PORT ADELAIDE’S ANZAC links spread far and wide, including in Europe. 

A number of Port Adelaide players and staff have served their country in the Australian Defence Force, and sadly some have fallen in the line of duty. 

A total of 12 Port Adelaide league players are known to have died in armed conflicts since 1915, four of those in World War I.  

So it is perhaps fitting that in the lead up to ANZAC Day and the build up to the centenary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, Port Adelaide supporters Helen and Joe Candida visited the graves of three players who served in the war but never returned. 

Helen and Joe are travelling through the north of France and Belgium and stopped to pay their respects to Albert Reginald Victor Chaplin, William Irving Boon and Joseph Charles Watson. 

Helen sent the club photos from the cemetery visit, showing poppies (handmade by Helen’s 80-year-old Port Adelaide supporter mother Margaret Russell) and Port Adelaide scarves draped over the men’s graves. 

“My husband and myself are currently on holiday in the North of France and Belgium and thought it only fitting that in this 100 year anniversary of the end of WW1 that we pay our respects to those past players who died for our freedom,” Helen said. 

“Unfortunately we did not make it to see Archibald James Gosling. 

“And in case you are wondering, the Victoria School in Villers Brettoneux still displays the guernsey that the club presented to them.”

The deaths of Arch Gosling, Albert Chaplin, William Boon and Joseph Watson while serving in France was keenly felt back home.  

Families, friends, comrades and old teammates were left behind to mourn. 

In 2015, 1915 replica heritage guernseys were left at their memorial sites. 

Gosling played 75 games and won one premiership in nine seasons for the club. 

Gosling’s war ended at the age of 36 on 5 June 1918, as the result of chlorine gas.

Chaplin, Watson and Boon were three members of the great team of ‘Indestructibles’ that conquered Australian football in 1914 by winning every game, including the SAFL premiership decider against North Adelaide, and the Championship of Australia against Carlton. 

Albert Chaplin was the first Magpie to fall, his death coming in September 1916 as part of the Battle of Mouquet Farm near Pozières. 

Chaplin and his brother George both served together, first in the Middle East and then in France with the 52nd Battalion. 

Albert rose through the ranks to the rank of Sergeant. 

He was a two-time Port Adelaide premiership player, and was killed at Mouquet Farm, although his body, like so many others, was never found. 

Boon was a member of the 8th Field Artillery Brigade and served from his enlistment at the end of 1915 through until 1918 when he was killed by a direct hit from a German shell on his position while fighting on the Somme in Méricourt.

His death came on 24 April and he is now buried in a small cemetery just outside of Bonnay. 

Joseph Watson died of a gunshot wound to the leg at Bullecourt in 1917. 

The company sergeant major was part of a push to attack German trenches near the village that resulted in some 3,000 Australian deaths. 

Thank you to Helen and Joe for sending these photos through as a poignant reminder of Port Adelaide’s long and proud association with Australia’s armed forces. 

You can see a list of more than 100 servicemen who have been identified for the club’s war honour roll here. 

http://www.portadelaidefc.com.au/club/history/our-servicemen

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