As they bow their heads and pause to reflect, their thoughts will be of a man, barely older than some of them, who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Private Albert Edward Holmes was 25 when in early 1916 he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force.

One of five sons off a dairy farm at Kolora, he was part of the seventh reinforcements for the 29th Battalion. The soldiers left Melbourne in July aboard the HMAT Berrima, bound for the Western Front, but Private Holmes’ time at war lasted just months.

He died on March 3, 1917 when a shell exploded in the Sunray trench near Gueudecourt, in northern France, killing him and injuring others. 

He had just turned 26.

A letter home from Sergeant Frederick William Woosman confirmed his death, and also the brutality of a conflict which took the lives of 60,000 Australians.

“The Germans counter-attacked and a shell landed right in the trench, killing him instantly. I was only about 20 yards from him and saw his body just afterwards,” he wrote.

“I helped to bury him at the back of the trench and put a little cross up, but later a proper cross was erected by some of the boys, who also did up the graves in early April.”

Other letters painted a picture of a popular stretcher-bearer who was “a big, broad-shouldered man” and “tall, fair and stout”.

“Holmes was one of the best. A man who never grumbled and was well liked in the battalion,” Private James William Chesterfield wrote.

Few of those paying their respects today would know the exact details of Private Holmes’ story, or that he was a Kolora premiership player in 1914 and 1915.

But his legacy, and that left by the thousands of others who served at war, provides a backdrop to the Anzac Day clash between Kolora-Noorat and Old Collegians.

Almost every grade of football and netball will feature a relative of Private Holmes. Most will wear the black, teal and white of the Power.

One is A grade coach Glenice Justin, whose father Ron Holmes was a nephew of the fallen solider. “It’s a really special day, especially this year,” she said.

“Anzac Day doesn’t fall on a Saturday all that often and it’s the 100th year (since the Gallipoli landings).

“It does bring home these things happen. I was talking to Mum about him, there were five brothers. Albert was the only one who went to war.”

That Private Holmes’ story will resonate throughout the grades is testament to the family bonds that form the backbone of Kolora-Noorat.

Beyond being a great-uncle to Justin, he is a great-great-uncle to almost a dozen other footballers and netballers at the club.

They include Hannah and Luke Justin, Joe, George, Meg and Connor O’Sullivan, Laura Bourke and twins Chloe and Olivia O’Brien.

Two others, Joe and Sam Kenna, are footballers with Old Collegians — a coincidence which gives the match-up a fitting piece of symmetry.

The magnitude of the occasion is not lost on Joe O’Sullivan, one of two vice-captains at the Power under new coach Danny Finn.

“It’s obviously going to be a big occasion. There will be a lot of people there, the boys will be up for a big game,” he said.

“It means a lot to a lot of people in our community to come together and play on such a special day.”

O’Sullivan said he was moved by watching Essendon footballers speak on television this week about learning the stories of those who died at war.

“They said it’s unbelievable to think blokes their age, in the prime of their life, had to go over there and fight at war and never came back,” he said.

“I’m 21. There would’ve been a lot of blokes my age sacrifice everything they had for everyone back home.”