Ron Larking | |||
---|---|---|---|
Personal information | |||
Full name | Ronald Guy Larking | ||
Date of birth | 9 September 1890 | ||
Place of birth | Caulfield, Victoria | ||
Date of death | 1 April 1918 | (aged 27)||
Place of death | Neuve-Eglise, Belgium[1] | ||
Original team(s) | Melbourne Grammar | ||
Position(s) | Full-forward | ||
Playing career1 | |||
Years | Club | Games (Goals) | |
1909 | University | 1 (0) | |
1 Playing statistics correct to the end of 1909. | |||
Sources: AFL Tables, AustralianFootball.com |
Ronald Guy Larking MC & Bar (9 September 1890 – 1 April 1918) was an Australian rules footballer who played with University in the Victorian Football League.
The son of Richard James Larking (1868-1908),[2] and Ethel Maude Larking (1863-1952), née Peterson,[3] Ronald Guy Larking was born in East St Kilda on 9 September 1890.[4] In 1913, he was engaged to Hetty Matthes Alkermande.[5] He died in a motorcycle accident on 1 April 1918.[6][7]
He attended Melbourne Grammar School from 1901 to 1910.[8] He was in the school's rowing First VIII and football First XVIII,[9][10][11] On 29 October 1909, competing for Melbourne Grammar in the annual athletic sports meeting of the Public Schools' Association, he won the open mile race by more than ten yards, slowing down; he broke the previous record for the event by almost ten seconds.[12] He held the record until 1916.[7]
He entered King's College, Cambridge on 1 October 1910,[13] graduating (BA) in 1914, and (MA) in 1917.[14] He won a half-blue for boxing, in the middleweight division, in 1911; and in 1912, he was elected president of the university's Boxing and Fencing Club.[7] He was also a member of Isaac Newton University Lodge.[15]
While still a Melbourne Grammar student, he played one senior match for University in the Victorian Football League (VFL) competition, against Fitzroy, on 4 September 1909, the last game of the 1909 home-and-away season, in which Fitzroy, 9.6 (80), drew with University, 8.12 (60).[16]
Larking played at full-forward, replacing the injured Albert Hartkopf;[17] and, as often was the case in those days at the Brunswick Street Oval following inclement weather, the entire ground was in an atrocious "oozy condition", with "the going … heavier and somewhat more tricky than usual", and with "a veritable quagmire about 25 yards square, through which players plugged ankle deep" at the railway goal end of the ground.[18]
On the outbreak of World War I, and residing in England, he enlisted in the British Army.[9] Initially a corporal and a Despatch rider, he was soon promoted to captain. He was twice awarded a Military Cross (M.C.) for bravery; thus, M.C. and bar. He was killed in a motorcycling accident in 1918. His obituary, in The Times of 12 April 1918, read (in part):
A scholarship, the Ronald Guy Larking Exhibition was established in his name in 1919.[19] It was awarded annually, and limited to the sons of soldiers, aged between 14½ and 17 years, who intended to study at Melbourne Grammar as a boarding student. It was tenable for their entire time at the school.[20]