Setting the Record straight: an Anzac story
By Hugh Jones ©
Even into their 80s, my grandmother and my great aunt Jean, would talk fondly about the lodger who lived in their house in Hobart before World War I. They had been teenagers and the lodger, a tall skinny footballer called Ivor Margetts, had become something of an adopted older brother.
“Ivor liked lamb sandwiches,” we’d be told over lunch. Or, “Ivor and Daddy enjoyed long Sunday walks together.” Some of his belongings were still retained by the family.
Their reverence for Margetts made him something of a fascination for me, more so recently when I inherited a large collection of letters he wrote while away at World War I. I’ve now written a book about him that will be published next month and hopefully I’ve corrected an official oversight.
Margetts went but didn’t return from the war, cut down by shrapnel at Pozieres in July 1916, along the way becoming one of the state’s best-known soldiers. He’d been among the first on the sand at Gallipoli and somehow survived the entire campaign on the Peninsula, being neither wounded nor sick enough to warrant being evacuated.
By the time the 1st Division reached France, Captain Margetts was adjutant of the 12th Battalion and pretty much the brigade’s morale officer. Being a champion footballer helped his reputation.
He’d made his debut for the Launceston Football Club while still at school, then had a breakout season in 1911 that brought him to the notice of football fans across the state. In June that year he was picked in the combined team from the North to play the South, one of the season’s highlights for fans at both end of the island, which is where he came under the eye of southern recruiters.
Margetts moved to Hobart ahead of the 1912 season and signed with the Lefroy Football Club, one of the three senior teams in Hobart’s Tasmanian Football League. Officially, he moved cities to take up a teaching post at the Hutchins school (despite having no qualifications) but it’s possible the job had been found by Lefroy, as the kid could really play footy.
Lefroy, the Blues, hadn’t won a premiership since 1907 and had been overtaken by the younger Cananore Football Club as the local powerhouse. But the 1912 team turned that around, with twenty-year-old Ivor a significant factor. Lefroy beat North Hobart to win the southern premiership, then accounted for North Launceston to win the first official Tasmanian state championship. As the premiership ruckman, Ivor became a local hero.
When he wasn’t required at Hutchins as a “junior resident master”, Margetts lodged with my great grandparents Charlie and Amy Simmons, and their daughters Jean and May, my grandmother. The family had always welcomed young men into their home, usually the sons of Northern families who had come South for university or work.
Charlie just adored Ivor, the son he didn’t have. They bonded mostly when on duty with the local militia, the Derwent Regiment. Charlie had been a member since well before Federation, while Ivor had loved playing soldiers since school cadets.
Football was a big part of Hobart life. Every Saturday during winter there was one senior league game played, attracting crowds of up to 5000 people (more than 12 per cent of the city’s population).
For three seasons Ivor was a fixture in the Lefroy senior team, and in the representative teams too. He played games for Lefroy against visiting teams from Melbourne, for the South against both the North and the North-West, and for the state.
After the 1914 finals, Ivor was selected in the Tasmanian team to contest the Australian National Football Carnival in Sydney. The team arrived in Sydney the day war was declared, news that somewhat overshadowed the competition. As soon as he could, Margetts returned to Hobart and enlisted.
He was mentioned in despatches for his bravery, particularly at Gallipoli. His letters home are cheerful yet alive with the colour of war. After the horrors of Lone Pine, he wrote “The trenches were just full of dead Turks; in some places you had to walk on dead bodies and in other places where the trenches were wide enough we had them tied up in bundles against the wall. A number were thrown out to help make the parapets. I can tell you it was pretty sight and I have had some very funny experiences … “
Margetts’ death brought great sadness to my grandmother and her family. They loved him as a son and brother. Charlie Simmons never really recovered from the shock, resigning from the militia at the end of the war. He died suddenly in 1930, as much as anything of a broken heart.
My book Two Good Soldiers, One Great War (Forty South Publishing) chronicles the lives and war experience of Ivor Margetts and Charlie Simmons. It will be available widely in Tasmania next month [May] but others can order it HERE.
Now, about that administrative oversight … for many years the AFL has listed in its Anzac Day Record the senior Australian footballers who lost their lives at war. Margetts is among that list but to date has always been recorded as being just a Launceston footballer. This year the list should be updated to recognise his career with Lefroy, a club that sadly folded in World War II.
You can contact Hugh Jones [email protected]
Two Good Soldiers, One Great War will be launched at
Hobart Convict Penitentiary, cnr Campbell & Brisbane Sts, Hobart
Wednesday 15 May 2024, 5.30pm
Part of the 2024 National Trust Australian Heritage Festival
RSVP by 13 May: email [email protected] or phone 6243 1003
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Fascinating story Hugh.
Thanks Hugh. A powerful but sadly common story from those times.
Your conclusion about Lefroy Football Club folding after WW2 has parallels here in WA, and I’ve always found it a reminder of the role of class, wealth and power in who lives and who dies.
North Fremantle and Midland Junction were both clubs in the WANFL that folded at the end of WW1. They were working men’s teams – dock workers and railway workers respectively. Over represented in the dead and wounded of the war they lacked enough players, trainers and officials to field a team in 1919. The rest of the clubs promised them readmission in 1920 but it never happened. They survive in lower leagues or folded into other clubs (MJ in my Swan Districts) but the resentments still simmer 105 years later.
I look forward to reading the book, Hugh