Born in Minmi in 1892, the inside right from the Minmi Rangers, had his 1909 season interrupted after a section of the Back Creek mine he was working in collapsed, leaving him with a broken arm. Fifth of seven children born to a miner George Snr, young George emerged into what would become football’s heartland. In 1894 the Minmi Rangers played the first recorded match in Newcastle, the event immortalised in brass on the bandstand in Lambton Park.
George travelled to Liverpool in Sydney to enlist on 12 December 1914 and was assigned to C Company of the 2nd Battalion of the AIF, and shipped off to Egypt for training and thence to Gallipoli. His time at the front was short lived, picking up the first of a number of infections that would see Pte Barr in and out of hospital for the remainder of the war, starting with a Corneal Ulcer which had him hospitalised in early May only a fortnight after the landing. He was transferred away from the fighting to the 4th Mobile Veterinary unit looking after the horses of the Light Horse Brigade.
George Barr returned home in January of 1919, wed Ellen Dodd in 1921 and died in Newcastle Hospital in 1924. There is no record George returning to the game after the war.