[[Fhs/fs/7/index.html|File:Freotopia fhs fs .. .. img banner.jpg]]
Fremantle Stuff > FHS > Fremantle Studies > 7 > Errington
Fremantle football in colonial times
Steve Errington
Errington, Steve 2012, 'Fremantle football in colonial times', Fremantle Studies, 7: 92-103.
The people of Fremantle saw their first football match on Wednesday 14 October 1868 when the Temperance Society played and defeated the town by two goals to one. The venue was the Fremantle Green at the northern end of Cliff Street, by the jetty. The Inquirer report of the match is very brief but it was clearly played under the ‘best of three’ rule where the first team to kick two goals won the game. [1] This applied both at Rugby School, Warwickshire, [2] and in games played in Melbourne. No other rules were specified.
Football was introduced to the colony of Western Australia that year by the 14th Regiment who had played the Melbourne Football Club under Victorian rules the previous winter. [3] On Friday 22 August 1868 twenty men of the regiment handed a football lesson to twenty Perthites led by the Reverend Frederick Taylor. [4] Taylor was headmaster of Bishop Hale’s school which was located in the Cloisters at the time. They played on the sports ground which ran between St Georges Terrace and Hay Street on the western side of the school. In September, the 14th Regiment played and defeated the Metropolitan Rifle Volunteers and then a team of civilians on the Cloisters ground. [5]
After an eight-month tour of duty, the regiment sailed away in February 1869 and the game of football went into hibernation for seven more Winters.
It was revived in March 1876 by Carlton Pether, captain of the Perth Boys School Football Club. George Gallop, secretary of the Fremantle Boys School Cricket Club, had challenged Perth Boys to a cricket match. Pether could not organise a cricket eleven but agreed to meet the Fremantle team in a game of football. They settled on twelve-a-side; the playing rules are unknown. The day-long contest took place on the Fremantle Green on 18 March 1876. Seventy years later, Gallop could not remember who won the fights or the football. [6]
The Fremantle Green was land that had been reclaimed from the shallows by a series of ‘working bees’ and then planted with couch grass. [7] It became the training ground of the Fremantle Rifle Volunteers but, in April 1862, the Fremantle Cricket Club turned it into an excellent cricket ground in time for a match with the Perth Cricket Club. [8] It survived until the 1879 Foundation Day celebrations before it was reclaimed for building the first Fremantle railway station as part of the terminus of the Fremantle- Guildford line which opened in March 1881. [9]
Rugby arises
Success in Victorian Rules Football would eventually prove to be a source of great pride to the people of Fremantle, [10] but the ‘portonians’ also excelled in rugby and soccer - and rugby was the first to get organised. It started at High School (later known as Hale School) in Perth in July 1878. The Headmaster was from a rugby-playing school and he secured the Cloisters ground for some friendly games [11] between teams led by St John Ord (nephew and private secretary to the Governor) and Henry Lefroy, a future State Premier who had been educated at Rugby School. In 1879, a football club was formed at High school but football only gained a permanent foothold on the winter calendar after the school team played a town XV on their new Milligan Street ground in June 1881.
The sportsmen of Fremantle had lost Fremantle Green, but their Perth counterparts had just gained a central sports ground when the shallows between the Barrack and William Street jetties had been reclaimed to form the Esplanade reserve. [12] This inspired the formation of the Perth and Perth Rovers Football Clubs in March-April 1882. Then, on Friday April 21, a meeting at the Freemasons Hotel saw the formation of the Fremantle Football Club with Frank Stafford and John Broomhall in the key roles of captain and secretary. Thirty-four members signed up and a scratch match was arranged so they could learn the rules of rugby. A contest with the Perth Rovers was organised for 1 June 1882, the Foundation Day holiday, and the best XV was selected to meet the Perth Rovers on the Barrack Field. This was once the parade ground for the Pensioner Guard and is now the site of Fremantle Oval. At half time Fremantle was leading thanks to a touchdown by Broomhall, and both teams strolled across to the Freemasons Hotel for refreshments. In the second half Samuel Moore scored a second touchdown, Stafford converted the try and time was called with Fremantle easy winners. Both teams adjourned to the Emerald Isle Hotel in High Street where many toasts were drunk. 13
Two weeks later the Perth club travelled to the port and was also defeated thanks to field goals from Stafford and Thomas Latimer. Harry Herbert impressed spectators with his ability to kick with either foot. The following Wednesday, Fremantle beat Rovers on the Esplanade. Fremantle lost an away game to Perth in July and then defeated them at home in August. City Bank official and diarist Alfred Hillman was in the crowd and he recorded how he was ‘much amused at the interest taken in the match by the townspeople, the way they cheered their side on’ and observed that ‘if the match had been played in Perth there would have been no such demonstration.' 14 With four wins from five matches, Fremantle were the unofficial rugby premiers of 1882. Their supremacy was confirmed in early September when they were challenged on the Barrack Field by a combined XV from the city. In a closely fought and friendly game the only score came from Stafford, who, finding the city backs not in their places, made a good run and touched down. The try for goal missed but Fremantle won by one try to nil.
On 12 April 1883 Bill Bateman called a meeting at the Pier Hotel and formed the Swan Football Club to play under Victorian Rules. Bateman was elected captain and his mate Harry Herbert ‘sub-captain’. The only other Victorian Rules club was in York, therefore, members could only play intra-club matches. 15 However, the short rugby season of 1883 belonged to Perth Rovers. Bank teller Frank Stafford had been transferred to the city and he was elected captain of Rovers who remained undefeated. In June, Rovers defeated Fremantle under new captain David Jose on the Esplanade. In July, with help from new recruit and future premier Walter James they inflicted another defeat in a match on Barrack Field.
In 1884 Perth Rovers were virtually without opposition, and interest in the game faded away. The Fremantle Football Club was not heard from during the season, though in July the Daily News tipped that a match would shortly take place between the Rovers and the once ‘invincible Fremantle team. [16] If the match did indeed come off no one thought it worth reporting. Half the rugby news concerned youth sides which included a new Fremantle Union Football Club. [17] The appearance of this club was the most noteworthy development of the 1884 season. Unions under two different names would win ten Victorian Rules premierships and are the club to which the South Fremantle Football Club traces its roots. They were formed in May 1884 when sixteen youths got together, probably in a room at the Freemasons Hotel, which later became the club’s headquarters. Unions made their first appearance on June 11 in a match against High School on the Perth Esplanade in a match they won by three tries to nil. The Union fifteen included Frank Snook (captain), John Humble (vice captain), Harry Fay, Lew Bateman, Ernest Back, and George Herbert, all players who would later contribute to Victorian Rules premierships. Perth Juniors also lost to Unions on the Barrack Field two weeks later. Adding insult to injury, the visiting players were hooted and stoned on their way to the railway station by the port larrikins. 18 The Perth Juniors beat Unions on the city ground in July but this was virtually the end of rugby for nearly eight years.
A switch to Victorian Rules
Most of the leading rugby players switched to the Victorian game the following season; on Monday 27 April 1885 the Fremantle Football Club held its annual meeting voting to switch from rugby to Victorian Rules. At the Cleopatra Hotel in High Street, Fremantle members had an ‘animated discussion’ about the code they would play, and the majority voted for Victorian Rules. 19 Swans founder Bill Bateman, one of the majority who voted that night for the Victorian game, was unanimously elected captain. The meeting resolved that the club’s colours be blue and white, colours which distinguish this first Fremantle Football Club from a later one which enjoyed enormous success playing in red and white. Young bookkeeper Aubrey Newman accepted the key role of secretary and turned out regularly for the Fremantle twenty but when pressure of work obliged him to step down he returned the reins to John Broomhall.
Fremantle Football Club, 1885 South Fremantle Club)
Standing (from left): CA Saw, GF Moore, J O’Connell, PH McKnight, FW Ross, CG Hanham, WA Payne, WA Bateman (capt), AW Newman, W Butefisch, W Brown, GF Gallop, D Jose, D Rogers
Sitting (from left):J Beswick, F Henderson, FS Loukes, R Broomhall, JA Humble, Clarke
Perth Rovers met the same night and voted to play the football code favoured by the majority of clubs. The Victorian Football Club was formed the following Saturday and Hugh Dixson, its dynamic young secretary, immediately convened a meeting of the three clubs the following Friday and formed the West Australian Football Association (WAFA, WAFL from 1907) with Fremantle Mayor Barry Wood as president. Dixson donated a premiership cup.
High School joined the other three clubs but dropped out of the competition very early. Unions (red, white and blue) also affiliated but did not join the senior competition until 1886. In 1885 and 1886 Fremantle and Unions played their home games on Barrack Field. Rovers won the Dixson cup in the first year, but in 1886 Fremantle were reinforced by some top recruits from Adelaide and went through the season undefeated. The young Unions, though allowed to play 23 players instead of the usual 20, were uncompetitive.
Dixson Challenge Cup, donated by WAFL founder Hugh Dixson in 1885 and won permanently by Unions in 1889 (Photo by author)
Port football underwent some dramatic changes in 1887. The South Australians went home and the Fremantle club folded. Their best remaining players including Bill Bateman slowly drifted over to Unions who changed their colours to red and white. The Town of Fremantle had been given Fremantle Park in place of Fremantle Green and in June 1886 the Council accepted a tender for £175 to erect a pavilion. This was completed in October and spectators could watch cricket and football matches from upstairs for sixpence. 20 The Park became the home of port football for the next eight winters. Led by John Humble, Unions won the premierships in 1887, 1888 and after Humble was succeeded by ex-Norwood player ‘Paddy’ Knox, 1889. By winning three premierships, Unions became the permanent holders of the Dixson Challenge Cup. In a controversial move the club voted to give it to Knox. The Cup reappeared in a Fremantle auction room in 1961 and was saved for posterity by Hilton Park man Milton Baxter. It is now in private hands. 21 In 1890 Unions changed their name to Fremantle Football Club and won again.
In 1891 West Perth, the first of the present WAFL clubs, joined the competition, but the season ended disastrously for the Fremantle club. The club reacted badly when on July 18 they lost on Fremantle Park to Perth Rovers, 1.3 to 0.7 or one goal to nil (behinds did not yet count in the score). Fremantle had not been beaten on the Park after moving there in 1887 but, after Rovers took an early lead, resentment of umpire William Croft began to build - Croft was a former Rovers player. It peaked in the final quarter when he sent Fremantle star Tommy Allen from the field, the first time a Western Australian footballer had been sent off. 22 In the wild scenes that followed the final bell, an attack on the umpire was led by Harry Marshall, a Fremantle Town Councillor, club vice president and recent player. 23 The following Thursday, Marshall was convicted of disorderly conduct in the Fremantle Police Court and jailed for 24 hours. On release, he was met at the gates by a crowd of cheering well-wishers who took him on a tour of the Freemasons, Oddfellows, Federal and Commercial Hotels. For the rest of the season Fremantle refused to play under Croft and forfeited matches to West Perth, Rovers and the short-lived Centrals; the coveted premiership went to Rovers.
Rugby revived
In the 1892 season the Fremantle club would return to its winning ways but the population boom which followed the discovery of gold in Yilgarn (1887), Murchison (1889), Coolgardie (1892) and Kalgoorlie (1893) changed everything. Supporters of rival football codes were reinforced by new arrivals to the colony; in May 1892 these supporters got together to form a Rugby and English Association Football Club (REAFC). Both codes were played. Twelve months later the Swan Rugby Football Club emerged from the REAFC and was soon followed by Pirates, another city club. A third club, Wanderers, was formed at a meeting at Fremantle’s Federal Hotel on 16 May 1893 and shortly afterwards the West Australian Rugby Union (WARU) was formed.
The Fremantle Wanderers, skippered by E Graham Price, played their home games on Barrack Field and were competitive for the next two seasons. But in May 1895 they met at the Federal Hotel and changed their name to Fremantle Rugby Football Club. Price had gone to Coolgardie and J Cowan was elected captain with W K Dunn continuing as secretary. The Barrack Field had just been converted to Fremantle Oval and made home ground for the Fremantle Victorian Rules Club so the rugby club was able to play its home games on Fremantle Park. During 1896 Fremantle Park was leveled and seeded with couch grass with the courtesy of a £1000 government grant. The Fremantle rugby club played home matches on Plympton Oval in East Fremantle which is a playing field now lost to history.
In 1897 Fremantle was led by H ‘Nipper’ Atkinson but withdrew mid- season, owing money to the WARU. Although the club re-grouped and elected office-bearers in April 1898 at a meeting held in the Victoria Hall but their place in the competition was taken by a new club which met at the Esplanade Hotel five days later. Led by former Fremantle captain Nipper Atkinson, the Fremantle Pioneers were much more successful. Playing in blue and white, the Pioneers won the WARU premierships of 1898 and 1900.
‘Socker’ established
An English Association Football Club had also been spawned by the REAFC in 1893 but struggled to find playing fields and soon folded. 24 It took another three years for soccer to get organised, until 13 May 1896 to be precise. At a meeting held at the United Services Hotel in St Georges Terrace, Perth, the British Football Association of West Australia was formed, as was the Perth English Association Football Club. At the next meeting, two more city clubs, Civil Service and Crusaders, were formed and Messrs Boase, Maxwell and Stanton undertook to form a club in Fremantle.
Fremantle Wanderers, soccer premiers in 1896 and 1897 (Richard Kreider)
This happened at a ‘fairly well attended’ meeting at the National Hotel on 26 May 1896. 25 The ‘soccerites’ adopted the Wanderers name abandoned by the rugby club twelve months earlier, formed Fremantle Wanderers and elected to play in light blue. W Boase was made captain. The port had some soccer veterans among its recent arrivals but was handicapped by the unavailability of a playing ground in Fremantle. Wanderers made their home ground on a paddock next to the Half-Way House (now the Albion Hotel) at Cottesloe. After twelve rounds of games, Wanderers emerged one point clear at the head of the list and were premiers for the inaugural season. In 1897 they were again premiers and collected the new League Cup, now owned by the WA Museum of Sport.
From 1898, Wanderers shared Fremantle Park with the Pioneers rugby club and two clubs representing the increasingly popular sport of lacrosse, namely Fremantle and East Fremantle. In 1898 Wanderers also shared the Park with the short-lived Port Rangers soccer club. With the playing strength of the port divided neither club was successful. But in 1899 Wanderers again won the League Cup (after an exciting play-off with Perth on the Perth Esplanade) and also collected the Challenge Cup for winning the new knockout competition. 26 They were again premiers in 1900.
Semi-professionalism in Victorian Rules
While rugby and soccer were becoming established, changes were afoot in Victorian Rules. In 1892 the rugby-style kick-off was abandoned and the umpires started matches by bouncing the ball. Betting on matches also became common. Fremantle, still led by Paddy Knox were again premiers, narrowly from West Perth. In 1893 the WAFA competition was reduced to three clubs. Fremantle suffered mid-season ructions over attempts to control the ‘betting element’ in the club and despite the sacking of five players for suspicious play, the club survived to retain the premiership from West Perth and Rovers.
1894 was marked by a steady inflow of footballers from the eastern colonies. When Paddy Knox stepped down as Fremantle skipper the club was able to appoint former Carlton captain Jack Lorraine in his place, with another Carlton star James ‘Jigger’ Moorehouse in the twenty. Fremantle were premiers once again - despite being expelled from the Association mid-season! In a three-team competition Fremantle delegates were regularly outvoted at Association meetings by the two city clubs. When players were reported club delegates decided the penalties and in June Lorraine and the popular Moorehouse were both suspended by a vote of the West Perth and Rovers delegates. In defiance, Fremantle selected the suspended players and, after defeating Rovers in a close contest, were promptly expelled. After a tense two weeks that nearly wrecked the WAFA the club was re-admitted with loss of the points from the Rovers match.
In 1895, Fremantle officials engineered the promotion of the Fremantle Imperials - premiers of the WA Junior Football Association for the previous three years - to the seniors. This equalized the voting at delegates meetings. Imperials played in blue and white. In April 1895 a North Fremantle Football Club also appeared. 27 They chose to play in the Junior Association but after winning three premierships they were promoted to the WAFA in 1901. There was another big change in 1895; Fremantle Oval was opened and made available for WAFA matches. Fremantle sporting clubs had successfully petitioned the Forrest government for the Barrack Field to be given to the Municipal Council. It had been fenced so that admission could be charged. 28 Fremantle and Imperials made Fremantle Oval their home ground and Fremantle Park became available for rugby matches.
In 1895 the Fremantle club recruits included the greatest of them all - Albert Thurgood, Essendon forward and Champion of the Colony of Victoria for 1893 and 1894. Thurgood led the team for the first six fixtures before stepping aside for his former Essendon team-mate William ‘Poss’ Watson. With Fremantle trailing Rovers mid-season, the red and whites recruited two more Essendon champions in Bob Byers and ‘Spot’ Chadwick. By season’s end Harry Fay was the only WA-born player in the twenty. Thurgood celebrated his freedom from office by kicking 14 goals against West Perth on July 20 (no WA team had ever kicked 14 goals before) and Fremantle pulled away to win another flag.
Of the twenty-two players named in Fremantle’s squad for the first fixture of 1896, nineteen were from Victoria and three from South Australia. They included Tom Wilson, the former North Melbourne skipper, who became vice captain and he was later joined by top Melbourne rulesman David ‘Dolly’ Christie. The red and whites secured their ninth premiership with ease.
In 1897 a divided house of Fremantle found it could not stand. The club split over the question of whether semi-professionalism should continue or the players should play strictly as amateurs. The amateur faction gained the upper hand. Tom Wilson and Dolly Christie switched allegiance to Imperials and captain Poss Watson retired. This dramatically shifted the balance of football power from red and white to blue and white. Fremantle was led by former Fitzroy premiership player Jack Leckie until Watson returned in round three. [29] At the end of the 1897 season the Imperial club was in debt and there was talk of a new club to play in blue and white. In April 1897 the Town of East Fremantle had been formed from Fremantle’s east ward comprising the localities of Plympton and Richmond. There was already an East Fremantle Cricket Club in the West Australian Cricket Association competition and, at a meeting in the Commercial Hotel on 6 April 1897, the East Fremantle Football Club was formed. [30] Tom Wilson was elected captain with Dolly Christie as vice captain.
In 1898 Thurgood returned to Essendon early in the season and supporters sitting in the new Victoria Pavilion (officially opened November 1897) saw some very close contests. For the first time behinds counted in the score and this enabled Fremantle to squeeze out one final flag. East Fremantle finished fourth and last which they subsequently avoided repeating until 2004.
In 1899 Poss Watson retired as skipper and the Fremantle team began to fall apart, struggling to field a full team even though only eighteen players were now required. Off the field the club had five secretaries in two years and slipped into debt. Creditors refused an offer of 4s 6d in the pound and in April 1900 the old club was abandoned. Publican and former club president Tom O’Beirne and former Fremantle player Griff John got together and organised a new football club. 31 At a meeting in O’Beirne’s Club Hotel (formerly the Emerald Isle) on 20 April 1900 the South Fremantle Football Club was formed. They kept Fremantle’s colours, trainer, home ground and players. Fourteen of South Fremantle’s inaugural eighteen players had played for Fremantle. The season belonged to East Fremantle who won the first of ten premierships in the next fifteen seasons due in large measure to the leadership of Tom Wilson who served as either captain or secretary for most of this period.
In September 1900 as the nineteenth century drew to a close and the Australian colonies prepared for Federation, Fremantle’s Saturday night sporting newspaper The Umpire could have pointed out that Fremantle was home to the reigning premiers in rugby (Fremantle Pioneers), soccer (Fremantle Wanderers) and Victorian rules (East Fremantle).
Fremantle Studies Day, 2010
Notes
1 The Inquirer, 21 October 1868
2 Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days, 1857, chapter 5.
3 G Christian, J Lee & B Messenger, The Footballers: The History of Football in Western Australia, St George's Books Perth 1985, pp 1-6.
4 Perth Gazette, 28 August 1868. This is three weeks earlier than the contest hitherto identified as the first; see Steve Errington, 'Chasing leather and choosing a code’, Early Days, v13 n1, 2007, p 65.
5 Perth Gazette, 25 September 1868; The Inquirer, 30 September 1868.
6 John K Ewers, Perth Boys School 1847-1947, Perth 1947 p 91.
7 JK Hitchcock, The History of Fremantle: The front gate of Australia, 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council 1929, p 29.
8 Perth Gazette, 25 April 1862.
9 RS Minchin & GJ Higham, Robb’s Railway: Fremantle to Guildford Railway Centenary 1881-1981, Australian Railway Historical Society, 1981.
10 Clement Macintyre, 'The "Bouncing Game" in Fremantle: Australan football and community identity in Western Australia, 1885-1900’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, v7 n1, 1990, pp 131-139.
11 Western Australian Times, 2 August 1878.
12 Errington, 2007, p 68.
13 Morning Herald, 5 June 1882.
14 Alfred James Hillman, The Hillman Diaries 1877-1884, Perth, 1990, p 706.
15 L Ryan, The official centenary historical record of the Australian game of football in Western Australia, WANFL Inc, Perth, 1929, p 10.
16 Daily News, 8 July 1884.
17 The Herald, 6 September 1884.
18 Daily News, 26 June 1884.
19 West Australian, 29 April 1885.
20 The West Australian 4 and 25 November 1886.
21 Milton Baxter, personal communication with the author.
22 West Australian, 20 July 1891.
23 Geoffrey Bolton,‘Harry Marshall: A Fremantle larrikin in politics’, Fremantle Studies, v4, 2005, pp 1-7
24 Stephen G Errington, The Origins of Soccer in Western Australia, a report prepared for the Professional Soccer Federation of Western Australia, April 1993, Battye Library Q7 96.33409 ERR; Richard Kreider, A Soccer Century, SportsWest Media, Perth, 1996 p 10.
25 Morning Herald, 27 May 1896.
26 Kreider, 1996, p 29.
27 West Australian, 24 April 1895; Baden Pratt, The Mighty Maggies of Gilbert Fraser Reserve 1895-2006, North Fremantle Amateur Football Club, 2006, p 19.
28 John K Ewers, The Western Gateway: A History of Fremantle, 2nd edn, Fremantle City Council, 1971, pp 102-103.
29 Late in 1897 Leckie returned to Melbourne on the death of his father. He was later elected to the Victorian and Commonwealth Parliaments and was a member of the Menzies and Fadden ministries. See Geoff Browne, Leckie, John William (jack) (1872-1947), Australian Dictionary of Biography, v10, MUP 1986, pp 43-44.
30 West Australian, 7 April 1898. See also Dolph Heinrich, The Jubilee Book of the East Fremantle Football Club 1898-1947, Patersons Printing Press, Perth, 1947.
31 Frank Harrison & Jack Lee, The South Fremantle Story 1900-1975, South Fremantle Football Club 1975, v1, pp 95-103.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 5 May, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/fhs/fs/7/Errington.html (it was last updated on 30 October, 2022), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.