Reg Date (26 July 1921 – 11 August 1995) was an Australian soccer player who plied his trade after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Date played for

Wallsend Football Club Wallsend Football Club is a football club in Australia. They play in the Northern NSW State League Division 1 which is the second tier of competition in Northern NSW Football. They are the oldest football club in Newcastle. Club Colours T ...

and Canterbury-Bankstown. He represented Australia in five full international matches, captaining three times.

Early life

Date was born in Wallsend to Nancy and John "Mick" Date. His father was a fisherman at Lemon Tree Passage, where Date lived until the age of eight, when he moved to live in Wallsend with his mother's parents.

Club career

Date went to Plattsburg Public School in Wallsend, being a prolific goalscorer in their youth matches. He made his debut for

in 1938 as a 16-year-old. He joined Canterbury-Bankstown in the state league in 1945. Date continued to live in Wallsend, commuting by train every weekend. In 1948, Date returned to Wallsend. In time he was coached by the great

Alf Quill Alfred Quill (born 1910, in Sydney) was an Australian soccer player and played for the Australia national team. Often considered one of the best soccer players in New South Wales, he scored 868 goals in all NSW competitions in his 24-year senio ...

's legendary goalscorer of the inter-war years. At his peak Date was an incredible goal scorer for

Canterbury-Bankstown Canterbury-Bankstown is a customary region of Sydney, Australia, in the south-western suburbs. The area is located around the Bankstown railway line, to the west of the St George region and to the south of the Inner West region. The suburbs o ...

in the

New South Wales Division 1 New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

, earning state and international recognition and captaining Australia in three matches against

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

in a five-game home series against that nation; Date scoring 8 goals. (He scored another 3 in two warm-up matches for the 'B' side prior to the official tour. There was consternation when Date, for whatever reason, was not selected on international tours of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

in 1948 and, most surprisingly,

in 1950 but he did score in a representative match on the national side's return from the Cape for New South Wales against Australia on Saturday 2 September 1950 and did appear for the 'B' side in the famous 0–17 defeat to an English XI on 30 June 1951.

Career statistics

Club

International

Legacy

In 2000, he was selected as a member of the Australian team of the century by respondents to an

RSSSF The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around the ...

vote, beating

Frank Farina Frank Farina OAM (born 5 September 1964) is an Australian football (soccer) coach and former player who played as a forward. His playing career spanned Australia, Belgium, France, Italy and England, and was a major player for the Australian ...

into second place for the number 10 shirt.

Later life

Date worked for years running hotels in the Newcastle area. He became the publican of the Queens Arms Hotel in Maitland in 1947, moving to the Ocean View Hotel in

Dudley Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, southeast of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the ...

the next year. In 1954, Date took over the Albion Hotel in Wickham, where he worked until his retirement in 1980. In a 2012 interview with ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', his Australia teammate

Joe Marston James Edward "Joe" Marston (7 January 1926 – 29 November 2015) was an Australian association football player who became the first Australian to appear in a FA Cup Final when he turned out for Preston North End in their 1954 defeat to West B ...

rated Date as the best Australian player that he had played with or against, adding, "Great player. Great bloke. But boy he could drink. The selectors, they never liked Reggie. He was too much of a larrikin. They couldn't handle him."

Honours

Wallsend *NSW State League: 1938, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1951, 1953 *NSW State League Cup: 1942, 1944, 1950, 1952 *NSW Robinson Cup: 1938, 1939 *NSW Daniels Cup: 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1949, 1950, 1951, Canterbury *NSW State League: 1945 *NSW State League Cup: 1946 *NSW Sydney Cup: 1946 Individual *NSW Top Scorer: 1942, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1953

References

External links

Oz Football profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Date, Reg Australian soccer players Australia men's international soccer players 1921 births 1995 deaths Men's association football forwards Sportspeople from Newcastle, New South Wales Soccer players from New South Wales