i

From Football Field to Battlefield

The story of the VFL’s contribution to the Great War effort, the pressures placed upon the league

to do so and the players’ experiences on a ground so unlike the one they came from.

During the time of the

Great War, the Australian

army was in need of one

thing and one thing only –

soldiers, and lots of them.

Many everyday men

heeded the call of the

Commonwealth and took

up arms in the fight, but

many were in need of much

physical training to keep up

with the hectic paces of

war. They made the cut, of

course, but if the Australian

Army would benefit to find

a healthy dosage of already

fit men. It would be

immeasurably appreciated,

which is when their

attention turned to the VFL,

one of the largest sporting

leagues in Australia at the

time. Of course, many of its

players had already

answered the call and

enlisted, including Carlton

player Fenley John

McDonald, who was one of

the first to join the

Australian Army from the

VFL. The VFL never showed

any disinterest in the war

effort; in fact, a few of its

top figures brought up

putting games on hold until

the Great War was over.

Despite this, the VFL

seemed to be singled out by

propaganda, put under

more a spotlight when it

came to giving over its

players than other sports.

When this occurrence is

investigated, it is clear that

such a pressure existed

because its players were

seen as more physically

suitable for fighting than

other sports of the time,

such as horse racing. This is

added to the proposal that,

due to the spotlight upon

the sport in Victoria, the

player’s presence in war

activities would be seen as

a rallying point, inspiring

the everyman to fight

alongside their heroes.

In A League of Their Own

During the period of the

Great War, Australia did not

have the Australian Football

League that the population

knows and loves in the

present. Even up to as late

as the 1970’s, there were

separate leagues based

upon state, which was the

case during the 1910’s. The

VFL was the biggest, as it

had been the original

league splitting off from the

VFA. There was also the

SAFL (South Australian

Football League) and WAFL

(Western Australia Football

League) but they were not

nearly as substantial as the

VFL, dominating both in

popularity and number of

teams.

This size is what led to such

an incredible pressure being

placed upon the league to

release their players from

contract and encourage

their players to get involved

with the war effort. The

recruiters saw a mass of

perfectly fit men, ready to

undergo training and take

to the battlefield. The push

for the players to enlist was

obvious, especially in the

cases of particular pieces of

propaganda almost pushing

guilt on to them for not

taking up arms alongside

the rest of the male

population.

ii This campaign would be

expected, albeit a little

unfair on the players, if it

were not for the fact that

many involved in the league

publically supported the

war effort and enlisting of

the league’s players.

In fact, Alderman Crichton,

then president of the

Essendon Football Club,

announced at a public

meeting that if it would

help the war effort, the

league could be put on hold

altogether, freeing up their

players and continuing to

do so until the war was

over.iii And yet, the

Australian Army still felt the

need to single out the sport

in propaganda and

conscription efforts. This

did not escape notice, as

Crichton himself notes that

his sport is a lot more

focused on that other

sports such as horse racing.

It seems like an imbalanced

system, but there is logic

behind the push; VFL

players were simply better

suited for warfare than

those invoved in horse

racing. There were two

types of roles in horse

racing; stable hands and

jockeys. The former would

have been of average build,

the latter much less likely to

excel in a warzone. Why

waste your time working to

enlist potentially less than

useful recruits when the

VFL has such a large

number of above average

men to enlist? This put the

VFL in a league of their own

when it came to potential

impact in a time of war.

Defending Within the

Ranksiv

Before becoming one of the

first players of the VFL to

enlist in the Australian

Defence Forces, Fenley John

McDonald had played just

eleven games; 10 were with

Carlton from 1911 to 1912

where he scored 4 goals,

and one with Melbourne in

1913. His goal record is

made more impressive

when you consider the fact

he was a defender, even if

the game was not as

structured as it is by today’s

standards. His career had

only really begun a couple

years before his enlistment,

starting his playing career at

21 years of age.v

Still, he enlisted in 1913, a

year before the Great War

even began. The research I

conducted for this

illustrated essay could not

locate a specific reason as

to why McDonald enlisted

in the first place. It could

really be any number

things; from a feeling of

responsibility towards his

country, falling for the

propaganda and its guilt-

ridden pressure to enlist. It

is also possible that his

father took part in the Boer

War, instilling a need in

McDonald to follow in his

footsteps. Whatever the

reason, McDonald was soon

travelling to a side of the

world he had never seen to

fight in a war he may not

have truly understood.

McDonald was labelled as

just another soldier, but his

presence, like others from

his profession, did not go

unnoticed. Those around

him took notice of him and

noted his status as a VFL

player, just like with other

players on the battlefield.

Even descriptions of

players’ death in diaries had

some mention of their

history, like with George

Challis, a Carlton player

who was ‘blown to bits’ in

France.vi This was a side

effect of recruiting so

heavily from the VFL. Much

like if it were to happen in

Afghanistan today, the men

fighting took pride in

knowing they were fighting

alongside their sporting

heroes. This inspiration was

not protective of course,

and neither was fame or

sporting talent. Fenley John

McDonald died on April

25th, 1915, on the

Dardanelles. This only helps

to highlight that no matter

who the Australian

government sent to war,

they were, at their very

core, human.

Support From Afar

The VFL showed

overwhelming support for

the war effort, and it was

not only limited to the men

that they sent to the

battlefield. The league used

its position of being in the

public eye to display a pro-

war stance. One of the most

notable examples of this is

the St. Kilda Football Club

and its decision to change

the team colours it had held

for so long.

Since the club’s forming in

1873, the St. Kilda Football

Club’s team colours were

red, black and white. Even

today, these are the colours

you see displayed by the

team every weekend in

their playing jerseys,

banners and flag, the

singular of the latter

intentional. But during the

time of the Great War, the

team decided to

temporarily change their

colours only slightly,

switching out the white for

yellow.vii The reasoning

behind this is based on the

fact that red, black and

white were the colours

used by the German

Empire, the enemy of the

Great War. It was felt that

having such a visible

connection to the German

Empire was not something

that the club wanted, and

so they made the minimal

change to distance

themselves from the

enemy, while at the same

time aligning themselves

with the Belgian flag, the

nation being an ally of the

British Empire.

viii

It was only a small change,

of course, as it was not

exactly a large overhaul of

their colour palette. Still,

through it, the St. Kilda

Football Club did it and did

so to make a point; that

being that they then had no

tie to the German Empire. It

was a show of resistance in

one of the country’s most

prominent leagues, one

that held a lot of weight in

the population. If they were

able to display solidarity in

such a minor way, then

those around them were

able to take solace in it. As a

significant rallying point for

the community, the VFL was

able to show strong support

for the war effort in more

ways than physical fighting.

Strength in Numbers,

Weakness Without

The VFL did not get by

giving up as many men as it

did without suffering, and

suffer it did. The leaders of

the league originally

considered suspending play

of the 1915 season, but

went ahead after a vote

turned down this

proposition. This season

went by somewhat well,

albeit with low attendance

rates, but the season that

displayed the biggest

impact on the VFL’s

capacity to continue was in

1916.

In this year, only four teams

even took part in the

season, those being Carlton,

Collingwood, Fitzroy and

Richmond, even though at

the same time, the lower

class segment of the Rugby

League continued to play

with little interruption.ix

Other teams could not take

part largely due to a

shortage of available

players, but some others

simply chose to withdraw

from the competition

because of “patriotic

reasons.” This is another

example of the

aforementioned

undertakings of St. Kilda to

show a positive outlook of

war, doing something

extremely more notable

than a slight colour change.

With this, the VFL struggled

to get the attendance it

needed, although the

league did get by until the

end of the Great War in

1919. But this, in terms of

the treatment of sport in

the wartime, is quite a

distinct occurrence. It is not

the same story that we had

seen with horse racing

which, as Alderman

Crichton pointed out in an

earlier mentioned piece,

had not been given the

same treatment as

Australian football had in

relation to recruitment. The

VFL was stripped of its most

valuable resource; its

players. But still, they did

not take the easy step of

fighting the war effort; if

anything, they increased

their shows of support,

taking measures to sway

public perception of the

war (even if it was already

overwhelmingly positive). It

shows the mindset of the

Australian people of the

time; no matter what it

took, they were going to do

whatever was needed to

win the Great War.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

1913 St Kilda Grand Final Team[image] (15 June 2014)

<http://boylesfootballphotos.net.au/article60-H-V-Vic-Cumberland-A-Giant-of-His-Era> accessed

14th October 2015

Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, Will They Never Come? [image] (1914)

<http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138351691/view> accessed 13th October 2015

‘Sport and War, Stoppage of Football, Mr. Farthing and Conscription’, The Argus, 20th July 1915 p.7,

in Trove, accessed 14th October 2015

Fenley McDonald in War Uniform [image] (21 April 2015) <

http://www.carltonfc.com.au/news/2015-04-21/the-great-fallen-fenley-mcdonald> accessed 14th

October 2015

Commonwealth War graves Commission, Death Certificate for Fenley John McDonald [image], (3

May 1915) < http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-

dead/casualty/717924/McDONALD,%20FENLEY%20JOHN> accessed 14th October 2015

Secondary Sources

Tony Ward ‘Sports Images in a Time of Turmoil 1910-1940’ Soccer and Society 10/5 (2009)

R.S. Corfield Hold hard, cobbers: the story of the 57th and 60th and 57/60th Australian Infantry Battalions 1912-1990, Volume One 1912-1930 (Glenhuntly, Victoria: 57/60th Battalion AIF Association, 1991)

James Connor, The Sociology of Loyalty (Canberra, ACT: Springer, 2007) 1915 St Kilda Football Guernsey [image] (2010) <http://www.angelfire.com/ok/fbtmisc/stkilda.htm>

accessed 13th October 2015

i 1913 St Kilda Grand Final Team[image] (15 June 2014) <http://boylesfootballphotos.net.au/article60-H-V-Vic-Cumberland-A-Giant-of-His-Era> accessed 14th October 2015 ii Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, Will They Never Come? [image] (1914) <http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138351691/view> accessed 13th October 2015 iii ‘Sport and War, Stoppage of Football, Mr. Farthing and Conscription’, The Argus, 20th July 1915 p.7, in Trove, accessed 14th October 2015 iv Fenley McDonald in War Uniform [image] (21 April 2015) < http://www.carltonfc.com.au/news/2015-04-21/the-great-fallen-fenley-mcdonald> accessed 14th October 2015 v Commonwealth War graves Commission, Death Certificate for Fenley John McDonald [image], (3 May 1915) < http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/717924/McDONALD,%20FENLEY%20JOHN> accessed 14th October 2015 vi David Doyle’s diary is cited in R.S. Corfield Hold hard, cobbers: the story of the 57th and 60th and 57/60th Australian Infantry Battalions 1912-1990, Volume One 1912-1930 (Glenhuntly, Victoria: 57/60th Battalion AIF Association, 1991) 29 vii James Connor The Sociology of Loyalty (Canberra, ACT: Springer, 2007) 91 viii1915 St Kilda Football Guernsey [image] (2010) <http://www.angelfire.com/ok/fbtmisc/stkilda.htm> accessed 13th October 2015 ix Tony Ward ‘Sports Images in a Time of Turmoil 1910-1940’ Soccer and Society 10/5 (2009) 616