Harold Oliver (Australian footballer)

Harold Oliver

Personal information
Full name	William Harold Oliver
Date of birth	(1891-08-12)12 August 1891
Place of birth	Waukaringa, South Australia
Date of death	15 November 1958(1958-11-15) (aged 67)
Place of death	Adelaide, South Australia
Original team(s)	South Broken Hill (1908) Lyrup (1909) West Suburbans (1910)
Height / weight	182cm / 83kg
Position(s)	Utility
Playing career¹
Years	Club	Games (Goals)
1910–1922	Port Adelaide	117 (89)
Representative team honours
Years	Team	Games (Goals)
1911–1912, 1921	South Australia	14 (15)
¹ Playing statistics correct to the end of 1922.
Career highlights
Club 3x Champions of Australia team member (1910, 1913, 1914) 4x Port Adelaide premiership player (1910, 1913, 1914, 1921) 2x Port Adelaide patriotic league premiership player (1916, 1917) 2x Port Adelaide best and fairest (1911, 1912) Best on ground (Port Adelaide def. South Australia, 1914) Port Adelaide captain (1921) Port Adelaide best junior (1910) Representative 14 games for South Australia 1911 South Australian championship player Honours Port Adelaide's greatest team (right half-forward) Port Adelaide Hall of Fame (1998) Port Adelaide life membership (1922) SANFL hall of fame (2002)

Club

Representative

Honours

William Harold Oliver (12 August 1891 – 15 November 1958) was an Australian rules footballer. Harold Oliver was a key player to some of South Australian football's most successful teams. He starred in South Australia's victorious 1911 Australian football championship along with Port Adelaide's 1914 "Invincible's" team. After being close to retiring from the game after World War I he returned to captain Port Adelaide to the 1921 SAFL premiership.

His reputation as an early exponent of the spectacular mark along with his general skill at playing the game saw him regarded as one of the best players South Australia has produced. This is despite never having won the Magarey Medal, somewhat a result of his career being interrupted by World War I.

Harold Oliver was born to Cornish immigrants James Oliver and Sarah Mill in the gold mining town of Waukaringa. It was common for Cornish people, where mining was a key industry, to move to Australia and use their knowledge to attempt a better life as the economy in Cornwall was waning. During Oliver's childhood in the 1890s the town was home to 600 people. Today it is a ghost town.

When Harold Oliver was five his family moved to Broken Hill, New South Wales. This is where he started playing junior football and in his last year in Broken Hill he debuted for South Broken Hill in the Broken Hill Football League at the age of 17.

In 1909 Harold Oliver moved to Lyrup, South Australia and started a farm growing fruit. During this time, he captained the Lyrup football team. In 1909, after never previously winning a game, the Lyrup football club won the local riverland league premiership. They subsequently traveled to Mildura where they lost twice to the home team. The Mildura Cultivator praised Oliver's marking and kicking reporting that it was as good as anyone who had played at the ground. An umpire at the game from Melbourne told Harold that he would be welcome in Melbourne to play football if he wanted to. At the end of 1909 Oliver was contemplating moving to Queensland to join his sister in the state but two friends, the Musgrave brothers, who played for West Suburbans in Adelaide suggested he come down and visit.

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