Pre-war
Soccer in Brisbane was booming in 1914. Buoyed by an increase of immigration since 1910, the number of clubs grew. A total of 54 clubs can be confirmed playing in 1914, which fielded 62 teams between them. These teams were spread across senior and junior divisions or were classed as “miscellaneous”, a designation given in contemporary newspapers for teams who played ad hoc, social games rather than appearing in a formal league.
This was a far cry from 1900, when Thistles were forced to play against three Ipswich teams. Thistle did not survive the off-season, and no Brisbane clubs were seen in 1901, while in 1901 a reactivated Eskgrove had to join the Ipswich and West Moreton league to find games. Things improved from 1903 when 9 Brisbane teams competed and largely remained stable. The exception was 1908, when no soccer was reported in Brisbane, though the Milton club travelled to Toowoomba to play Newtown, the continuation of a yearly fixture.
An immigration boom started in 1910 and lasted until the start of the war. An assisted
immigration campaign had been resurrected in 1906 but was supercharged in 1910 through an increase in promotion in the United Kingdom. Immigration rates skyrocketed, and so did the Australian soccer-playing population.
By 1914 there were enough players for 62 teams. This means there were almost 700 men playing soccer that year, and this only if each team had a minimum of 11 players in their squads. The number was likely much larger. Even the figure of 54 clubs fielding 62 teams may be higher due to the inconsistent way the newspaper covered the game.
In 1915, for instance, the 3rd grade junior competition (Junior in the Scottish sense of lower division adult competition)received more newspaper coverage than the senior first-grade packed Queensland representative players. The intervening junior divisions and miscellaneous teams were barely seen in newsprint. It is possible some clubs played but were never immortalised by the newspapers.
(For the purposes of this article, 54 clubs in 1914 is a conservative count, as are the counts
for each year of the war. Some clubs which appeared in the various “Association Game”
columns in the local newspapers been excluded. Please see the Note at the end of this
article.)
The 54 clubs existed as far north as Enoggera and Clayfield, south to Rocklea, west to Toowong and Bardon and east to Bulimba, though the locations of where some clubs played is unconfirmed. The locations of some clubs are suggested in their names – Hill End refers to the then Presbyterian church in West End who fielded a team, while Fernberg is a major street through Paddington — but available newspapers do not mention their home grounds. The locations of some generically named clubs, such as Hippoes, Vanilla Rovers and Roses, seem lost to history.
Most clubs played in one of two clusters, one on either side of the river. At least 12 clubs existed around Milton, Rosalie and the developing estates towards Bardon and Toowong. These clubs were largely split between what is now Suncorp Stadium/Lang Park and nearby Gregory Park.
The largest cluster of at least 18 clubs played around the docks and industrial sites in modern day West End, South Bank, Kangaroo Point and East Brisbane. Much of this industrial landscape existed well into the 20th century before redevelopment and for many decades supported football.
The location of this cluster suggests many players were working class labourers, in a similar way to Ipswich football had been powered by miners and railway workers. Thriving industry attracted workers from the Old Country, who brought knowledge of the game with them.
But it was also reflected ground availability. Kangaroo Point was a hub for football due to the the availability of two neighbouring grounds. The Pineapple Ground had been used by soccer in Brisbane since the 1880s. Next door was Dunn’s Paddock, which was given its modern name of Raymond Park in March 1914. The Kangaroo Point hub at least 10 clubs: East Brisbane, Eskgrove, Geelong Rangers, Kangaroo Rats, Merton, Pineapple Rovers, Ramblers and Wellington, while nearby Shafston Rovers were likely based there.
The cluster stretched east into East Brisbane where Ashfield Rovers, Heathfield Rovers and Heidelberg Rovers played in a crook of Norman Creek called Heathfield, the location of the modern-day Heath Park. Ad hoc games were also hosted at Norman Park in the next crook upstream. To the south of Kangaroo Point was Buranda Rovers, while the western edge of the cluster saw three clubs in modern day West End and South Brisbane who played games at Musgrave Park. These three clubs – Vulture Street Baptists, Hill End and Park Church (both sister Presbyterian churches) – were examples of the third driver which influenced where clubs were located – religion.
Clubs throughout the decade sprung from churches. Christ Church, still snug in the grounds of Suncorp Stadium, had its own team in 1914. St Mary’s Anglican Church was one of the few teams in Kangaroo Point which could play in their own field, located in the church grounds. Other church teams of the 1914 season are harder to track down. Holy Trinity fielded a team in 1914, but it is unknown whether this was the church of that name in Fortitude Valley, or the church in Woolloongabba. And was Sacred Heart the Catholic Church in Paddington or another Catholic institution? We do not know.
It is possible teams with more generic names may have been church teams. Could Geelong Rangers – one of three teams named after parallel streets in East Brisbane – have been founded by the Mowbraytown Presbyterian Church which stood at the south end of Geelong Street? (Ellenas, an important Brisbane club seen from 1915, was named after Ellena St, Paddingotn, which also had a church at one end.)
Supporting the 54 clubs was a school competition, which had commenced in the decade before the war. 1914 saw at least 8 teams compete at school level: Bulimba, Junction Park, Milton, Normal, New Farm, South Brisbane, Stragglers and Wattles. The Normal School was the first government school in Brisbane, situated in Edward Street. It appears the school also fielded a team non-school soccer later in the decade. It is unknown which schools Stragglers and Wattles represented. School soccer would come to have a growing importance on Brisbane football during the war.
Soccer boomed through an increasing industrial workforce, growing suburbs north of the river and strengthening religious communities, while the schools prepared players of the future.
After war was declared in August 1914, Brisbane football began to shrink.
1915
The annual meeting of the Queensland Brisbane Football Association (QBFA), as reported in the Courier on 20 March 1916, stated that there were only 31 clubs in the Brisbane competitions in 1915. This was a mistake by the association or a misreporting by the newspaper. There were 31 teams in the three junior grade competitions in 1915. They had missed the 5 additional clubs which made up the senior grade with Brisbane City, who fielded teams at both senior and junior level. The report also ignored teams who played miscellaneous games.
A total of 43 clubs can be verified as playing in soccer Brisbane in 1915. Thess clubs fielded 50 teams. This was a net loss of 11 clubs and 12 teams from 1914, but this does not tell the entire story. Almost two-thirds of the clubs which had existed in 1914 had seemingly disappeared.
Of the 54 clubs in 1914, only 20 survived in 1915: Balmoral, Bulimba Rangers, Christ Church, Corinthians, East Brisbane, Enoggera Rovers, Eskgrove, Exelsior, Hill End, Natives, Park Church, Pineapple Rovers, Rag Tags, Ramblers, Red Rovers, Shafston Rovers, Soudan Rovers, Toowong Caledonians, Vulture Street Baptists and Wellingtons. Even these surviving clubs had lost players. Five of these clubs had fielded teams in more than one division in 1914, but only Balmoral continued to do so in 1915.
Up to 34 clubs disappeared after the outbreak of war. In their place came 27 sides which were not reported as playing in 1914. This would have led to players who wished to continue playing to move clubs to find a game.
To the rescue came new club Brisbane City. The club was formed by the chairman of the QBFA., John Kendal. Kendal was a long-time administrator and referee who wrote about the game in The Daily Standard under the penname “Looker-on”.
Brisbane City fielded a senior team and two junior grade teams in 1915, more than any other club that season. This could be interpreted as an attempt by the association to accommodate those players who saw their clubs fold due to enlistments. And the loss to players to enlistment soon became significant. A third of all players in Brisbane had enlisted by the end of 1915.
This figure comes from a report in the Brisbane Courier on 6 October 1915, which covered an informal gathering of QBFA members and the Referee’s Union. E.L. Stevens, chairing the function, claimed upwards of 200 Brisbane soccer players had enlisted, a figure repeated at the annual meeting in March 1916, where the association claimed the 200 had become a player base of 600 players.
“Volunteer”, writing in the Sydney sports newspaper Referee on 20 October 1915, revised the estimate upwards:
“Like their fellow-soccerites in every other State in the Federation, those of Brisbane have rallied splendidly to the colours. To date, approximately 250 have donned the khaki. These figures do not include batches from Ipswich, Toowoomba, and Rockhampton centres.”
“Volunteer” went on to name a handful of soccer enlistees, including Queensland representative players A. Cripps, P. Spence and A. McDonald, and Q.B.F.A. chairman Jack Kendal, who had enlisted in September. “Volunteer” claimed, “one club had 15 of its membership roll enlist.”
It is possible that this club was Rag Tags. Kendal, in one of his last columns in the Daily Standard, published on 21 August 1915, wrote that Rag Tags had folded due to almost the entire team enlisting. The decline of Rag Tags may have started months earlier. At the start of the season, Rag Tags’ 1914 premiership-winning 2 nd junior grade side moved en masse to form Brisbane City’s 1st junior grade team. It is uncertain how many of the team’s players made the move and how many enlisted, but it seems Rag Tags as a club could no longer accommodate two teams. By the end of the season, they had none, and they would not return until later in the decade.
We do not know the names of the Rag Tags players who enlisted. Only one Rag Tags player can be confirmed as signing up. Leslie De Voss enlisted in 1916, but we only know of his existence from a 1913 club photo. No one else in that photo seems to have enlisted, and it is unknown whether De Voss was still at the club when it folded in 1915. This difficulty in identifying enlisted players is consistent across Brisbane soccer.
As of November 2025, only 47 soccer players, referees and administrators can be confirmed as being active in Brisbane soccer prior to enlisting. This is a quarter to a fifth of the estimated 200 soccer enlistments reported in October 1915. It is unknown how additional Soccerites enlisted by the end of the war. This lack of identifiable players is in stark contrast to Toowoomba and Ipswich, where over 200 pre-war players can be identified between them.
We cannot identify Brisbane soccer enlistees largely because of the ad hoc nature of its reporting in the Brisbane newspapers. Rag Tags were a powerhouse team in their junior divisions, but newspapers in 1914 and 1915 only reported their fixtures or results. Their team list never appeared in newsprint, which is
why it cannot be confirmed whether De Voss was still playing when he enlisted.
Newspaper coverage before and during the war mostly consisted of fixtures and results. Even this was inconsistently applied. As mentioned, the 3rd junior grade was more visible than the senior grade. Line-ups were rare, especially from the senior grade, the supposed pinnacle of the sport in Queensland. The exception was Brisbane City. The Telegraph gave detailed coverage of each of Brisbane City’s senior games, complete with line-ups. But even this information has not greatly assisted in identifying soccer Anzacs. The only Brisbane City player shown to have enlisted was Richard Garlick.
Where squad lists were printed, they usually consisted of first initial and surname. Many of these were common names and had multiple matches in the AIF records. D. Ross played for an Enoggera military team in October 1915 and was mentioned as having previously played for Hearts in Scotland. But two enlistees with the name David Ross enlisted from Queensland in August 1915 alone, one from Brisbane and the other from Townsville, and both English born, with no obvious connection to Scotland. Neither can be confirmed as the Enoggera base player.
When Brisbane newspapers announced enlistments or casualties, they rarely mentioned whether the soldier had played soccer. Even when they did, and a player could be identified, there was information lacking. Henry Homer’s obituary in the Brisbane Courier on 29 November 1915 stated he had been well-known local soccer player, but it failed to name his club. No “H. Homer” appeared in any team lists printed in the newspapers. Someone named Homer played for Rosalie Rovers in 1914, but this could have
also been one of his brothers, such as Lauderdale Homer who later played for Wellingtons.
The newspaper coverage contrasted with that in Ipswich and Toowoomba, where over 200 pre-war soccer participants can be identified as having enlisted. Local newspapers in these cities readily covered soccer and regularly printed team-lists. More so, their newspapers readily mentioned if a soldier played soccer. The newspapers in these centres were run by those with close ties to soccer: the Queensland Times’ Tom Barker was a former club administrator, while several members of the Toowoomba Chronicle’s Groom family played. Both newspapers saw soccer, and all local sport, as part of a wider community in which their writers and editors and the sportspeople were active members. Barker, for instance, often received letters from Ipswich soccer players and other sportsmen who were at the front, which he printed in the Queensland Times.
Brisbane largely lacked this chatty, social coverage until the decade after the war. The brief exception was Jack Kendal’s “Looker-on” column in the Daily Standard in 1915. His columns were a prototype to the gossipy coverage of the 1920s, but he was mostly concerned with results, referees and disciplinary matters rather what individual players had done. Initially the war was not mentioned in his columns, but over time could not be ignored.
At first, Kendall teams were missing players but did not attribute this to any cause. The “Looker-on” column of 23 May 1915 stated, “clubs turning out with one or two players absent is getting quite a frequent occurrence, and nothing tends to get players indifferent as to the welfare of their club and to eliminate the support of the public form the game.”
This changed in his article on 18 June 1915:
“In one of the latest Australian casualty lists appears the names of three members of the Hill End Club (second grade juniors), who will not again appear on our playing field. They have played their last game, and have nobly laid down their lived for the country. For these three members, Privates Orr, Anderson and McNee (sic), a memorial service was held last Sunday in the Park Presbyterian Church and as a mark of respect for their hero comrades the members of the Hill End Football Club walked from Hill End Church to take part in the memorial service.”
Joseph Orr can be identified by a separate obituary in the Brisbane Courier on 12 June 1915, which explicitly stated he played for the Hill End club. William McNae can be identified from a letter in Orr’s military records, as well as a separate Daily Standard article, also on the 12 June, listing him and Orr as members of the Hill End Presbyterian church community who had died in the conflict.
Anderson, though, remains unidentified. Both Hill End and Park Churches fielded teams in the junior QBFA competitions, but their line-ups were never published. Park Church had an honour board, but this went missing after the church moved to Highgate Hill. Pinpointing an Anderson who enlisted from Queensland and who had died by June 1915 has not been successful. Anderson is emblematic of the over 200 Brisbane soccer players who had reportedly enlisted by October 1915 but cannot be identified.
While players were lost to war, some weren’t initially lost to Brisbane soccer. The camps in Brisbane, at Exhibition and especially Enoggera, provided sports programs while the new enlistees were in training. These AIF training camps played several soccer games across 1915. The earliest known was on January 25, when the 3rd Brigade Artillery beat Rag Tags 2-1. The Artillery side promptly asked for further challengers, and while it is unknown whether the challenge was accepted, other brigades also took up soccer.
A further eight games featuring military teams can be identified from newspapers, as various units or combined AIF teams played senior grade Brisbane clubs Brisbane City, Wellingtons and Corinthians. This included a game between Corinthians and the Navy in November.
These Brisbane-based military teams included local players, including Queensland representative players James and John Peebles, Astley players Albert and John Edwards and Corinthian’s Tom Ormiston. But many of the players came from elsewhere in the state, including Peter Spence and George “Jim” McCurry from Ipswich, Holland Scroxton from Jondaryan and George Samson from Townsville. Many of the military players, whose names were published in team-lists in the newspapers, have yet to be identified.
Throughout this changing environment, the Queensland representative team still managed to tour New South Wales in 1915. The two states had traded tours every year since 1912, but the 1915 contest would be the last senior tour until after the war. Queensland played three tour games and one interstate test, a 4-2 loss to NSW. A second test was cancelled in favour of a tour match against a Wollongong representative side, much to the chagrin of Queensland team management. A parallel schoolboys’ tour ran alongside the seniors. The manager of the tour was Samuel Izatt Ross, soon to take over the leadership of the QBFA after Kendal enlisted in September.
Ross had previously held the role of secretary of the QBFA in 1890, at the start of a lengthy career between the 1880s and the 1940s which took him from player to referee to administration. Among his achievements was the creation of a Referees’ Union, and he was one of the main drivers in fostering soccer in schools during the decade before the war.
On returning to lead the QBFA Ross faced not only increasing player loss to the war, but whether encouraging the remaining players to play was a hindrance to enlistment. A special meeting was held in February between representatives of the clubs and the QBFA to discuss the issues. The Telegraph on 18 February reported the meeting developed the following proposal:
“That all competition matches in the senior, first and second grades be abandoned for the
season of 1916; that no player of military age be allowed to play in the lower grades; and that this be a recommendation at the annual meeting.”The proposal was put to the annual meeting in March, and the outcome reported in the Courier article of 20 March:
“Consideration was given to a resolution passed at a delegate meeting held recently, ‘that no competition be held in the Senior, First or Second grade competitions, and that no player of military age be allowed to take part in a lower competition’. … It was suggested that any of the Senior, First, or Second Grade clubs who might form should be allowed to play friendly matches. It was also agreed to get into communication with the military forces, as it is known there are many ‘soccer’ in the various camps, and matches will, is possible be arranged by the executive.”While it easy to think this was a reaction to the loss of so many players, there was also pressure to send more men to war. Enlistments started dropping from late1915. Those eager to volunteer had already done so, while the daily news of deaths likely discouraged others from enlisting.
The government’s response was to attempt to introduce conscription in Australia. This was twice rejected by the Australian public. The Australian government could not impel Australian to serve overseas, but the existing Defence Act allowed men to be called up for service in Australia and be imprisoned if they refused. The government applied the act while debate on conscription raged.
Enforced home service was an unpopular policy as it impacted jobs, and the only way to escape such service was to apply to an Exemption Court. Lauderdale Homer, Henry’s brother and fellow soccer player, had been rejected for enlistment in 1915 but in 1916 was forced to serve locally. He successfully applied to the Exemption Court on the basis his family had already sent 3 of 6 brothers to war.
1916
This drop in enrolments may explain why senior soccer was suspended in 1916. The effect of the suspension was immediate. The number of clubs dropped to 21. Only 8 clubs which competed in 1915 were seen playing in 1916: Balmoral, Ellenas, Natives, Park Church, Soudan Rovers, St Martin’s (an Anglican Church in Paddington), Starlights and Wallabys. They were joined definitively by Kangaroo Rats after an ambiguous status in 1915. Shafston Rovers, on the other hand, moved over to Rugby League.
Up to 35 clubs were lost in 1915. If some continued to play soccer, they were not mentioned in the newspapers. The footprint of football also shrunk, though this may have been by necessity. Most games appeared to have been played at the Kangaroo Point hub at the Pineapple Ground and Raymond Park grounds, as if centralisation were enforced on the sport. The clubs largely came from three small clusters: Milton, Kangaroo Point to West End, and the Hendra and Clayfield area. Outside of these, Balmoral clung on in the Bulimba area, as did the local Bulimba school side. Junction Park in Annerley was the only school side outside these areas.
The only official competition in 1916 contained eights clubs. Balmorals, Ellenas, Natives, Park Church and Wallabys were joined by newly formed Kurilpa Rovers, Kangaroo Point and Ovals. It is unclear whether this was a junior competition, or a junior-minor competition of youths under the enlistment age of 21. The other 13 clubs were seen in rare miscellaneous games.
There were curiosities that season. Oriel and St Colombs were reported as playing in a Sunday School Union competition. St Colombs was an Anglican Church in Clayfield, while it is likely Oriel referred to the Clayfield street of that name where St Agatha’s Catholic church sat. No other games from this competition were mentioned in the newspapers, but it suggests soccer continued in parts of the community outside of the auspices of the QBFA and the media gaze.
Then there were Anzacs and Anzac Rovers, which were different clubs. Both appears to have played multiple codes. Anzac Rovers beat New Farm 17-1, while Anzacs beat Milton Rovers 33-1. New Farm were a rugby club in 1916, while the only mention of Milton Rovers that decade was a soccer game back in 1912. At first glance these appear to be rugby or league scores wrongly printed in the soccer columns.
But Anzac Rovers also played Kangaroo Rats in a game which finished 2-1, while Anzacs beat a team named Stars 1-0, both suggesting soccer. The identity of Anzacs and Anzac Rovers remains unresolved, but it is possible they were clubs from Brisbane’s military bases, who were known to field teams in multiple codes.
Games between military and civilian teams continued in 1916. For the civilians, these games were an outlet for senior grade players who saw their competitions cancelled. These players were gathered into Brisbane representative teams which played the military. The highest profile game saw an AIF side and Brisbane representative side play as part of a multi-sport charity carnival in April 1916. The carnival was in aid of a Private Nowland, who was badly injured in training by a grenade. The AIF side, including three Queensland captains in John and James Peebles and William McBride, ran out 2-0 winners against players they would have played with or against in senior club football the previous year.
The Depot Signallers came from the Chermside camp and took on the Brisbane select side five times, with a sixth game proposed, but which cannot be confirmed as being played. Only two of these games saw team line-ups published. Many of these players came from elsewhere in Queensland, including Tully, Rockhampton, Cairns and Cooroy, while Guy Hynd had come from Grafton in New South Wales. Alfred Cosh of Wallabys is the only Signallers player who can be identified as coming from Brisbane, while a handful of players remain unidentified.
Schoolboy soccer continued unabated. The school’s comp was well reported as eight teams took part in the competition: Bulimba, Dutton Park, Junction Park, Kangaroo Point, Milton, Nundah, Technical College and Toowong.
Interstate schoolboy soccer also continued in 1916, though it took some organising. Samuel Ross went to Sydney to successfully lobby the education department to send a New South Wales schoolboys’ team to tour Queensland. The tour was well-reported in the newspapers, with one of the game’s played as an opener for an AIF versus Brisbane match.
After guiding Brisbane soccer through a difficult period, Ross enlisted in March 1917, after the age of enlistment was raised. He was the fourth leader of the QBFA to sign up after Jack Kendal and his predecessors Jack Logan, Albert Dyos. Despite this constant interruptions to the game’s administration, the number of players who enlisted and the loss of clubs, the game suddenly rebounded in 1917.
It is possible the rebound came from the post-1915 decrease in enlistments, compounded by resentment caused by the attempts to introduce conscription. This may not have saved the 1916 season, but by 1917 the numbers of players had improved. These were joined by those who had returned from war and still able to play, as well as those who had aged out of school football.
1917
While competitive football was still suspended for the 1917 season, the number of clubs doubled. A total of 42 clubs can be verified, a rise of 20 clubs. There was again some attrition, with only 6 sides surviving from 1916: Ellenas, Kangaroo Rats, Kurilpa Rovers, Natives, Stars and Wallabys. But these were joined by clubs which had previously disappeared during the war: Astley, Excelsior, Hendra Rovers, Holy Cross, Park Church, Rag Tags and Red Rovers, while Shafston Rovers returned from Rugby League.
There were 26 new clubs, including two teams of scouts, Imperial Boys’ Scouts and Milton B.P. Scouts. There was precedent with a team of scouts playing in 1914. Another new team was Latrobe, who became one of the dominant clubs in Brisbane during the 1920s and 30s. But outside of these new clubs, soccer grew in school grade.
The schools’ competition now boasted 10 teams, though attempts to continue interstate schoolboys’ football in 1917 faltered. A Queensland schoolboy squad was named to tour New South Wales in August, with the Sydney newspaper Arrow advertising the tour on August 4. Queensland Schoolboys tour was ultimate cancelled, and the team instead played a Toowoomba representative side mid-month. Another squad to tour NSW was named in September but also failed to depart.
Central Technical College, the dominant schools’ team of the war, started fielding staff teams. The College Maintenance and Administrative sections played each other, and there is some evidence a combined staff team also played games. This was part of a wider trend of works teams which existed outside of organised competition.
Staff games were also played between the Freezing and Preserving sections of the A.M.E. meatworks in Canon Hill. A full match report appeared in the Daily Standard on 10 July. The report ended with a call for other metropolitan meatworks to take on A.M.E. The AME Freezing Department would also play the Freezing Department of Borthwicks meatworks. There were also suggestions the Q.M.E. and Redbank meatworks were interested in games. A club named Australian Meat Works had played Wellington back in
1913, but this was the first sight of games between works teams during the war.
1918
Soccer’s growth continued into 1918. There were 45 clubs in 1918, with 16 clubs backing up from 1917. Brisbane football was on the rise, though competitive football was still limited. But the footballing landscape was not that of 1914.
The Kangaroo Point hub at Pineapple Ground and Raymond Park (the former Dunn’s Paddock) was still the home of the game in Brisbane, but less games were being played in Milton and at New Farm. Musgrave Park saw an uptick in usage, as did Hendra in the inner north, while Yeronga Park and Junction Park had become increasingly important in the inner south as the war went on. Soccer appears to have lost the ground at Albion while no games can be confirmed in Toowong in 1918. This reflected where Brisbane clubs were now located. The game had become decentralised.
The cluster of clubs which had stretched from West End, through Kangaroo Point to East Brisbane had greatly decreased. There were no longer teams from neighbouring East Brisbane streets competing at the Kangaroo Point hub. Only four clubs – Wallabys, Wellington, Pineapple Rovers and Shafston Rovers can be shown to have regularly called Kangaroo Point their home ground in 1918. Park Church still used Musgrave Park, and had been joined by St Andrews, Kurilpa Rovers and Violets. A club called Heathfield exists in 1918, but there were no reported games at the ground of the same name. In all, the number
of clubs in the cluster had halved.
The large loss of number of clubs in the area may have been due to the loss of industrial workers to the war, and the end of the immigration boom after 1914. Soccer in the area would somewhat recover in the 1920s. To the east, heading towards the mouth of the Brisbane River, the three 1914 clubs in the Bulimba and Balmoral area had disappeared, though Bulimba still competed at school grade.
The Toowong to Milton cluster, on the north side of the river, collapsed. Only four clubs can be seen playing in the district in 1918: Ellenas, Rebels, Kangaroo and Latrobe all played in Milton or Paddington, while no clubs can be confirmed to exist in Toowong end of the cluster. Natives, who appear to have previously played in Toowong, had been based at Yeronga Park on the southside of the river in 1917. Rag Tags were mentioned in despatches in 1918 but were not seen having a home game in the Milton area that year.
Soccer new in the neighbouring clubs in the inner-north suburbs of Hendra, Clayfield, Kalinga and Nundah throughout the war, despite the loss of Astley and Hendra Rovers by 1918. Only Clayfield Rovers existed in the region in 1914, and they had been resurrected by 1918 after a period of dormancy. They were joined by 7 other clubs: Clayfield Blue Birds, Clayfield Gordons and Clayfield Church of England Boys Society (C.E.B.S), Hendra Stars, Nundah Lilleys, Kalinga and St Colombs.
St Colomb’s had been last seen playing in a suspected Sunday School league in 1916, but were now playing in the miscellaneous grade. Other church teams in Brisbane included the newly seen St Francis and St Andrews, as well as St Phillips who had also played in 1917.
A team called Rechabites, representing the Independent Order of Rechabites, also played. This was part of a wider movement into soccer by the society in Australia. A Rechabites competition already occurred in Newcastle and Sydney, and it appears there was an attempt to do the same in Brisbane occurred in 1919. For the moment the club Rechabites were seen played established soccer club Kangaroo, losing 7-1.
Several clubs in 1918 had results published but their locations cannot be traced. These clubs had generic names such as Waterloo, Wanderers, Golden Spray, Irishtown and Union Jacks. They may have been named after streets, housing estates, businesses or schools but it is not obvious. There was a club called Samford (Nundah) but there is no information if Samford related to the village on the western fringes of Brisbane located nowhere near Nundah.
Natives became the only club to have been seen playing every season of the war, though little is known about their existence, other than they appeared to have moved from Milton/Toowong cluster to Yeronga. If there was any consistency throughout the war, it was at school grade.
Twelve school grade teams competed in 1918. Curiously, one of the few new teams was Blackall. A club of the same name was seen playing adult football in Brisbane in 1916. There is no indication of what Blackall referred to, and there seems to have been no street, road or housing estate named Blackall in Brisbane at the time. It may have been a visiting team from the Blackall Ranges, which skirt the western fringes of the Sunshine Coast hinterland, and is surely unlikely to refer to the town almost 1000km to the north-west of Brisbane. (The town of Blackall, surprisingly, did have one soccer match in 1914.)
Interstate school soccer also returned, with Queensland finally making its tour to New South Wales, after attempts to do so in 1917 had been cancelled at the last minute.
Post war
The war ended in November 1918. Things took a while to get back to normal. Soldiers slowly returned across 1919, and former Queensland reps like John Peebles and William McBride would soon be playing in the Brisbane leagues. Jack Kendal and Samuel Ross both returned from the war and continued to contribute to the game in Queensland for many years. The 1919 season would be truncated but by 1920 the game returned to a full-strength league structure. Many players joined the Returned Soldiers’ team, which would then merge with the re-established Brisbane City in 1921. Newspaper coverage in Brisbane would fully mature in the 1920s to include line-ups, match reports and information on individual players.
Queensland and New South Wales resumed interstate tests at senior level in 1920. Brisbane also supplied half of the original Socceroos team in 1922, which included several Soccer Anzacs in George Brown, John Peebles and William McBride. The city hosted its first of many international when New Zealand visited in 1923. It is here the Soccer Ashes trophy was inaugurated.
In the long-term, the war provided Latrobe, the powerhouse club of the late 1920s. It would later merge with a club called Bardon and still exists as Bardon Latrobe. Pineapple Rovers and Shafston Rovers would become the oldest teams which, through a series of club mergers as industry in the Kangaroo Point wound down, became modern day NPL club Eastern Suburbs. Brisbane City of the 1910s and 1920s has no relationship with the modern club.
Many of the clubs from 1918 disappeared over the next few years. But new clubs formed immediately after the war have become some of the oldest unchanged clubs in Brisbane: Redlands (purported 1918), Mitchelton (1920), Grange Thistle (1919/1920), and Wynnum Wolves (1921). Soccer in Brisbane recovered, and would thrive until it’s next major challenge, internal politics from the late 1920s. War may have threatened soccer in Brisbane, but the sport continually found ways to survive. While many clubs folded, others flowered in their place. albeit briefly for many.
Buoyed by returning soldiers and half a decade of graduating school footballers, soccer again boomed in Brisbane.
Map of Brisbane Clubs 1914-1918
NOTES
The research for this article was initially based two sources. The first was Ted O’Loughlin’s SoccerMad database which was released in 2012. The database lists players, clubs, known games, leagues tables in Queensland between 1884 and 1929. O’Loughlin compiled the database from contemporary newspapers, including those available on microfiche and early Trove, the online newspaper archive run by the National Library.
Trove was the other source. The number of newspapers on Trove has greatly increased since the release of SoccerMad, which allowed additional teams to be revealed which were not listed in SoccerMad. But Trove meant a handful of clubs listed in SoccerMad had to be questioned.
The counts for each year of the war are deliberately conservative. The number of clubs is likely to be larger than what is presented. Clubs counted are those which are verifiable or are on the balance of probabilities more likely to be soccer. Other clubs, some listed by O’Loughlin, and others by this writer, proved to be questionable. The issue has been caused by the newspapers themselves.
The Brisbane newspapers, especially the Daily Standard and the Courier, regularly ran soccer results, often under the titles like “Association Game”. But it seems not all results in these columns were that of the world game.
SoccerMad included several rugby teams who only played other teams on this list or multi-code club Kangaroo Rats: Cities, Rainbow, Jubilee, New Farm, Sangate, Toowong Bluebirds and Trafalgars. Sandgate’s 11-3 win over Jubilee was reported in the Sports Referee on 17 July under the “Association Game” section, normally reserved for soccer. The same column also included two Australian Rule results. That said, Sangate and Jubilee appeared in the soccer results several times, suggesting they may have dabbled in the code but neither have been counted.
Similarly, Toowong Bluebirds were flogged 23-1 by Kangaroo Rats in 1914. The next year a game between Rainbow and Kangaroo Rats were reported in the Brisbane Courier on 7 June 1915 finished 13 to 3.
Some clubs can be identified as Rugby League clubs (Coronation, White Star, King’s Own, and Violet in 1914) and excluded for similar reasons. Other clubs were excluded as their only published results were very unsoccerlike. Prospect Rovers were beaten 15-5, and Milton Rovers 33-2, and while neither club were otherwise linked with other codes, both been excluded due to the scores suggesting their results were published in the incorrect columns.
(The confusion went both ways. Emu II v Rath II, a 3-1 win for the former, was reported in the in the rugby section of Sports Referee on 31 July but also in “Association Game” column of the Brisbane Courier on 2 August 1915. Emu were a soccer club with results regularly reported against other soccer teams throughout the season.)
Blow-out scores did exist in Brisbane soccer at the time, but there are enough question marks over all of these teams that for the sake of consistently they have been excluded from the counts. If only they had been like Avondale in 1916 and Bluebells (without the Toowong) in 1915 who had blowout scores against Rugby teams but were also seen playing known soccer teams resulting in soccer-like scores. Both were included in the counts for these years.
Other clubs in SoccerMad have been excluded because they cannot be verified in Trove. This does not mean they did not exist. O’Loughlin likely had access to newspapers not digitised on Trove, or whose optical recognition was so askew as not to be searchable. Clubs include Eagle Junction, Auchenflower and Tivoli, plus known clubs Ashley Rovers and Albion (in 1915), and Torwood and Emus (in 1916). For the sake of consistency, they have been excluded, with the hope their participation eventually appears on Trove.
The counts also do not include school, Sunday school, or works teams, unless they played against teams outside their groupings. These teams have been mentioned separately above. Other clubs were excluded for individual reasons. Breakfast Creek were only mentioned in one game in 1915 which they forfeited, as did Enoggera in 1917. Helidon Rovers and Andrew Rovers were excluded as there was no indication where the game between them was played. Helidon is a village at the bottom of the range underneath Toowoomba but were not otherwise mentioned in Toowoomba or Brisbane newspapers. Andrew Rovers was excluded by association, as there is no indication where the club was located. Warilda and Grantala, who played each other in 1915,have been excluded as they were crews of visiting ships, as was Mallina who played Natives in 1917.
Finally, there were issues of the newspapers being inconsistent in spelling and name usage. Hellenas were mentioned in SoccerMad, but Trove has subsequently revealed they were a misspelling of Ellenas, the 1916 champions. Aspley (in the far northern suburbs) has been excluded as it appears to be a misspelling of the well-known team Astley (based around Hendra). This does not discount a team existing in Aspley, but mistakes were common.
Rath, mentioned as playing in 1915 is likely Rats, mentioned other times that season. But are Rats a different clubs from Kangaroo Rats, who did not obviously play that season, or even Dinmore Bush Rats from Ipswich? In this case, Rats were counted under that name, as Kangaroo Rats were only seen playing rugby that year. More confusingly in 1917 there were Kangaroo Point, Kangaroo Rats (back again) but also Kangaroos, mentioned several times. In this case, only two clubs have been counted on the assumption a nickname was used. Some clubs may have simply changed their names. Merton played in 1914, while in 1915 there was both Merton Street (also known as Merton Road) and Merton Rovers. But what to make of the game in which Merton played Merton Rovers? There is not enough evidence to show Merton was now Merton Street or continued to exist as a third club in the area. A decision was made to only count two clubs, not three. Toowong was also noted as playing the same season, but this could have been Toowong Caledonians, also seen that season, or Toowong Stars, seen the previous year.None of this is to disparage O’Loughlin’s excellent research. The vast majority of clubs he lists are verifiable, and it is not his fault if other sources have yet to be digitised. All these factors mean making a definitive count difficult. A conservative approach means the clubs chosen are those who either were listed in their grade fixtures, played at known soccer grounds or had soccer-like scores. Some were only seen playing one match, but whether these were one-off kick-abouts or suggest a mass of unreported soccer ecosystem can only be determined if further source material becomes available. Who known what else is awaiting to be discovered about Brisbane soccer during the war?
Written by Garry Mackenzie