Australian Football

After beginning with South Adelaide in 1911, swift and hard-working rover Frank ‘Dinky’ (or ‘Dink’) Barry had played only 41 games of league football (plus 2 for the state) by the time, four years later, that the impact of the war caused the SAFL competition to be suspended. When football resumed in 1919, Barry, for reasons unknown, elected not to continue. However, his series of stellar performances for South during the 1915 season had already procured a kind of football immortality for Barry in the shape of South Australian football’s highest individual honour, the Magarey Medal.

South Adelaide which, along with Norwood, had dominated South Australian football for much of the nineteenth century, had suffered greatly after the inception of the electorate system, and between 1906 and 1914 had never finished higher than fifth. In 1915, however, with Barry very much to the fore, it made the finals, and although its participation lasted only a week, courtesy of a semi final defeat at the hands of Sturt, there were definite signs that it had turned the corner. From 1916 to 1918, however, the SAFL competition went into mothballs, and all of South’s momentum was lost.

Even in 1915, the impact of war on football was considerable; press coverage of the game was negligible, and so there is very little information available about Barry’s Medal triumph. This, coupled with the brevity of his career, arguably makes Frank Barry one of the most intriguing and elusive figures in the early history of the game.

Author - John Devaney