Four brave brothers from the Newtown Football Club served on the front line in France during World War I. Alas, one did not return.
Aub Provan, Laud Provan, Roy Provan and Viv Provan, all played football for Newtown in the Sydney competition prior to WWI, and all enlisted in the AIF for the war.
Tragically, Laud, a member of the 30th Battalion, was killed in action at Vaulx-Vracourt on 18 May 1916. He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Vaulx Hill in France.
Laud enlisted on 8 February 1916 at the age of 22. He worked as a clerk. He is listed on Newtown’s Honour Roll for the Great War 1914-1918 in the club’s 1933 annual report.
His younger brothers, Roy, also a clerk, also served in the 30th Battalion while Viv, who worked as a bookkeeper, was posted to the 8th Field Artillery Brigade. Both are listed on the Newtown Football Club’s Honour Roll for the Great War.
However, it was elder brother Aub who achieved significance as a footballer, and after the war as a leading official at the club and league level.
Aub commenced his football career with Newtown in 1908 and played up until his enlistment on 11 January 1916, and after return from active service in the 8th Field Artillery Brigade, played until 1923.
He was a member of the 1911 New South Wales team that competed at the national championships in Adelaide where he played in the game that the Sky Blues lost to Western Australia by one solitary point, 8.18. 66 to 9.13.67.
Aub played alongside fellow WWI heroes, captain Billy Muggivan (Sydney), vice-captain Albert Vincent (Sydney), Ralph Robertson (North Sydney), Freddie “Mack” McGargill (Sydney), and Newtown teammates, Reg Ellis and Henry Hortin.
A clever winger, he also played for Combined Sydney against Fitzroy (1910), Riverina (1910), Kalgoorlie Railways (1911), Broken Hill (1911) as well as in the NSW win over Queensland at the Gabba in 1913.
The match in Broken Hill was part of the lead-up to the 1911 carnival in Adelaide. The Combined Sydney team travelled by train to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide; there was no direct train to Sydney until 1927.
Combined Sydney defeated the local team at Jubilee Oval , 6.12.48 to 1.5.11. Eight players from Broken Hill were subsequently drafted into the State team that then travelled by train to Adelaide to compete at the 1911 Carnival.
Aub Provan, a solicitor, began a distinguished administrative career in football when he took on the role as club secretary and league delegate for the Newtown club in 1919.
He was elected as president of the NSW ANFL in 1928 and served until 1933. He donated a trophy for the league best and fairest in 1932, which had commenced in 1926 but had not been named. The award was known as the “Provan Trophy” until 1937 when the league changed it to the Phelan medal, in recognition of the outstanding service to the game by Jim Phelan, a long-standing secretary of the NSW ANFL.
It is appropriate to recognise both the war and football service of the Provan brothers in the centenary of the award for best and fairest in the Sydney competition along with the other footballers, umpires and officials who served this country in World War I.