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Bill Cleary (Australian footballer)

Australian rules footballer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ4908489 ↗
Source-derived summary

William 'Bice' Cleary (20 February 1868 – 27 January 1942) was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Fitzroy Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

Cleary came from South Ballarat, and after two seasons crossed to Fitzroy. He was vice captain in 1894–1896, and after Tom Banks retired, was 28 when he captained Fitzroy in the inaugural VFL season. He resigned the captaincy, which went to Alec Sloan the following season.

His final game was as a forward pocket in Fitzroy's 1899 Grand Final triumph, having come into the side towards the end of the season after not playing for over a year.

References

External links

Bill Cleary's playing statistics from AFL Tables

Bill Cleary at AustralianFootball.com

Holmesby, Russell and Main, Jim (2007). The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers. 7th ed. Melbourne: Bas Publishing.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bill Cleary (Australian footballer)” is australian rules footballer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bill, Cleary and Australian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1868, 1942, 1894, 1896—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1868-02-20. For this dossier, Bill, Cleary and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian rules footballer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4908489. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1868, 1942, 1894 and 1896.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bill Cleary (Australian footballer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bill Cleary (Australian footballer) primary sources, Bill Cleary (Australian footballer) archive and Bill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bill Cleary (Australian footballer)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bill Cleary (Australian footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.