With Ashes cricket still the topic of conversation, in the 1920’s even a rugby league player got the better of England cricket. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.

Eric Frauenfelder was amongst the best ever to play the game, several games. He first came to sporting prominence playing Australian rules football in Albury, New South Wales, where he was born.

At the Christian’ Brothers College there, Frauenfelder was captain of the Australian Rules team which beat the best that Sydney and Melbourne had to offer. When he was seventeen years old, he finished school and went to Ipswich, Queensland.

As an amateur boxer, Frauenfelder won everything in his division, and as a twenty-year-old in 1921 at the Brisbane Stadium, he won the lightweight boxing championship of Queensland.

Rugby league in Ipswich then made him a household name. Frauenfelder played twenty-five matches for Queensland during a period of domination over New South Wales. He played all three tests for Australia when England toured in 1924 which was the greatest year in League history. Frauenfelder had come from an Australian rules side down south to be one of the best full backs to ever play the game of rugby league.

Frauenfelder is remembered in Ipswich as the toughest player in one of the toughest exhibitions of rugby league football ever seen. It was a match in 1925 that Ipswich played the touring New South Wales team.

Frauenfelder was backing-up from playing full-back for Queensland just two days earlier. For Ipswich, Frauenfelder was seen to enter one of the rucks in which some scuffling was going on. When he emerged, three New South Wales players were unconscious on the ground. Stretchers and ambulance bearers were needed to carry them off the ground.

Then in 1928, his terror for top level opposition was extended to the cricket field. Frauenfelder had just scored a century on the North Ipswich Reserve when he was selected for the Queensland Country XI to play against England at Warwick.

Frauenfelder was mercurial when he strode to the crease in the second innings. He hit three fours in one over off Douglas Jardine, who would become infamous as the England captain responsible for Bodyline four years later.

Trying to reach his half century in the first over after lunch, however, Frauenfelder advanced down the pitch, missed the ball and was stumped. Frauenfelder had batted for three quarters an hour, and hit seven fours, for forty-seven runs just short of his half century.

It had taken two of England’s all-time great cricketers to dismiss him. The bowler was Tech Freeman who remains the only man to take 300 wickets in an English season. And Les Ames, he’s still the only wicketkeeper ever to score 100 first-class centuries.

Frauenfelder was simply a phenomenal athlete. As a boxer he has won everything in his division. He was a champion as an Australian rules player. He was a good tennis player, a representative cricketer, and one of the best rugby league fullbacks ever to play the game.

Perhaps the best contemporary quotes I’ve read about him described him as a genius. “Like a brilliant meteor, Eric Frauenfelder flashed across the Queensland football firmament to dazzle tens of thousands of spectators with full back’s feats of originality and uncanny cleverness that had to be seen to be believed. Eric was a genius.”

Frauenfelder is perhaps the only person ever to terrorise England in not one, but two, top tier sports – rugby league and cricket.

Frauenfelder lived to be ninety-two years of age. His last resting place is at the Nudgee cemetery on Brisbane’s northside. But there’s just a regular plaque, nothing to say that he was Ipswich’s and maybe Queensland’s greatest ever all-round sportsmen.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
Queensland Rugby League team who played in Sydney in 1925, Eric Frauenfelder backrow 2nd from right – State Library of Queensland.
Eric Frauenfelder, Ipswich, Past Brothers Rugby League Club, 1922 – State Library of Queensland.
People milling around the entrance of the Brisbane Stadium c1925 – State Library of Queensland.
Eric Frauenfelder form the Queensland Rugby League team who played in Sydney in 1925 – State Library of Queensland.
Douglas Jardine – Shortpedia website.
Kent And England Wicketkeeper Les Ames Circa 1930 – russtygold via eBay website.
Eric Frauenfelder, Nudgee Cemetery, Brisbane – Find a Grave uploaded by Liz R 2020.