Bruce Sloss was always a fighter. An old-fashioned follower in footballing sense, tall for his era at 180cm, he played his 81st and last game for South Melbourne in the 1914 grand final. He fought to the final siren in an heroic performance that is part of club folklore.
The then 25-year-old, the fifth most experienced member of a South Melbourne side in which only captain-coach Vic Belcher had topped 100 games, ran himself into the ground.
Legend has it that he almost won the game off his own boot, and despite Carlton prevailing by six points against a wayward Swans he was widely considered to be the best player on the ground.
Jack Worrall, ex-Test cricketer, ex-Fitzroy footballer, ex-Carlton coach and incumbent Essendon coach turned eminent sporting journalist, was glowing of his praise of Sloss. In his report published in The Australasian” he wrote:
“Sloss had no superior on the ground, his glorious efforts in the last quarter stamping him as a great footballer. He possesses all the qualities but is apt to attempt the impossible on occasions. He marked, kicked, and ran like a champion, and almost pulled the match out of the fire by his brilliant efforts.”
He’d fought to the death, just as he would do quite literally 800 days later when he was killed in action fighting for his country on the opposite side of the world in World War 1.
Sloss is one of 18 South Melbourne players known to have been killed in action and is remembered with his fallen comrades this week as the AFL commemorates all who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the annual Anzac Day round of matches.
Sloss, the youngest son of James Davis and Christina Sloss, was born in suburban East Malvern in Melbourne on 21 January 1889. He split his leisure time between cricket and football in his youth before settling on a football career that peaked and ended in the 1914 grand final.
South Melbourne, premiers for the first time in 1909 after beating Carlton in the grand final, and engaged in a fiercely rivalry with the Blues in the four years that followed, finishing 3rd-2nd-3rd-3rd.
In 1914 they’d finished second on the home-and-away ladder a game and a half behind Carlton. After accounting for fourth-placed Geelong in the first week of the finals they upset the minor premiers 5.13 (43) to 3.6 (24) in what is officially recorded as the preliminary final.
Had the positions of the two clubs on the home-and-away ladder been reversed South would have been declared premiers. But because Carlton had finished top they had the right of challenge, and seven days later the teams met again at the MCG.
It wasn’t exactly a time when football enjoyed the total focus of the Victorian sporting public as World War 1 raged on the opposite side of the world.
Indeed, Melbourne awoke on grand final morning to news reports that the British armed forces had retreated after the famous ‘Battle of Mons’ and that the Germans were within striking distance of Paris.
As the reports told, the British had been forced to retreat due to the greater strength of the Germans and the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army, which exposed the British right flank.
Thought initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal and executed in good order, the British retreat lasted two weeks and only a counter attack in concert with the French at the Battle of Marne prevented an invasion of Paris.
Football was secondary and despite a perfect Melbourne day the crowd of 30,495 was barely half that of the 1913 grand final.
Carlton led by 21 points at half-time but South Melbourne’s superior pace worried the Blues and they added 1.6 to 0.0 in the third quarter. It was back to eight points as Sloss led a Swans rally that fell agonisingly short.
Depending on which records you believe Sloss was either one of 10 individual goal-kickers in Carlton’s 6.9 (45) to 4.15 (39) win, or the only multiple goal-kicker in the grand final.
Regardless, his herculean solo effort was matched only in post-match debate by a controversial umpiring no-call in the closing seconds when South’s Tom Bollard looked set to mark and kick what would have been an equalising goal.
He was within easy range of goal until Carlton’s Ernie Jamieson crashed into him without retribution from inexperienced sole field umpire Henry Rawle, who was officiating in the grand final in his first season in open company. It was just his sixth senior match after he’d controlled the entire four-match finals series. He went on to umpire just 22 games before retiring in 1924.
Sloss trudged off the field to end a career that had included three games as a teenager with Essendon in 1907-08, a stint with Brighton in the VFA and 81 games with South from 1910-14.
He had debuted with South in Round 10 1910 after a long clearance delay and played 81 of a possible 90 games, including the 1912 grand final loss to Essendon. He was the first player to wear guernsey number 18 for South when numbers were introduced in 1912 and wore #21 in 1913-14.
He played several times for Victoria, including the 1914 national carnival in Sydney, and was admired throughout his career for his never-say-die attitude and his willingness to always fight for his cause.
He was not the average footballing personality, remembered as a one-time bible reader known for his strong tenor voice at Malvern Presbyterian Church in his early years, and later won huge acclaim after a key role in revolutionising the jam-making industry.
Employed as a maintenance worker at a jam factory, he invented and patented a method of cutting melons into cubes that involved revolving circular wheels rather than the old method of fixed knife blades, thereby stopping the fruit being reduced to pulp.
His invention was a win for the jam-loving people of Australia, but little did he know at the time that the fight was only just beginning. And that soon it would take on much more real and dire connotations.
Sloss enlisted in 1915 and was trained as a machine-gun officer. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 17 January 1916 and was assigned to the 10th Machine Gun Company, First A.I.F.
It was the unit in which his oldest brother Roy also served, and together they arrived in England in July 1916. On 3 September, still in camp, Sloss was promoted to Lieutenant.
On Saturday 28 October 1916 he played in a football match at the Queen’s Club in London between two teams of Australian servicemen. He was the captain of the Third Australian Divisional team that beat the Australian Training Units team 6.16 (52) to 4.12 (36).
Soon after he was shipped off to France, where his unit was headquartered behind the front at Armentieres on the northern border.
On 4 January 1917, after returning from the front lines and talking to a fellow soldier, Sloss was killed instantly when a stray German artillery shell landed at his feet, showering him with white-hot shrapnel.
He was buried at the Cité Bonjean Military Cemetery, Armentières, in Northern France.
Three of Sloss’ former South teammates were killed in the same war – Charlie Fincher, Claude Thomas and 1914 grand final teammate Jack Freeman.
The 18 South Melbourne players acknowledged by the AFL as having been killed in action are:-
World War 1 (1914-18)
Bradford, Norm – 7 games 1915
Callan, Hughie – 36 games 1907-10 (including 1907 grand final)
Fincher, Charlie – 9 games 1913
Freeman, Jack – 22 games 1913-14 (including 1914 grand final)
Harrison, Ed – 7 games 1906, 1908-09
Rippon, Harold - 5 games 1903
Sloss, Bruce – 81 games 1910-14 (including 1912 and 1914 grand finals)
Thomas, Claude – 13 games 1914-15
Turnbull, Jack – 12 games 1908
World War 2 (1939-45)
Grieve, Jeff – 11 games 1941
Hamilton, Gordon – 2 games 1940
Hedge, Alf – 16 games 1937-38
Le Brun, Norm – 3 games 1929
Pearsall, Allan – 2 games 1941
Sawley, Gordon – 7 games 1941
Smith, Len – 1 game 1902
Thomas, Len – 187 games 1927-38 (including 1933 premiership and 1934 and 1936 grand finals)
Wade, Jack – 26 games 1931-33
Note: Hughie Callan also played 35 games at Essendon (1903-05), Harold Rippon played 5 games at Melbourne (1898, 1900), Bruce Sloss also played 3 games at Essendon (1907-08), Norm Le Brun also played 23 games at Essendon (1931-32), 19 games at Collingwood (1933-34) and 5 games at Carlton (1935).
