CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB - HOME OF THE SEAGULLS

PLAYERS - HARKER, Arnold

Arnold Edward HARKER

STATISTICS

Guernsey Number: 16
Career: 1944
NFC Games: 0
NFC Goals: 0
Debut: v Sturt-South (Adelaide) 1st Juy 1944
Finale: v Port-Torrens (Alberton) 12th August 1944

BIO

Wartime competition 1942 - 1944
Norwood-North games : 5
Norwood-North goals : 0

A speedy wingman who came up through the Norwood Junior Colts, Ted Harker played five games for Norwood-North in the wartime competition in 1943 but missed out on premiership glory.

Ted played for the Junior Colts in 1940 and 1941.  In March 1943, Ted, 17, won the 220 yards, 440 yards and broad jump at the Adelaide Harriers junior championship athletics meeting at South Park.

His first two Norwood-North games were discouraging - a 17.12 to 13.14 loss to Sturt-South at Unley and a 27.12 to 17.13 hammering by Port-Torrens at Adelaide. Then, with Jack Oatey shining and Ted Harker making the best players, Norwood-North won its first game of the season, defeating West-Glenelg 12.18 to 6.13 at Adelaide.  It beat Sturt-South by a point at Unley, 13.14 to 13.13.

A wildly inaccurate Port-Torrens delivered the reality check with a crushing 18.38 to 11.9 victory at Alberton. That was Ted’s last game.  Amazingly, North-North regrouped to sweep through the major round and pip Port-Torrens by 21 points in the grand final, 12.10 to 8.13.

When regular football resumed in 1945, Ted was close to league selection but never quite made it as players returned from active service.

Ted, only son of Mr and Mrs E. C. Harker, of Vernon St, Norwood, married Josephine Margaret, only daughter of Mr and Mrs H. S. Havelberg, of Exeter, at St Bede’s Church, Semaphore, on 19 June 1948.

P. Robins January 2025

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