Australian Football

AustralianFootball.com Celebrating the history of the great Australian game

 

Key Facts

Full name
Arthur Collinson

Known as
Arthur Collinson

Arthur Collinson


One of the forefathers of Australian Football in Queensland, Arthur Collinson is widely regarded as the man most responsible for the re-emergence and consolidation of the game in south-east Queensland in the early twentieth century. In a 35-year stint he held every senior position on the League and also served as an umpire. 

Born in Melbourne and educated at the O’Hare College, he worked in a saw mill and was transferred by a Melbourne timber firm to head their Queensland operations. He was among a group of Victorians pivotal in reviving the national code in Queensland in 1903 (contemporaneous with a similar revival in Sydney) and was appointed Queensland Football League secretary in 1905, holding that position for five years. A highly-respected umpire, he officiated in many premiership fixtures during his tenure as secretary and was known to have umpired at least two grand finals and one interstate clash. Awarded Life Membership of the League in 1911, he was described in the local paper of the time as “a good-natured gentleman and a most effective worker in the game’s best interests who never sought the limelight”. 

He was Queensland’s first representative on the Australian Football Council in 1906, manager of the 1908 Queensland interstate carnival team and also filled the role of League treasurer before World War I. He had a work-related stint living in Chinchilla from 1912 and while there are no actual records of support it is widely believed that it was during this time that football was first played in the Nanango/Chinchilla region. Returning to Brisbane, he was appointed President of the League just after the war, holding the position at various times through the 1920’s and ‘30s and serving as League Patron in 1924. As the paper recorded in 1933: “Probably nobody has worked harder for the game in Queensland than the genial A.C. and probably no man is more out of pocket than he in the effort to keep the code going”. He passed away in May 1940 just days after having again been made QANFL patron.

Author - Murray Bird and Peter Blucher


Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.