Ellis played for Wesley College's First XVIII and, at the same time, was playing for Collegians Football Club.
In 1940, "Noel Ellis was outstanding at centre half-back with Collegians, in the Victorian Amateur Football Association, [who] transferred to the Demons when the amateurs suspended their competition halfway through the season [due to the war]" (Sporting Globe, 24 August 1940).
Ellis's application for a permit to play with South Melbourne was refused by the VFL Permit Committee, on 26 June 1940 – on the precedent-setting grounds that, as a boarder at Wesley College, Wesley College (rather than his parents' residence at Red Cliffs, Victoria) was deemed to be his official place of residence – and, so, given the physical location of Wesley College (on the eastern side of St Kilda Road), Ellis was residentially bound to Melbourne. The VFL Permit Committee granted him a clearance from Old Collegians to Melbourne.
Ellis participated in his first practice at Melbourne the following evening. He was selected as 19th man in his first First XVIII match for Melbourne, against Hawthorn, on 24 August 1940 (round 17). He also played for the First XVIII in the first two matches of the 1941 VFL season (against Fitzroy, and South Melbourne).
Ellis was injured while playing for Melbourne against Carlton in the first round of the Patriotic Premiership (1941), at the M.C.G., on Saturday, 24 May 1941, and did not play again.
Death
Only 20 years of age (three days before he turned 21), Ellis was accidentally shot and killed, by a mishandled revolver, at a World War II military camp in Queensland.
The soldier who fired the weapon, Lieutenant Mervyn David Henry (VX101968), had been talking to Ellis in the mess tent when the incident occurred.
The Melbourne First XVIII wore black armbands in their match against Carlton, on 11 July 1942, as a mark of respect for the memory of Ellis.
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