I finished off the first volume of my memoirs by mentioning Don Richmond’s arrival at the club. I estimate it was around about 1970-71. Don’s arrival was significant. Not only was I to personally play alongside Don for the next decade or so, but also, in Don, the club acquired a great bloke and a cricketer of considerable experience to provide the leadership and guidance needed in our lower grades.

Don’s contribution to the club didn’t stop there, of course. His work as club secretary for over 20 years was exemplary - the envy of every club in the HDCA. That is because he did his job so well and because our club, unlike others, never came close to going off the rails. Stop for a few minutes and think about the behind the scenes work over the years that must have gone into making Banyule the great club that it is today. We’ve got to thank Don for much of this. He is rightfully a living legend of the club.

Don’s family have also been heavily involved with us from the beginning - his son, Greg, played Juniors, and wife Joan and daughter Leanne have been tireless workers for the club.

But, enough of this sentimentality. Let’s have a few laughs at Don’s expense instead. Firstly, there was the matter of his bat. While most of the young bucks at the club had expensive bats with flashy brand names and swords and stuff emblazoned on them, or scoops or hefty jumbos and managed to make the odd 30 or 40, Don was making 100’s with a bat that you wouldn’t look at twice in an op shop!

It was skinny, looked to be fairly light, had no noticeable brand name, appeared to have been handed down through a few generations, and … it was just about as black as the ace of spades! If a kid got that bat in a school game, he’d probably walk down the pitch every time it was his turn to face and swap it with the kid at the other end! But, that bat could hit the ball all right.

Don batted left-handed and always opened the innings. He’d occasionally go out early, but if they didn’t get him before he got his eye in, he’d make them pay for it. Don made several centuries in his Banyule days and countless fifties. He generally only hit the ball a couple of different ways. He’d drive everything pitched outside off, and he’d murder anything outside leg with his lethal hooking - black blade flashing. Many was the time Don opened our innings and was still there as the tailenders began coming in. He taught us about patience and about waiting for the right ball to come along and about what to do with it when it finally came. Consequently, us young blokes would go out and block the first couple (as was taught to us by Rennahs in the Juniors), decide that the next one, no matter what, was going to be the right ball, and then hit it straight down some fieldsman’s throat.

He’d come off to our applause, his cheeks red and dripping with sweat, his thin hair plastered to his scalp and his shirt wringing wet. He’d be absolutely buggered, but he’d know it wouldn’t be long before he’d have the pads back on and be out there again ‘keeping.

It was Don’s keeping that we all loved. No one could appeal louder. I wonder if he still appeals from the other side of the fence when he hears a snick. He had a unique way of catching the ball. He’d stand back from the stumps to the opening bowlers. Upon hearing a snick, Don would immediately commence his appeal (prior to taking the actual catch). Not unlike "Oh, what a feeling ... Toyota!", Don would fling his arms wide and launch himself high into the air - "Owzaaat???" Meanwhile, the ball would continue on its journey through to the keeper - not to his gloves - they were two metres apart! The ball would generally canon into the region of Don’s groin, immediately muffling the rest of the appeal and doubling him up quickly, as he desperately fumbled and clutched at the ball that was rolling back down between his legs to be finally caught in the top of his pads. Don would then remain absolutely still for fear that any movement would cause the ball to spill out onto the grass. It rarely did.

Look back through our first grade premiership photos. There’d be quite a few players in them who played their first Senior games under Don. I played in two premiership sides with him and enjoyed every moment.

He used to say to me, "I’ll give you the next over, but don’t you dare bowl that fast rubbish!"

"Why?" I would think. "That last snick hurt, didn’t it?"

Perhaps his greatest mistake was the day he gave me out LBW against Greensborough, when any fool could tell the ball came off the centre of my bat!

The midfield confrontation went something like this:

Snick!!! (Wooden sound) THUD!!! (Pad sound)

"Howzat, Ump?"

"Out!"

"What??? You’re #@*%\$# joking, Don! What about the &*%$#@ snick? ....." (and so on)

THE EARLY 70’S

Harry (Steve Smith) had shown a bit of promise since coming to the club, before a car accident left him in hospital with bad leg injuries for an awfully long time. I suppose many blokes would have given up any thoughts of ever playing again, but not Harry. He made an amazing comeback, playing in the 1972-73 side that won the 6th grade flag under Don. They let Harry bat with a runner all season, but Heidelberg Colts denied him one in the final. He fielded where he didn’t need to run and he bowled off two steps.

I remember the first ball bowled by Harry in his comeback. We were playing Olympic and the guy batting was also named Smith. He happened to be a friend of Harry’s and even an acquaintance of mine. Harry strode in and rolled his arm over. The ball bounced about one and a half metres wide of the pitch on the leg side, hit a tuft of grass, turned a right angle and came straight at the batsman. He laughed and gently swatted the ball back towards Harry, who reached up his hands and caught it. Harry laughed as well, and, as it was his first ball in a long time, he jokingly said "Howzat?"

"Out," said the umpire.

"What?" exclaimed incredulous Smiths at both ends of the pitch.

"Out," he repeated.

"It was a wide," claimed the Smiths.

"It came back onto the pitch and he hit it. He’s out - caught and bowled."

So, from that successful comeback, Harry became a bowler of note once more, although he went into the Shame File for awhile over that appeal. But Harry could also bat. He made a couple of centuries over the next few seasons, before his bowling prowess earned him a place in the firsts once more and a demotion to the tail end of the batting order.

The fourths were once playing at Seddon Reserve in Ivanhoe and Harry was playing in a higher grade nearby. Harry came over to Seddon at tea to find out the score.

"Have you batted yet, Harry?" I asked.

"Not yet. There’s a couple more, then me," he replied as he departed.

When I arrived back at the rooms after the game I learnt that Harry had made a hundred - between tea and stumps. Not a bad effort for a guy who only got to bat a couple of times a season for the last decade of his career.

That 1972-73 6th grade premiership victory I mentioned was aided by the Victoria Police, who did us all a big favour by arresting a bloke called Moose at the Colisseum Hotel on the first night of the game and jailing him for the rest of the final. He was about 6 foot 6 inches tall and weighed about eighteen stone. He was pretty quick and we weren’t looking forward to facing him.

UNDER 14’S (1972-73)

This was also the season that the club entered its first Under 14 side and I was appointed manager. It should have been coach, but I couldn’t teach anybody anything about actually playing cricket. Merv Anderson would come to training every week and perform that role. I was there to work on the moral fibre of the youngsters and to mould them into a team that would do the club proud and would be talked about for many years to come.

"How," I wondered, "can I immortalise these boys so that they will be talked about at Banyule for years to come?"

"Have a team photo taken," I answered myself. "Take it in front of Rosanna’s clubrooms, get yourself a very bad haircut and some half-masted jeans. Get Yogi and Steven Page to wear their Beatle wigs and Greggy to wear his dad’s shirt and those horrible shorts. Ring around and get a few celebrities to appear in the photo, such as TV news dynamo, Mark Gillies, Peter "Buzz" Byron (who once starred in a TV commercial), and Truth front-pager, Ricky Page. Throw in a few club stalwarts such as Veal, Richmond, Gurney and Johnston, tell Jed to wear his best jumper and ask Brad to look sensible.

Then, put the photo up on the clubroom wall and leave it there forever. That’s one photo they’ll never stop talking about."

Brad Russell actually took 7 wickets in the final that season, giving us our first Junior flag. It was the last time one of Brad's deliveries ever hit the pitch.

I used to cart the kids around in the back of my EH Holden station wagon. As Yogi and Bruce Gurney would generally bat all day, the others would spend the mornings playing my tapes - Cheech and Chong (you know the sort of thing, jokes about dog poo, etc.) and other artists of similar legendary status.

As Brad Russell tells the story, each Saturday morning at about 9.30, I’d be umpiring and call out to the kids in the car. "Hey, you kids turn that cassette off, will ya?"

"Why?" they’d yell back.

"You’re running the battery down," I would reply, with an air of authority.

They never did, and by the end of the season most of those kids could recite those Cheech and Chong sketches word for word.

MORE OF THE 70’S

We had some deviants playing for us in the 70’s. Nothing’s changed, has it? Rennahs, as captain of our firsts (2nd grade) took a liking to taking his team into the toilets for his pep talks.

"Now, boys, I just wanted to show you the Correct Stance. Spread the legs evenly about two feet back from the urinal and point in such a way as not to splash. Do you all know how to block?"

"Yeah, Rennahs. We normally come in here to get unblocked!"

"OK. How about the hook shot? It’s useful for that one that just dribbles down your leg side, just as I’m demonstrating right now."

****, affectionately known as **** for his shoulder length hair, was the club’s greatest ever storyteller. Each Saturday you’d throw out the bait and **** would bite.

Here’s a typical story.

"Do anything last night, ****?"

"Yeah, I picked up a sheila in St Kilda. I was ..........(fill in the missing word).... her in the back of the car and suddenly the door was ripped open. This bloke sticks his head in and yells, "I’ll give ya fifty bucks to do that on film!" "............ off!" I yelled. "OK," he says, "make it a hundred bucks!""

It was nothing for **** to have apparently consumed a dozen bottles, punched up a gang of skinheads single-handed, tangled with the police, and, of course, engaged in numerous acts of seduction, the like of which most of us could only dream of - all on any given Friday night. None of it was true but nevertheless, we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. What a legend!

We even had a guy who played a season with only one arm - I forget his name, but I can recall him whacking the ball around a bit at training.

The club became Banyule around this time and never looked back. It was also in the early 1970’s that some of the most unusual umpires to have ever graced a cricket field came into their own. I’ll tell you about them in the next instalment.