Salisbury United Soccer Club founder and women’s soccer pioneer Bob Bush dies
SALISBURY United Soccer Club has paid tribute to the man responsible for founding the club 59 years ago.
SALISBURY United Soccer Club has paid tribute to the man responsible for founding the club 59 years ago.
Bob Bush died on Wednesday, September 11, aged 94.
Mr Bush established the club in 1954 while serving at the nearby Edinburgh RAAF base.
He played in United’s first ever match against British Wanderers in a team featuring a mixture of servicemen and cvillians, and later served on the club’s committee for 35 years.
Salisbury secretary Peter Lockett said Mr Bush was an active member of the club up until his death.
“He was a pleasure to have around,” Mr Lockett said.
“He was instrumental in the club’s establishment and he laid the foundations in the first few years of its life.
“He was an old-school gentleman who set the standards and lived by them.”
Born in Liverpool, England, in 1920, Mr Bush moved to Australia in 1953.
In 2010, he told the News Review Messenger of the sacrifices he made to establish Salisbury United and soccer across the northern suburbs.
“I made us some goal posts and then I made the nets by hand and, by the time I’d finished, my fingers were bleeding,’’ he recalled.
“I’m still amazed every time I go to the club and I think, I started all this, and I’ve got my head held high and everybody knows me.”
In 1978, Mr Bush set up SA’s first women’s soccer league, driving across Adelaide to visit clubs and encourage them to enter teams.
He later became the SA Women’s Soccer Association’s first chief executive.
The grandstand at Salisbury’s home ground, Steve Jarvis Park, is already named in Mr Bush’s honour and he was inducted into Football Federation SA’s inaugural Hall of Fame in 2003.
The club hopes to establish a perpetual trophy in his memory.