James Bell
The Soccer Monument Map project initiated by Paul Mavroudis got a mention on If You Know Your History this week, and being stuck at home with sick progeny led me back to the rabbit hole of searching for the grounds, statues, plaques and now murals dedicated to footballing people around the country.
In a bid to try different search terms, I typed in "soccer memorial" into Trove. In the midst of the many games played at various Memorial Ovals and Parks and for Memorial Cups around the country, I came across a very different soccer memorial.
In 1933, James Bell, a soccer player for Latrobe FC in Brisbane, died in a motor vehicle accident aged 27.
His funeral was well attended, not only by family and friends but of members of other sporting clubs, including "Brisbane Rugby League, Thistle Soccer Football Club, Western Suburbs Rugby League Football Club, Waratah Rugby League Football Club, Latrobe Soccer Club, Buffalo Football Club, Carlton Rugby League Club South Brisbane District Rugby League Club."
At a meeting of the Latrobe club a few days later, it was decided to form a committee to raise fund for a memorial at Bell's grave.
I had yet to come across a soccer club funding such a memorial for a player, though I had seen such efforts elsewhere. As previously reported in these pages the Rugby fraternity in 1888 funded an engraved tablet for the visiting England captain B. L. Seddon who had drowned in the Hunter River. The tablet was unveiled accompanied by a speech from T.D. Warner, possibly the first soccer referee in Australia.
Bell, however, was the first I'd seen connected with soccer, and having the club itself organising the funding committee.
In April 1933, plans were made for a memorial fund game in Bundamba, though whether the game went ahead is unrecorded. By late June it was decided the fund would close the next month, clearly having met its goal.
The fund received support from the Home Secretary and future Premier E. M. Hanlon who unveiled the monument on the 6th of August. Alec Gibb, the first Socceroo captain and President of the Ipswich and West Moreton Association, as did Queensland soccer pioneer and head of the Referees Association S. I. Ross were among those invited.
A few days before The Telegraph ran a full obituary, detailing how James "Windy" Bell was born in Glasgow in 1905, emigrated with his family in 1912 and started playing soccer in 1920 for Bedford Rovers and Caledonians (the Ipswich club of the Walloon/Thagoona area, and not the Brisbane team). Later, aged 24, he stepped up to senior competition with Thistle before finally joining Latrobe. His family was well known in sporting circles, with his father and uncle long connected to Thistle.
Here then was a different sort of soccer memorial. The question was, did it still exist, and was there any mention of soccer or Latrobe FC on the monument.
There are a few sites in which graves are listed, but the only listing for James Bell at Toowong Cemetery was from the 1950s repeatedly appeared. Ancestry.com finally turned up a cemetery listing for our man, though without a picture of the monument, or many other details.
It was then I discovered the Brisbane City Council had a search function to find graves in their cemeteries, and a map of the one at Toowong. Our James Bell turned up, and a few days later off I went, dragging along the self-same progeny to get some sun.
I'd driven past Toowong Cemetery often, but had never been in. It is located on a hillside, opposite the Botanic Gardens, and with an excellent view of the city, which was spoilt, according to my daughter who did not appreciate the locale of our walk, by the view of graves.
Up and down hill we traipsed past graves aplenty, until we found plot 28-38-13 and our monument.
"In Loving Memory
of
James Windy Bell
Killed, River Road
Brisbane March 1933
Aged 27 Years
---------
Erected By His Friends
And Comrades"
There is no mention of soccer, or Latrobe, but at times like these soccer isn't the point. His friends and comrades wanted to perpetuate his memory, and they succeeded. The other half of the monument, on the other side of the "rope" divider is empty, probably due to Bell being single at the time of the accident.
So is this a Soccer Monument as befitting Paul's project?
I would say there is an argument to be made. I wouldn't suggest every grave of every soccer player be included, but the fact it was the club which funded and arranged the monument is unusual.
These days fields and grandstands are named after the dearly departed - the Lawrie Bloomfield Field at Teviot Downs Soccer Club and Cheryl Southwood Field at Pacific Pines FC are just two in Queensland dedicated since the start of last year - but in the 1930s, when fields were often named after living politicians or important living locals, one club took a different route to remembering a player taken too soon.
