A New South Wales interstate and Australian international representative centre, he was reputedly the first Sydney rugby union player to sign with the new breakaway league in its earliest formative days in late 1907.

[4] Part of Newtown's original rugby league team of 1908,[5] he debuted for Australia in the inaugural Tests in early 1908 against those same New Zealanders on the homeward leg of their trip to England and back.

[7] Cheadle joined the AIF on 4 January 1915 enlisting as a Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant and left Sydney on board HMAT A32 Themistocles on 12 May 1915 as a member the 17th Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Division.

He was evacuated with the 18th Battalion in the December winter, regrouped in Egypt and reached France in March 1916 seeing front line action in the trenches near Armentières.

Charles Bean, the Australian war historian, wrote that "Lieutenant Cheadle of the 18th Battalion, when boldly scouting with the moon nearing the full, was seen by the enemy, fired on and fatally wounded as the patrol withdrew over the parapet".