The battlefront tale of Percy Peaty, better known as Lionel in the football fraternity, is a short one.
Born in Granville in August 1891, Peaty enlisted on 16 May 1915 and was assigned to the AIF 1st Battalion. He shipped out for Gallipoli exactly a month later. Within a year he was deemed unfit to fight due to a heart disease, something I am sure his young wife was very glad of given the loss of life among other members of his battalion in Gallipoli at the time.
As a footballer Peaty had a far more storied career being a member of the all conquering Granville side of 1914 that won both the Rawson and Gardiner Cups. He played alongside future Socceroo Frank Melliar-Smith and legendary NSW captain R.H. Moore who was a veteran by that stage having first represented the state ten years earlier. Percy’s older brother Arthur also represented the state while playing for Granville.
Percy was the youngest of the Peaty clan and married a local girl, Mary Haigh, in 1913. The same year their son William was born. Tragically he died before his first birthday. More tragedy followed with the death of siblings William and Muriel at the height of the Spanish Influenza outbreak which also claimed his wife Mary.
Percy clearly decided a new start was needed and in 1920 he moved to Wollongong’s northern suburbs where he picked up the game again donning the famed red and white quarters of Corrimal where he played as a centre forward.
He married again in 1929, taking Kate Oliver three years his junior, as his bride. Percy became a boilermaker’s assistant and spent the rest of his years in the Illawarra, passing away in 1967, outliving all four of his siblings. Percy had one child, William who became a mechanic and with whom they lived in Corrimal until his death.