conflict.
Surviving brother Sydney would later name his son Colin Littleton Groom.