Frederick Albert Baring (15 December 1890 – 10 December 1961) was an

Australian rules Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

footballer who played with

Essendon Essendon may refer to: Australia *Essendon, Victoria **Essendon railway station **Essendon Airport *Essendon Football Club, in the Australian Football League *Electoral district of Essendon *Electoral district of Essendon and Flemington United Kin ...

in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football competition in Australia operated by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a second-tier, regional, semi-professional competition. It includes teams from clubs based in east ...

(VFL) during the early 1900s. In

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

he was named at fullback in Essendon's official Team of the Century. He also played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

for

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

Family

The son of Frederick John Baring (1857–1917), and Annie Baring (−1935), née Riley, Frederick Albert Baring was born in North Melbourne (then known as "East Hotham") on 15 December 1890. He married Minnie Sybil Horne (−1940) in 1916, and Edith Lillian Ackary in February 1944.

Football

A four-times premiership player with Essendon (1911, 1912, 1923, 1924), Baring started his career as a ruckman and ended it as a fullback. He kicked the winning goal in the 1912 Grand Final and captained Essendon for eight matches in the

1918 VFL season The 1918 VFL season was the 22nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. Played during the final year of World War I, eight of the league's nine clubs featured i ...

. In

1913 Events January * January – Joseph Stalin travels to Vienna to research his ''Marxism and the National Question''. This means that, during this month, Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito are all living in the city. * January 3 &ndash ...

he won the Essendon

Best and Fairest In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...

award. He was a VFL interstate representative at the

1911 Adelaide Carnival The 1911 Adelaide Carnival was the second edition of the Australasian Football Carnival, an Australian football Australian states and territories, interstate competition. It took place from 2 to 12 August at Adelaide Oval. A crowd of 20,000 witn ...

. During his career Baring played under the pseudonym "Adamson", when he was unable to get approved leave to play in the VFL from his employer.

Cricket

Baring was also a successful cricketer and played

Sheffield Shield The Sheffield Shield is the domestic first-class cricket competition of Australia. The tournament is contested between teams representing the six states of Australia. The Sheffield Shield is named after Henry Holroyd, 3rd Earl of Sheffield, Lor ...

matches for

. A right-handed batsman, he managed a total of 30 first-class matches between 1911–12 and 1928–29, scoring 1846 runs at 32.96. Following the death of

Victor Trumper Victor Thomas Trumper (2 November 1877 – 28 June 1915) was an Australian cricketer known as the most stylish and versatile batsman of the Golden Age of cricket, capable of playing match-winning innings on wet wickets his contemporaries found ...

, Baring was recognised, as the best batsman in Australia on poor pitches.Atkinson, p. 181. He made his highest score of 131 opening the batting for Victoria against

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

in December 1918. He was on the verge of playing Test cricket for Australia after being selected for their squad to tour South Africa in 1914–15; however, the series was canceled due to World War I.

Death

Baring died in the Melbourne suburb of

Doncaster Doncaster ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don, it is the administrative centre of the City of Doncaster metropolitan borough, and is the second largest se ...

on 10 December 1961.

Champions of Essendon

In 2002, an Essendon panel ranked Baring at 24 in their ''

Champions of Essendon The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers or colloquially the Dons, is a professional Australian rules football club that plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game's premier competition. The club was formed by the McCrac ...

'' list of the 25 greatest players ever to have played for Essendon.Champions of Essendon, ''Essendon Football Club'', 30 August 2002.
/ref>

Footnotes

References

* Atkinson, G. (1982) ''Everything you ever wanted to know about Australian rules football but couldn't be bothered asking'', The Five Mile Press: Melbourne. . * Maplestone, M., ''Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996'', Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. * Ross, J. (ed), ''100 Years of Australian Football 1897–1996: The Complete Story of the AFL, All the Big Stories, All the Great Pictures, All the Champions, Every AFL Season Reported'', Viking, (Ringwood), 1996.

External links

* *
Fred Baring
at ''Boules Football Photos''.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baring, Fred 1890 births 1961 deaths Essendon Football Club players Essendon Football Club premiership players Champions of Essendon Crichton Medal winners Australian cricketers Victoria cricketers Cricketers from Melbourne Australian rules footballers from Melbourne VFL/AFL premiership players People from North Melbourne 20th-century Australian sportsmen