UMPIRES

When the club changed its name to Banyule in 1974, it was playing its firsts and seconds games at the Beverley Road ground, while its thirds and fourths journeyed to Seddon Reserve, in Green Street, Ivanhoe, to play their home games. Rosanna Methodists, who became Rosanna Uniting (and then Yarra Valley) played on the Banyule High School ground.

The lower grade matches at Seddon Reserve were memorable. In those years I played alongside Keith Hopkinson, a Pommie train driver who opened the batting and kept wickets (Don Richmond was playing in a higher grade), Ian McKinlay, brother of Rod, Billy Bourke, John Wilson, Perry Barden, Mick Lewthwaite and other legends. When Billy invited a few mates down to play in our fourths, he was overheard to say, "...if you can’t bat, it doesn’t matter, and you get a bowl even if you only land half of them on the pitch." If this is true it doesn’t make my bowling trophies of those years look so good. When Billy did get a bowl he would surprise everyone by bowling up a mixture of medium pace, offies and leggies in the one over.

1974 was the first season that the HDCA seemed to be badly hit by a shortage of umpires. They hadn’t had a pay increase in a long, long time, and there were few left who could afford to umpire, as the few extra bucks they earned umpiring tipped the balance and made a good number of them ineligible for the pension. There were very few young umpires, and those that were any good at all were umpiring higher. (Although the inimitable Vinny Rowan was umpiring A Grade at De Winton Park in those days).

So in mid-September, 1974, an advertisement appeared in The Heidelberger, and it read UMPIRES WANTED... NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. Well, maybe a few applicants took that to mean NO KNOWLEDGE OF CRICKET NECESSARY, because that season we got some amazing umpires.

A young kid was waiting in the Seddon Reserve carpark one Saturday.

"Goodday," he said. "Are you guys cricketers?"

("No," we thought, "we’re the local West Ivanhoe boys. We like to go around in groups of eleven, clad in white, terrorising old ladies and small children in local parks!") "Yep," we replied. "We’re Banyule."

"Where’s the other team?"

"That’s them over there."

"Where?"

"Over there." We pointed once more at the other group of eleven blokes standing around a large bag of cricket gear.

"You’re both wearing the same colors," he exclaimed. "How will I ever tell you apart?"

What a dilemma! We’d been playing cricket for years and never even stopped to think about the horrible confusion this must cause. I mean, we weren’t even wearing numbers on our backs.

"Look, tell you what, ump. Just don’t pay any free kicks, OK? Will it help if one team bats while the other team bowls?"

"Oh, that’d help."

"Right, I’ll ask the other captain if he’s willing to go along with that."

"Thanks. By the way, where am I s’posed to stand?"

"Over there behind those three sticks sticking out of the ground." Thankfully, we’d put them in for him and saved ourselves a good half hour. "You just count eight balls (six ball overs were only used in England then) and then call ‘over’."

"OK."

The game got under way with the ump standing at his post. It didn’t take him long to adjust to the pace of the game. After eight deliveries he correctly called ‘Over’ in a most authorative voice. We trudged to our positions for the next over. The batsmen met mid-pitch for a brief conference and then walked back to their respective creases. Everything was in readiness for the second over. But, where was the umpire?

He was still standing exactly where we had told him to stand - right behind those three sticks - and right in front of Hoppy, our keeper!

"Oh! You never said I had to do it at both ends," our bemused umpire explained when we gave him his next lesson in the finer points of the game.

The comedy of umpiring errors continued for the next few years. The only time our lower grade teams ever got a decent game was when we didn’t have an umpire and did the job ourselves.

A few years later we played Viewbank (who wore caps designed to resemble VB cans and also became Yarra Valley) at Heidelberg High. A Viewbank bowler was charging in to bowl to one of our blokes. Just before his delivery stride the umpire threw out his left arm and almost cut the bowler in half.

"Hang on a minute," he decreed. "You can’t bowl now. Time for the Caulfield Cup." He turned towards the pavilion where his dog and his lovely wife awaited him. "TURN IT UP, LUV!!!" he bawled, then turned to the players. "That way you won’t have to leave your positions." We all stood and listened to the race. Upon hearing the judges’ ‘all clear’, he faced back down the pitch and called "play ball, gentlemen!"

This same ground was also the venue for Harry’s famous successful appeal against the sun. The pitch faced east-west, and late one day Ron Emery was charging in and sending a few down around the vicinity of Harry’s ears. Harry was looking straight into the sun.

"Hey, ump," Harry inquired, "can I appeal against the sun?"

"The what??!!"

"The sun. It’s in my eyes."

"I suppose so."

The umpire turned and looked into the sun. "Fair enough," he said. "You can’t play in these conditions. That’s stumps, fellas!"

The howls of protest from Viewbank could be heard as far away as the bar at the O.E. as we headed for the carpark in broad daylight and went back to watch a bit of A Grade.

One day I was batting with Jed. The ball thudded into his pads and rolled away to leg. I called him through for a quick single and had almost made my ground at the other end when I heard the opposition cheer that told me Jed was out LBW. I turned around and made my way back to the bowler’s end of the pitch. The umpire stepped in front of me, stern-faced, and waved his finger furiously, indicating the other end of the pitch. "Back you go," he announced with authority. "You blokes crossed. You’re facing," he told me.

This same ump once turned towards the scorers after an opposition batsman had run a single.

"Scorers," he knowledgeably called, "short run!"

It was the following season that the HDCA decided to allow captains to fill in umpires’ reports. They had a number of silly questions, like "Was he smartly attired?" and "Did he set up the stumps all by himself?", but, unfortunately, they left off the question that asked "Did he know the rules?"

We’ve also struck that bloke with the glass eye a few times. He umpired us a few times over at Heidelberg Soccer’s ground, as well as officiating in the famed "bloodbath" game against Loyal Sylvan just a few years ago, when the Chapman brothers featured in the main event on the card. My only incident of near-violence in 25 years with the club! His speciality is refusing to allow anyone to run on byes. He always calls you back and tells you that you can’t run because you didn’t play a shot. When he umpires you play under different rules. It is always wise to check with him before the game to see if it is going to be tippity-run or if you have to say ‘wicket leave’ before talking to your partner at the end of the over. The man is a fool!

Banyule has produced a few umpires. Don Richmond, a legendary cricketer and administrator, became a legendary umpire. And another Life Member, Dorothy Veal, umpired a number of games also.

But the umpire who I have the fondest memories of is without doubt Vinny Rowan. The man was a walking rule book. No situation has ever arisen in one of Vinny’s games where Vinny hasn’t got in the last word, usually by quoting some obscure rule or other, last used in a game in India before the war.

About twenty years ago, on the high school ground, Greg Russell (Brad's brother) skied a ball just over square leg’s head. The fieldsman turned and ran towards the fence, keeping an eye on the ball coming from over his shoulder. He held a great catch and kept running in the same direction. Greg began the long walk back to the boundary line. The jubilant fieldsman kept running - about thirty metres - straight through the gap in the fence, so pleased was he at holding this miraculous catch.

I was scoring. I’d marked Greg’s dismissal down as Caught and was just filling in the bowler’s name when I looked up to see Vinny facing the scorers with both hands held high above his head. He was signalling a six!

After the uproar had died down, he explained that Greg was originally out caught, but because the fieldsman had left the ground with the ball, Vinny had no option but to change his signal to a six. A bemused but relieved Greg turned and retraced his steps to the middle. "Rule soomthing or other, gentlemen," quoth former-Yorkshireman Vinny. Who could argue with him?

He once brought a young kid to train as an apprentice umpire. Pato hit a ball hard into the ground. It rebounded with such force into a fieldsman’s chest that there was an audible "Oofff!" escaped from his lips. The young kid raised his finger. Vinny watched like a hawk from his stance at square leg. "What in *&^%$&^# for?" screamed Pato. "Caught," said the tentative kid. There followed unbelievable confusion for the next few minutes, including a mid-pitch conference of the opposition who announced, "We’re not sure if it was caught on the full or not." An appeal was made to Vinny, who had seen it all, to reverse the decision and allow Pato to continue batting. Vinny’s face never moved a muscle. His eyes never blinked. Not a word escaped his lips. He was the master and he was in control. He was not going to intervene. After all, the kid had to learn a lesson from this, and it would make the perfect teaching point for Vinny after the game.

Vinny umpired against Macleod as Borrie and I ran, walked and, finally, staggered our way to the world record of 17 runs from a single ball (p. 247 Guinness Book of Records 1992). We were enjoying ourselves. "Twelve..." we’d shout as we headed back for another. "Thirteen..." and so on. At the end of it all Vinny had the final say. He turned to the scorers and, in his wonderful Yorkshire voice, he announced, "Scorers, ... that be seventeen!" He turned to me and confided, "’aven’t got signal for seventeen!" He then proceeded to lecture the Macleod blokes on the intricacies of the Lost Ball rule.

Vinny once played Yorkshire League against Hutton. What was Hutton’s motto, and how does it apply to Vinny? "Don’t argue!"