Ron Larking
Ronald Guy Larking was an Australian rules footballer who played with University in the Victorian Football League.
Family
The son of Richard James Larking, and Ethel Maude Larking, née Peterson, Ronald Guy Larking was born in East St Kilda on 9 September 1890. In 1913, he was engaged to Hetty Matthes Alkermande. He died in a motorcycle accident on 1 April 1918.Education
He attended Melbourne Grammar School from 1901 to 1910. He was in the school's rowing First VIII and football First XVIII, On 29 October 1909, competing for Melbourne Grammar in the annual athletic sports meeting of the Public Schools' Association, he won the open mile race by more than ten yards, slowing down; he broke the previous record for the event by almost ten seconds. He held the record until 1916.He entered King's College, Cambridge on 1 October 1910, graduating in 1914, and in 1917. He won a half-blue for boxing, in the middleweight division, in 1911; and in 1912, he was elected president of the university's Boxing and Fencing Club. He was also a member of Isaac Newton University Lodge.
Football
While still a Melbourne Grammar student, he played one senior match for University in the Victorian Football League competition, against Fitzroy, on 4 September 1909, the last game of the 1909 home-and-away season, in which Fitzroy, 9.6, drew with University, 8.12.Larking played at full-forward, replacing the injured Albert Hartkopf; and, as often was the case in those days at the Brunswick Street Oval following inclement weather, the entire ground was in an atrocious "oozy condition", with "the going … heavier and somewhat more tricky than usual", and with "a veritable quagmire about 25 yards square, through which players plugged ankle deep" at the railway goal end of the ground.