Charles J. B. Veryard
1947
League President 1938-1961
Charles John Besley Veryard, born in 1898, was a player and official of significance.
Veryard played 44 games for West Perth between 1917 and 1920, followed by four games at Subiaco. He was President of the West Perth Football Club from 1939 until 1941.
Veryard was in a unique position as an elected member of the City of Perth, serving on the Perth City Council as a councilor from 1927 and then being named Mayor in 1964, a position he held until his death in 1967. Though chased by many other WAFL clubs, Veryard instead chose to help amateurs at the community level.
For four years prior to the war, from 1939 until 1941, while still at the West Perth Football Club, Veryard was President of the WA Amateur Football Association.
Then the war years intervened. No amateur competition existed between 1942 and 1945 because of the war and when the forces started to return to Perth it was obvious that people of goodwill, ability and clout were needed to restart our community. Luckily, Charles Veryard saw Australian rules football as a necessary part of the Australian make-up, especially after World War II when our soldiers, sailors and airmen returned from the horrors of the battlefields.
Charles Veryard stepped in to reorganize our game. He took over the Presidency of the WA Amateur Football Association again in 1946 and for the next 16 years helped to re-establish the game at the community level. Not only was he an administrator, he was Manager of the State team at the Perth Carnival in 1946 and his untiring work saw him honored with Life Membership of the WA Amateur Football Association in 1947.
A decade later his work was so highly regarded that delegates from all States of Australia elected Charles Veryard as President of the Australian Amateur Football Council, a position he held for three years from 1957 to 1959 when he became Western Australia’s delegate to the Council in 1959.
He was recognised as a League Hall of Champion in 2013.
