The Swallows and Ariells biscuit factory was not only a major employer for Port Melbourne, but was also an important part of local football. Thomas Swallow was influential in the forming of the Sandridge Cricket Club in 1874, and that same year, the Alma Cricket Club based in Emerald Hill established its football team, which became the Sandridge Alma Football Club. In 1877, the Club became the Sandridge Football Club and Swallow was elected its first president. Swallows and Ariells also had a factory football team. The early Swallows team of the 1880s was likely to have been formed to play games for major holidays and events, some of which were very popular local events: in 1883, the Swallows and Ariells team played Kitchen and Sons’ factory team in front of a crowd estimated at eight hundred people. In June 1914 the Swallows team won a one-off game against the West Melbourne biscuit factory T.B. Guests which was the source of much local pride, and led to the Swallows factory establishing a standing team. The Port Melbourne Standard reported that some of the Swallows players “had never played in a match before, which is surprising” because of their “very promising” performance. In 1915, however, the team suffered some losses, and the Port Melbourne Standard explained that “as a lot of Swallows’ players had gone up to enlist the team had been very much weakened.” Nonetheless the team was strongly supported throughout the War, and Swallows games were often used as fundraisers for the war effort and for returned soldiers.
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