Cricket and other Stuff
You may or may not remember Pat Kelly, but I certainly remember as a young lad watching him plunder 160 runs on the dirt at the Woomera West oval. It is perhaps my earliest cricket memory.
What an experience playing on claypan oval! How cool (and hot) was it playing senior cricket at the age of 8 or 9. Fielding down in the saltbush riddled deep fine leg at the Phillip Pond’s Claypan or the Woomera West Oval when the men struggled to field a team. Then rewarded for your hours in the sun, you would stride out as the number 11 with pads that came up to your chin and a groin protector that just about covered the whole pelvis. The Slazenger bat which you needed two hands to carry let alone wield. An then to face the likes of Butch Leverington and others with Ronny Weaser all the time coaching you while he stood up to the stumps. After you had made your obligatory single you were summarily dismissed and clapped off the field like a true champion.
Relying more on local sporting heros than national legends we aspired to be the Ivan Limbs, Chunky Campbells and Dabbo’s of the cricket world and to play footy like Tommy or Bill Lloyds. We watched while older boys such as Steve Zehender and Butch Leverington made their way from Junior to Senior ranks and hoped one day we could do the same.
It is worthy of note that none of our sporting achievements (or under achievements) would have been possible with out the support we received from the Senior sports teams, they devoted a great deal of time to us juniors. I guess in hindsight, it may have given the single men a break from the sometime monotonous mess life. Whatever the reason, I am eternally grateful to these men for teaching me the finer points of almost every sport one can imagine from football to catching the greased pig at the Village Sports Club annual picnic.
It would be extremely remiss of me not mention a quite remarkable group of women, including my own mother who spent so much time scoring, making morning teas, ensuring we had drinks, cleaning uniforms, driving us to and fro and even umpiring. (when you were given out by these ol’e girls you walked). The likes of the portentous Kay Cullinan, all those junior footballers and cricketers in the late 60s/early 70’s will have the fondest memories of Kay, larger than life scoring, cooking, cursing, laughing and giving her time to us kids. A hot Saturday morning game of cricket, then pile into the car and up to the Jazza for a free coke.
For anyone who had anything to do with these sports clubs, these women were the stalwarts of the club. Looking back, I concede the menfolk and us kids were, at times, rather ungracious in their recognition of the ladies efforts.
In addition, in later years the elder statesmen such as my father
Jack, Dick Zehender, Bill Leverington and Pat Cullinan ensured we were
always kitted out with good equipment and officials to make our games go
well. I believe these men were not just club presidents and committee members
but true sports administrators perhaps even a
little before sports administrators became fashionable. I
would in fact say, that the above men could teach those university trained
administrators a thing or two..
People forget too soon the names such as Ron Weaser, in his time a fine cricketer and in fact a reserve gloveman for WA. Ron did spend an enormous amounts of time coaching, umpiring or simply being nice to us kids, we loved him. It was with great sadness I heard he was accidentally killed some years ago. Ron and all the other lovable rogues living along the notorious skid row were simply great to us kids, and despite their reputation for hard drinking and living, we were never threatened, they always treated us generously and well.
Phil Spehr
Ex 4 Karnang St / Ex Flat 346 Dewrang Avenue
ymee@dodo.com.au
E-mail: ymee@dodo.com.au
(22 August 2003)
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Memories of Woomera |
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