Few Collingwood footballers have experienced as troubled an off-field life as Bill Barry.

While relatively little is known of his football talents, by his own admission he had a record of court appearances that seems to have started when he was about 15, continued for at least 35 years and ended up numbering over 100.

That’s quite the track record. Indeed given how frequently he was before the courts, it’s remarkable that he managed to find time to play enough football, at a high enough level, to play four games for Collingwood in 1925.

He arrived at Victoria Park as a mature-age recruit (he turned 26 during the season) in the pre-season of that year, described as being a rover and half-back from Fairfield and Yarraville. After one of his pre-season outings with the Pies that year, The Herald reported that he had been “showing out with nice promise”, while The Argus said he was “highly commended”.

On the back of those performances he was selected in the first two games of the year at half-back, then returned for two more mid-season playing on the ball. But in none of those four games did his performances warrant much by way of media attention.

At the end of the season, the strongly built Barry was cleared to Hume Weir (police had to intervene during one of his early matches there after he and an opponent became involved in some wild fisticuffs), and a couple of years later was seen playing with Northcote Districts.

But by far the most noteworthy thing about Bill Barry was, sadly, his rap sheet. Charged with assault in 1921 he admitted even then to “many prior convictions’, despite being just 22 at the time. In 1949, again charged with assault, he told the court that he had throughout his life gathered “at least 100 convictions, including a few for assault”. Other charges included things like stealing, living with insufficient means, behaving in an offensive manner, using indecent language and vagrancy – and these were just the ones we know about because they made it to the newspapers!

Two of his brothers were also in regular trouble with the law, including one who was charged with assaulting police.

In all, it’s a pretty unsavoury record. Bill Barry could obviously play football to a high level, but his life story has ensured that is just a curious footnote, rather than the defining highlight it might have been.

- Michael Roberts