John William Summers was a plasterer from the Adelaide suburb of Prospect who played for the North Adelaide club from 1913 to 1915. A diminutive left winger, he was a member of North’s league winning side in 1914.
John Summers was born in Shepherds Bush, London, although his father, William Henry Summers, had been born in Adelaide. Summers snr had gone to England in his youth and served in the British Army.
Father and son both turned up at the Exhibition Camp (on Jubilee Oval) in November 1915 with the intention of joining the AIF. They were aged 43 and 21 respectively. William Summers was soon discharged on medical grounds with a gammy leg – the result of being kicked in a fight in London. In his mere three weeks in camp he collected disciplinary charges for disobeying orders and drunkenness.
John Summers was medically fit, and went on to serve with the 27th Battalion on the western front. On 18 May 1918 he was convicted of looting an abandoned shop in Amiens. The sentence was eight weeks of Field Punishment No.2 – supervised hard labour at various locations. Only five days into his sentence, Summers was caught in a German mustard gas attack.
He was evacuated to hospital in England, then returned to Australia and discharged in March 1919. It would seem that he never completed his Field Punishment sentence. In a report of a league game between North and Prospect in 1922, it was mentioned that the Prospect goalkeeper, Summers, “played surprisingly well”. So it was likely that John Summers briefly played on after the war – and it was a surprise because even then he would have been considered too short for a goalkeeper!
He did not remain long in Adelaide. He went on to spend some time in New Zealand before eventually settling in Melbourne.