William Ricketts played for Brisbane club Returned Soldiers after the war. He was born in Fleet, England, but was living in Condong, Murwillumbah when he enlisted in August 1915. It is possible he played soccer in Australia before enlisting. Condong had a team in the short-lived Far North New South Wales competition, which was curtailed by the onset of the war, though Ricketts’ name was not listed in the scant team lists published by the local newspapers.
A farmer in the Condong region, Ricketts went north to enlist in Brisbane. He left Australia in October, but furunculosis saw him confined to hospital in Abbassia, Cairo in December 1915. He recovered in the new year and was reallocated to the 47th Battalion after the post-Gallipoli reorganisation of the Australian forces.
He was sent to France where he was promoted to Corporal in 1916, and onto Lance-Sergeant and Sergeant in 1917. Rickets was transferred to the 49th Battalion in 1918, though his service that year was interrupted by two further bouts of illness.
Ricketts was court martialled in early 1919 for being absent without leave in England between 3 and 17 March 1918 but was found not guilty.
He started back for Australia in June 1919 and initially lived in Fortitude Valley. The Toowoomba Chronicle of 1 April 1920 reported that Ricketts and another soldier, O. Thompson, received assistance from the Repatriation office after they lost their possessions. The pair had taken on work at the cement works at Gore when their tent was destroyed by a fire. The Toowoomba Repatriation office, set up to help returned soldiers, provided them with clothes and a financial advance to allow them to return to work.
By August, Ricketts had returned to Brisbane and played for the Returned Soldiers’ soccer club against Brisbane City. On 6 September his play on the left wing was praised by the Observer and Evening Brisbane Courier reporting on a game against Queen’s Park. He appeared in the Returned Soldiers team photo of the year, which is held by the Queensland State Library. Returned Soldiers’ folded into Brisbane City and Ricketts was seen occasionally playing for City between 1922 and 1924. Ricketts died in 1964.
