Port Adelaideiborn labourer Robert Lawrence Kewley (with a Manx surname) lived at Port Adelaide and played for the Port club in 1910, mainly in the reserves but made at least one first team appearance. His name is absent from team lists in subsequent seasons, perhaps from one of the common reasons (“working in the country”), or even “lost interest”.
After enlisting in the AIF in July 1915 he was posted to a Light Horse remount unit in Egypt. Here he would have been involved in attending to fresh horses as well as being in and out of hospital with various illnesses. He later was posted to a stores depot and then as a guard on an Australian Flying Corps airfield. By 1917 an increasing number of disciplinary offences began appearing on his record, including one for “riding his horse across a railway line at a point where there was no level crossing!”
In June 1918 he disappeared for two months and was charged with desertion when he was apprehended. He was sent to the UK under escort. His sentence was not carried out and he continued serving with the AIF until May 1919 when he was shipped back to Adelaide. Robert Kewley married Elizabeth May Green at Port Adelaide in 1928, and the couple later moved to Sydney.