A
SORTA 20 YEAR HISTORY OF THE GREAT BNCC
Written
by OCL Scotty Hatcher to help celebrate the BNCC's 20th year of
existence in March 2009.
Okay. Who reckons they can name
the ten other blokes who played in their debut for the Barnies?
In batting order? I can name eight of them. Well, seven of them.
Because one of them was a girl. Embarrassing I know. Not because
one of them was a girl. Embarrassing that I remember. But, hey I
remember my first child being born. I remember my first beer. So
why wouldn’t I remember the other most important day of my
life?
Last game before Xmas (I remember that because on the second week
we all wore Santa hats on a 35 degree day), 1998. Against Powerhouse.
Fawkner no. 3.
The batting order:
1. Some blouse who wore a red helmet
2. C. Gray (equal with Prevolos as the worst BNCC catcher to play
more than five games who doesn’t have a moustache).
3. M. Vana (guru-like at the time with a gnomish brown beard)
4. L. Ryan (the girl. 1 of 2 to play for the Barnies. 1st and last
game).
5. P. Burns (captain – gave a masterclass that game in batting
ripped)
6. D. Wright (seemed like an alright bloke, at first. Ex of other
chick to play for the BNCC)
7. P. Simpson (faced one ball for the Barnies, never bowled)
8. Me
9. M. Manley (only game he never got injured)
10. ?
11. J Crawford (last game for the Barnies. Spray-on pants put to
bed).
Out of that eleven, I reckon 5 were members. Or at least regulars.
The rest, like me, ring-ins (and literally ring-ins you kids out
there. Back in those days we didn’t have that… that
e-mail). Sound familiar Todman? Sound familiar to anyone who’s
tried to pull a Barnie team together? Bloody Hell. How have we survived
all these years?
1989.
In 1989, a big wall was torn down, a black bloke was
finally let out of prison and another bloke who’s taken more
recreational drugs than just about anyone not to have worn the brown
and green, nearly won a grand final off his own boot. How fitting
then that the Vanas started a cricket club. A pair of brothers whose
loved ones had been on the other side of that wall; who had been
persecuted (not because of their skin, but because of their skill);
who knew, like God himself, that sport without drink and drugs was
like… well… like everything else without drink and drugs.
Just not as interesting.
It’s hard to write about what happens next.
Too many names, too many stories and, like my opening, all so subjective
when it comes to naming what makes Barnawartha North the greatest
sporting club in the world. I guess if it was a TV series, there
are some stories that you’d have to add in. And, like a TV
series, all would be embellished a little of course.
You could call it something like Overbelly: A Tale of Obesity.
There would be the opening sequence: the first meeting –
Scene: A pub.
Ingram, Cleo the Wog and Danny Calligan sit around
a table full of empty glasses and screwed up serviettes and pens
to indicate drawings gone wrong.
Enter Marty from the toilet hurriedly, pants still around his ankles.
Marty: "I got it!"
He picks up a pool cue as he rushes past, sticks it in his arse
and turns.
"A cow’s arse! With a cricket bat stuck up it! "Hey?
Hey?"
Others sigh in relief.
There would also have to be the heartbreaking scene about the split
that threatened to do to Barnawartha North and cricket as what Ginger
Spice did to the Spice Girls and music. The infamous defection of
four members who formed a new club called Crockham Hill.
Scene: A pub.
Thommo: What are we gonna do to them?
Manners: Give them life bans.
Tommy: Nah.
All look to Tommy, who turns slowly at the bar.
Tommy: Give ‘em life and ten.
He drops cigarette to ground and stomps on it.
Then, of course, there’s
that fateful golf game.
Scene: Golf course.
Brown drives effortlessly down the fairway. Coppo and
Tommy look at each other, their checkered pants bulging.
Coppo: "You play any other sports?"
Brown: "I love cricket."
Tommy: "Yeah?"
Brown: "Problem is I like a beer and a choof while I play."
Smiles appear on Coppo and Tommy’s faces. Their pants bulge
even further.
Scene followed by Post-Golf Game Barnies
Scene: Cricket Ground.
Marquee set up around combi where loud blues music
plays. Pucc behind bar, dinner shirt, immaculate, mixing cocktails.
Crowds of young revellers including women, drink and smoke, among
other things. In the distance, a cricket game is going on, which
no-one is paying much attention to.
Morgan Freeman (James Earl Jones?) voiceover comes on talking of
doom, camera spins out of control, music warps. ..
And, then of course, one of my favourite scenes.
Scene: Northern pavillion Fawkner Park.
Dennis and Kirschy face the tribunal, accused of drinking
alcohol at the previous game after repeated efforts by the MCA to
ban drinking.
Committee member: "Were you drinking at the game on Saturday?"
Kirsch: "Yes."
CM: How do you plead?
Kirsch: "Not guilty."
Dennis drops head, groans and spits out remaining teeth.
Of course, scattered through
Overbelly would be gratuitous cricket shots:
Coppo’s back-foot lofted cover drives.
Gav’s flicks of his legs over midwicket for
six.
Hucca’s lofted pull shot
Curtain’s defiance of anything offered in
a coaching manual
McGay's defensive lob block
Tommy’s sweep
Marty’s bum crack from square leg
Quirk batting in liederhosen
And, yes – Slim, foot planted slightly forward,
Viv-Style, arms and bat swinging with ease. Balls to all parts.
Though more important would be the Mc Fly blooper reel that would
go on twice as long as the series, with some of the greatest dropped
catches you’re ever likely to see, including at least a couple
of Tommy’s attempts at chest marks. And maybe an over from
Dirty.
Yeah, I know there’s other memories, including 2 grand finals.
But some things are best remembered as oral histories… Some
best not remembered…and some just aren’t remembered
at all…
And it’s late. I want to go to bed, gotta work tomorrow, etc,
etc. So, to end this disjointed rambling, I pose a couple of questions:
After 20 years as a club, what is the BNCC’s legacy? What
makes the Barnies the Barnies?
It’s something I’ve asked myself recently when certain
types accused us – or at least insinuated – that we’re
a bunch of racist, dull-minded drunks who are bad role models for
our kids. That we don’t respect women (obviously never met
our moles of the year!) That we don’t play in the spirit of
cricket (you know, that game that’s never had a scandal of
any type in its proud, colonialist history).
As Marty would say about our detractors – “They don’t
get it.” They don’t get that we don’t play in
a spirit straight from the stuffy, upper echelons of the MCC. They
don’t get that we’re a twenty year piss take of them,
with their training sessions, their front foot forward defence,
their archaic “old chaps” tradition and all their other
cricket nerdities. And they don’t get that we still haven’t
got sick of the joke. (If you don’t know what I’m talking
about, come to the next AGM).
I reckon our spirit comes more from the Vana motherland in Eastern
Europe. A spirit that tells us to drink up, take the piss out of
ourselves, live for the day. Because who knows when the next bunch
of bastards with a thousand tanks is going to come along and roll
right threw us.
And that is why…
Barnawartha is the place for me... |
| The
history of the Barnawartha North Cricket Club is also well described
here by MCA stalwart Alec Kahn in his report of the 2001 Grand Final
between BNCC and Reds.
Barnawartha Where?
If you take cricket seriously, don't read this. It will upset you
too much.
It's about Barnawartha North, who play C Grade in Mercantile. They
break every rule that other clubs live by.
Two seasons ago "Barnie" played our thirds in the grand
final.
Naturally all their regulars wanted to play. So they went down the
pub and drew the side out of a hat.
This, we learned, was a club rule.
Fourteen players pay $200 a season and form "the 200 club".
They get first priority for any game, and if too many are available,
a lottery takes place.
For the grand final, the three who missed the semi-final automatically
got a game.
The other eight came out of the hat. Form didn't matter, so their
best batsman and a leading all-rounder missed out.
Captain for the week was founding member Tommy Vana.
The captain changes every game, and he has to ensure the side has
eleven players, and more importantly, meat and beer for the BBQ.
In return, he can bat and bowl when he likes.
Tommy organised a marathon barbie for the grand final. It started
before the game, and went all weekend.
Players regularly left the field to grab a snag and give the reserves
a run.
Unlike the Reds, who warmed up intensely, the Barnawartha North
batsmen just munched steak sandwiches.
The club hasn't trained or warmed up for nine years.
It held a pre-season practice in its first three years, but everyone
decided that was too serious.
As usual the Barnawartha batting was agricultural.
Their scoring rattled along at slightly under run-a-minute, but
their biggest hitter, Shane "Slim" Gurnett, was caught
on the boundary for a quickfire 36. Earlier that season, Slim had
come in at 5/31 chasing 140, and smashed 191 in 80 minutes off 88
balls. His innings included 23 sixes and 10 fours, and an adjacent
District thirds game stopped while he rained sixes onto their ground.
When they fielded we saw another club tradition -- the nine-man
slips cordon
This was seen as remarkable when Australia used it briefly in Zimbabwe,
but Barnawartha North starts every innings with it.
It began as a joke in its first game to bluff the batsman about
the bowler's pace.
The nine slips remain until a couple of runs are scored. (That once
took the opposition six overs.)
If the ball gets driven, the bowler chases it himself. It serves
him right for not bowling to his field.
The widest catch ever taken in the cordon was by Marty Vana at fifth
slip. Marty took it one-handed because he had a chicken schnitzel
sandwich in his other hand. (He couldn't appeal because his mouth
was full.)
As they fielded, they regularly passed around the Silly Hat. The
last player to misfield or make a duck must wear it. A huge jester's
hat in the awful club colours of green and brown, it was previously
pink with a donkey's tail and before that, a cap with a whirligig.
The green and brown, incidentally, represent the bush.
Tom and Marty Vana founded the club twelve years ago with two mates
in a pub to perpetuate the spirit of bush cricket.
For a name, someone recalled a sign on the Hume Highway near Wodonga
pointing to Barnawartha North, a place with no buildings or people,
just trees. A club from a mythical country town was just what they
wanted.
At stumps on the Saturday, Reds were 1/56 chasing Barnawartha's
198.
But that couldn't stop the Barnie boys partying. The BBQ went all
night, and players slept under the stars.
Three players headed for a city night club and got back at 4am.
The hangovers made the Sunday difficult. The temperature reached
40 degrees, and a Reds opener played maybe the slowest innings in
history -- 27 in six hours.
Tommy Vana brought himself on to bowl. Tommy once took five wickets
against Reds, but this was still daring.
You see, Tommy bowls pure trash, in the tradition of 1950s Leicestershire
captain C.E.Palmer who took 8/7 in a county game bowling donkey-drops.
Tommy bowls with the action of an unco-ordinated five-year-old,
and every over contains a donkey-drop and balls that bounce four
times.
Several batsmen succumb each season trying to hit Tommy out of the
park.
But Tommy could not win it for Barnawartha North.
The Reds forces of austere socialism ground past them with two wickets
in hand.
Undaunted, Barnawartha made the four again last year, only to lose
in raucous good humour in the semi-final.
This year, the club is taking the theatre of the absurd to new heights.
It composed a ribald anthem to its favourite eccentric umpire and
sang it to him during a game. It is buying garden gnomes to replace
its boundary flags, and trying to fit wheels to a clubroom sofa
so that players can push it around Fawkner Park and watch their
games from it. |
