He also played 11 games for South Australia (kicking 19 goals), including a stint as captain and, while stationed in Melbourne in the munitions department during World War II, Langley played four games for Essendon Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL),[1] including an appearance in the 1943 VFL Grand Final.
He immediately made an impression for his tidy work behind the stumps and he was chosen for Australia's 1949–50 tour to South Africa, although he did not play a Test.
Following the 1965 election, Langley became part of the first Labor government in South Australia for 32 years and would later serve as Speaker of the House of Assembly from 1977 to 1979 before his retirement from politics in 1982.
[2] Considered "one of the great and delightful eccentrics" of the South Australian parliament, Langley was an old style Labor politician who had become disillusioned with the direction his party had taken under Don Dunstan on social issues like liberalising homosexuality laws.
He spent much of his retirement playing lawn bowls and died after a long fight with Alzheimer's disease, survived by two sons, two daughters and nine grandchildren.