Frank Farrell (rugby league)
Encyclopedia
Francis Michael "Bumper" Farrell ( 16 September 1916 - 23 April 1985) was an Australia
n premiership winning and national representative
rugby league
footballer. A prop forward, his long club career was with the Newtown Bluebags
from 1938 to 1951 with four Test appearances for the Australian national side between 1946 and 1948. Outside of football he was a policeman in the New South Wales force; he rose through the ranks and was stationed in Sydney's tough inner-city suburbs, where he earned a reputation as feared and revered detective in the Vice Squad.
, and remained a committed Roman Catholic throughout his life.
He married Phyllis Dorothy Read (1912–1981) on 11 November 1944 and had two sons and two daughters.
club. He became captain of the club, leading them to victory in the 1943 Grand Final against North Sydney
. One of Farrell's closest and lifelong friends, Frank Hyde
, was Captain of North Sydney in the 1943 Grand Final.
In a famous incident in 1945, he was accused of biting off a portion of St. George
player Bill McRitchie's ear during a match at Henson Park. He formally denied the allegation at the time. It took seven months for the New South Wales Rugby League
judiciary to finalise their inquiry and Farrell was found not guilty.
Frank Farrell was captain in 1944 when Newtown finished the regular season on top of the table. Decimated by injuries and the active-duty call up of servicemen Len Smith
and Herb Narvo
who had starred for them all season the Bluebags were beaten by Balmain
16-19 in a Final. Newtown exercised their "right of challenge" as minor premiers and called for a Grand final
in which Farrell led the side. Balmain again prevailed in a low scoring when their representative centre Joe Jorgenson
kicked two late penalty goals to give the Tigers a 12-8 win.
Farrell was captain-coach of the Newtown club from 1946 to 1951 and in that six year period the club made the finals on four occasions. He retired in 1951 and was at that time the first Sydney top-grade player with 250 grade games for his club. He remains today the only player to top 200 first-grade appearances for Newtown. He later served a long term as President of the Newtown Jets
.
debut for New South Wales against Queensland
in 1939 and would go on to play thirteen career matches for his state. After the war, he made his international representative debut for Australia in the 1946 Test series against the Great Britain Lions
, playing in all three matches of the series. He made another Test appearance against New Zealand
in 1948.
However articles including two published by the ABC, and oral history interviews with long term residents of the Kings Cross precinct uncover the dark underside as the community remember and recite Farrell's legendary status for his harassment and intimidation of local business people and residents, particularly anyone considered "bohemian", "Some of the gambling dives were chockablock with thuggish cops, like Bumper Farrell, whose reputation for turncoat behaviour was legendary. Farrell hunted vagrants (and anyone he didn’t like the look of, myself included) to boost the score of arrests at Paddington Police Station, while turning a blind eye to grander villainy".,.
"The Darlinghurst police back in those days with Bumper Farrell, they weren't very nice. They'd put you in a steel-built cabinet and rock you round the room. Then they'd get you out and throw you on the ground and get telephone books and jump on top of the phone books. But they'd never leave a mark". Debra Deveraux, George Negus Tonight, ABC, 2004.
In the 1950s a scandal was quickly quashed when the cover of Melbourne newspaper Truth ran the headline "Sex Chocolates: Anna Hoffmann Strikes Again" Anna Hoffman was a supposed vagrant working as a prostitute, when she allegedly spiked Farrell's food with marijuana during a tryst with him, and recorded the event with equipment placed under her bed.
This wasn't Hoffman's first experience with the legal system; after a few run-ins with the police force and allegedly threatening to expose details of corruption, this was second time around in a court room for her since 1955. She was allegedly deported, never to set foot in Australia again. The incident was efficiently brushed under the carpet in record time.
Bill Jenkings
, a well-known Australian writer and newspaper reporter, refused to believe allegations about the involvement of Frank "Bumper" Farrell in corrupt activities - having known him personally for 40 years. Jenkings said in his biography As Crime Goes By.. (Ironbark Press, 1992) that the Queens of Sydney's underworld, Tilly Devine
and Kate Leigh
, constantly earned Bumper Farrell's wrath. "He'd run them in every chance that he got."
A biography about Frank Farrell called “Bumper. The Life and Times of Frank Bumper Farrell” (2011), by author Larry Writer states "he enforced law the 'Bumper' way, with his fists and boots, and by his own moral code, which while terribly politically incorrect, was certainly effective. He was the toughest, roughest street cop that Australia has ever seen."
Frank Farrell died suddenly of a heart attack at his home on 23 April 1985. His funeral service was attended by many police and football colleagues and was widely reported in the national media. He was later buried with at Mona Vale
Cemetery on 26 April 1985. Frank Farrell was survived by his four children and many grandchildren.
In 2008, Rugby League's centenary year in Australia, he was named at prop forward in both the NSW Police and Newtown Jets
Teams of the Century.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n premiership winning and national representative
Australian national rugby league team
The Australian national rugby league team have represented Australia in senior men's rugby league football competition since the establishment of the game in Australia in 1908. Administered by the Australian Rugby League, the Kangaroos' are ranked number one in the RLIF World Rankings...
rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
footballer. A prop forward, his long club career was with the Newtown Bluebags
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
from 1938 to 1951 with four Test appearances for the Australian national side between 1946 and 1948. Outside of football he was a policeman in the New South Wales force; he rose through the ranks and was stationed in Sydney's tough inner-city suburbs, where he earned a reputation as feared and revered detective in the Vice Squad.
Early life
Farrell was the great-grandson of an Irish convict named Patrick Farrell who was shipped to the Sydney in 1837 for stealing a pig. His father, Reginald Francis Farrell (1889–1983), was a broom-maker and his mother, Margaret Theresa Wynne (1886–1977), an ironing lady. His parents were married in 1913. Frank was born at St. Margaret's Hospital in Surry Hills, an inner suburb of Sydney. He was brought up in the tough Sydney city suburbs of Redfern, Tempe and Marrickville. Frank was educated at Marist College KogarahMarist College Kogarah
Marist College Kogarah is a systemic Catholic College for boys from Years 7 to 12, located in Bexley, New South Wales, Australia.The College was founded in 1909, and has a tradition based on the teachings of the French educator Saint Marcellin Champagnat...
, and remained a committed Roman Catholic throughout his life.
He married Phyllis Dorothy Read (1912–1981) on 11 November 1944 and had two sons and two daughters.
Club football
Farrell was a rugby league footballer with a long sporting career. He played his entire New South Wales Rugby Football League premiership career of over 250 grade games with the Newtown JetsNewtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
club. He became captain of the club, leading them to victory in the 1943 Grand Final against North Sydney
North Sydney Bears
The North Sydney Bears are an Australian rugby league football club based in North Sydney, New South Wales. They currently compete in the New South Wales Cup, having exited the National Rugby League following the 1999 NRL season after 92 years of top-grade competition. The Bears are based on...
. One of Farrell's closest and lifelong friends, Frank Hyde
Frank Hyde
Frank Hyde, MBE, OAM, was an Australian rugby league footballer, coach and radio caller. A New South Wales representative three-quarter, Hyde played his club football in Sydney for NSWRFL Premiership clubs Newtown, Balmain and North Sydney...
, was Captain of North Sydney in the 1943 Grand Final.
In a famous incident in 1945, he was accused of biting off a portion of St. George
St. George Dragons
The St George Dragons was an Australian Rugby league football club in St George, Sydney, New South Wales that played in Australia's top-level Rugby league competition from New South Wales Rugby Football League in 1921 until 1998; in 1999 they formed a joint venture with the Illawarra Steelers,...
player Bill McRitchie's ear during a match at Henson Park. He formally denied the allegation at the time. It took seven months for the New South Wales Rugby League
New South Wales Rugby League
The New South Wales Rugby League is the governing body of rugby league in New South Wales and is a member of the Australian Rugby League. It was formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907 and was known as the New South Wales Rugby Football League until 1984 when forward thinking marketing managers decided...
judiciary to finalise their inquiry and Farrell was found not guilty.
Frank Farrell was captain in 1944 when Newtown finished the regular season on top of the table. Decimated by injuries and the active-duty call up of servicemen Len Smith
Len Smith
Len Smith was an Australian representative rugby union and rugby league footballer of the 1930s and 40s. He captained the Kangaroos in two Tests 1948 and was controversially omitted from the 1948-49 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain....
and Herb Narvo
Herb Narvo
Herbert Narvo was an Australian rugby league footballer and boxer of the 1930s and 40s. He was a national representative rugby league player and national heavyweight boxing champion...
who had starred for them all season the Bluebags were beaten by Balmain
Balmain Tigers
The Balmain Tigers are a rugby league football club based in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Balmain. They were a founding member of the New South Wales Rugby League and one of the most successful in the history of the premiership, with eleven titles...
16-19 in a Final. Newtown exercised their "right of challenge" as minor premiers and called for a Grand final
Grand Final
Grand Final is a predominantly Australian sport term used to describe a match that decides a league champion.It originated in Victoria and South Australia and has become specifically significant Australian culture...
in which Farrell led the side. Balmain again prevailed in a low scoring when their representative centre Joe Jorgenson
Joe Jorgenson
Cecil Keith "Joe" Jorgenson was an Australian rugby league footballer. He was a three-quarter for the Australian national team. He played in three Tests in 1946, two as captain.-Club career:...
kicked two late penalty goals to give the Tigers a 12-8 win.
Farrell was captain-coach of the Newtown club from 1946 to 1951 and in that six year period the club made the finals on four occasions. He retired in 1951 and was at that time the first Sydney top-grade player with 250 grade games for his club. He remains today the only player to top 200 first-grade appearances for Newtown. He later served a long term as President of the Newtown Jets
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
.
Representative football
He made his state representativeNew South Wales rugby league team
The New South Wales rugby league team has represented the Australian state of New South Wales in rugby league football since the sport's beginnings there in 1907. Administered by the New South Wales Rugby League, the team competes in the annual State of Origin series against arch-rivals, the...
debut for New South Wales against Queensland
Queensland rugby league team
The Queensland rugby league team have represented the Australian state of Queensland in rugby league football since the sport's beginnings there in 1908...
in 1939 and would go on to play thirteen career matches for his state. After the war, he made his international representative debut for Australia in the 1946 Test series against the Great Britain Lions
Great Britain national rugby league team
The Great Britain national rugby league team represents the United Kingdom in rugby league football. Administered by the Rugby Football League , the team is nicknamed "The Lions" or "Great Britain Lions"....
, playing in all three matches of the series. He made another Test appearance against New Zealand
New Zealand national rugby league team
The New Zealand national rugby league team has represented New Zealand in rugby league football since intercontinental competition began for the sport in 1907. Administered by the New Zealand Rugby League, they are commonly known as the Kiwis, after the native bird of that name...
in 1948.
Policeman
While playing football, Farrell was employed in the New South Wales Police Force in a career that lasted from 1938-1976. During his long tenure as sergeant of the 21st Division Darlinghurst (Kings Cross) police station in Sydney he was outwardly respected as an honest and tough member of the community and police force as a member of the Vice Squad.. Farrell became one of Sydney's most famous Policemen and was featured in hundreds of media reports between the 1940s and the mid-1970s. His highest rank was Inspector 1st Class.However articles including two published by the ABC, and oral history interviews with long term residents of the Kings Cross precinct uncover the dark underside as the community remember and recite Farrell's legendary status for his harassment and intimidation of local business people and residents, particularly anyone considered "bohemian", "Some of the gambling dives were chockablock with thuggish cops, like Bumper Farrell, whose reputation for turncoat behaviour was legendary. Farrell hunted vagrants (and anyone he didn’t like the look of, myself included) to boost the score of arrests at Paddington Police Station, while turning a blind eye to grander villainy".,.
"The Darlinghurst police back in those days with Bumper Farrell, they weren't very nice. They'd put you in a steel-built cabinet and rock you round the room. Then they'd get you out and throw you on the ground and get telephone books and jump on top of the phone books. But they'd never leave a mark". Debra Deveraux, George Negus Tonight, ABC, 2004.
In the 1950s a scandal was quickly quashed when the cover of Melbourne newspaper Truth ran the headline "Sex Chocolates: Anna Hoffmann Strikes Again" Anna Hoffman was a supposed vagrant working as a prostitute, when she allegedly spiked Farrell's food with marijuana during a tryst with him, and recorded the event with equipment placed under her bed.
This wasn't Hoffman's first experience with the legal system; after a few run-ins with the police force and allegedly threatening to expose details of corruption, this was second time around in a court room for her since 1955. She was allegedly deported, never to set foot in Australia again. The incident was efficiently brushed under the carpet in record time.
Bill Jenkings
Bill Jenkings
William Charles Jenkings was an Australian writer, newspaper reporter and well known Bondi Beach identity.Jenkings was a news and crime reporter for the Sydney newspaper The Daily Mirror, joining the paper in 1944...
, a well-known Australian writer and newspaper reporter, refused to believe allegations about the involvement of Frank "Bumper" Farrell in corrupt activities - having known him personally for 40 years. Jenkings said in his biography As Crime Goes By.. (Ironbark Press, 1992) that the Queens of Sydney's underworld, Tilly Devine
Tilly Devine
Matilda 'Tilly' Devine was an English-born prominent Sydney crime syndicate gangs member figure, involved in a wide range of activities, including sly-grog and razor gangs, but most notable as a madam.-Early life:...
and Kate Leigh
Kate Leigh
Catherine Mary Josephine Leigh was an underworld figure who rose to prominence as an illegal trader of alcohol and cocaine dealer in Surry Hills, Sydney, Australia during the first half of the twentieth century...
, constantly earned Bumper Farrell's wrath. "He'd run them in every chance that he got."
A biography about Frank Farrell called “Bumper. The Life and Times of Frank Bumper Farrell” (2011), by author Larry Writer states "he enforced law the 'Bumper' way, with his fists and boots, and by his own moral code, which while terribly politically incorrect, was certainly effective. He was the toughest, roughest street cop that Australia has ever seen."
Frank Farrell died suddenly of a heart attack at his home on 23 April 1985. His funeral service was attended by many police and football colleagues and was widely reported in the national media. He was later buried with at Mona Vale
Mona Vale, New South Wales
Mona Vale is a suburb in northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 28 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre of the local government area of Pittwater Council. Mona Vale is also part of the Northern Beaches region.-...
Cemetery on 26 April 1985. Frank Farrell was survived by his four children and many grandchildren.
Accolades
Frank Farrell was awarded the Queen's Police Medal for Distinguished Service on 1 January 1976.In 2008, Rugby League's centenary year in Australia, he was named at prop forward in both the NSW Police and Newtown Jets
Newtown Jets
The Newtown Jets are an Australian rugby league football club based in Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west. They currently compete in the NSWRL Premier League competition, having left the top grade after the 1983 NSWRFL season...
Teams of the Century.