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Cyril Connell Sr.

Australian rugby league 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 revisionSep 12, 2025
Entity authorityQ5200675 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cyril John Connell CBE (6 June 1899 – 25 October 1974) was an Australian university registrar and rugby league footballer and administrator. His son Cyril Connell Jr. also went on to become a successful rugby league footballer in his era.

Connell was born in Sydney, New South Wales and in his youth he fought in World War I, serving with the Australian Imperial Force in France. In 1922 he was halfback of the first Queensland team to defeat New South Wales.

After retiring from the football field Connell also served as an administrator for the Queensland Rugby League.

Connell's time as registrar of the University of Queensland is thought to have contributed significantly to the university's growth in the 1950s and 1960s. This earned him the honour of commander (civil) of the Order of the British Empire in 1965.

In 2000 Connell was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for his contribution to Australia's international standing in rugby league.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cyril Connell Sr.” is australian rugby league footballer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cyril, Connell 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—1899, 1974, 1922, 1965—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1899-06-06. For this dossier, Cyril, Connell and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian rugby league 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 Sep 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5200675. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1974, 1922 and 1965.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. 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 “Cyril Connell Sr.”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cyril Connell Sr. primary sources, Cyril Connell Sr. archive and Cyril 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 “Cyril Connell Sr.”?
  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 “Cyril Connell Sr.” 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.