Edward Mark Daniels was a fruit grower, organist, songwriter and soccer player who captained Palmwoods in the first soccer match on the Sunshine Coast. That game saw Palmwoods play Buderim on 31 July 1920, with Daniels scoring the first goal in a 2-nil win. During the war, Daniels moved from Palmwoods to Brisbane to enlist in July 1916, and shortly afterwards met Harriet Louisa Follano Router. They married on 7 October and lived together until his departure on 17 November, leaving her with a proportion of his pay.
He was transferred through several Battalions before being allocated to the 4th Division Machine Gun Company, though he spent most of his first year of the war in England training. During this time, he became sick for seven weeks with bronchitis. On his recovery he wrote a letter which appeared in the Brisbane Courier on 18 July 1917, recounting how he met a professional organist and as a result was given the opportunity to play an old organ in a 600-year-old chapel attached to a castle where a Baron lived.
Daniels finally arrived in France in September 1917 though his time at the front was interrupted by trench fever. He returned to England shortly before the armistice, discharged in early 1919 and returned to Australia.
On his return, Daniels was the centre of a widely reported divorce case. It was alleged while he was on active service, Harriet had undertaken what was described as “misconduct” with George McLeod. Word of the affair reached Daniels at the front, and on his return he refused to live with Harriet. Daniels took the couple to court in 1920. McLeod’s wife Daisy was a witness, while the co-defendants offered no defence. The jury agreed that the affair had been proven and the judge granted the divorce and ordered the co-defendants to pay £100 damages and costs. The case was reported as far away as Melbourne.
Daniels continued to play soccer after the game in 1920, appearing for the North Coast representative team for an away game against Brisbane in 1921. The same year Daniels lodged a copyright application for a song called “Life’s Motto”, the first of several applications for songs he made in the 1920s. In the coming years Daniels became a well-known local music teacher and was often seen playing piano, organ and leading choirs in churches on the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, as well as at civic events.
By 1945 Daniels had remarried with a daughter and was living in Kangaroo Point. Here he died in 1952.