Hockey

I don`t remember who introduced me to the Valley Hockey Club, but it started one of the happiest periods of my youth. I think I started playing in their lowest junior grade and was grouped with a number of strangers, but that didn`t stop us from becoming champions that year, and just about each succeeding year as the Club moved us up into another age group. We played our matches each Saturday afternoon at Victoria Park, opposite the Royal Brisbane hospital, where the new Northern By-pass has been constructed (another boyhood memory destroyed).

There I would be in starched white shorts, a pale blue club shirt with a small white ‘V’ (for Valleys) on the pocket, black leather hockey boots freshly shined, shin pads inserted in socks, waiting with my team to take on the club who dared to challenge us. I guess there must have been at least six playing fields, side by side, where teams from all over Brisbane competed, a sea of changing colour as they dashed from end to end. A roar from one field or another as a goal was scored. Shrill peeps from referees` whistles as someone infringed. Hoarse shouts from onlookers as a player was encouraged or derided. Those were the days.

Because we were so much better than most of our competition, they only way they could put us down was to give our Club a nickname-‘Dirty Valleys’. Didn`t matter, we went out there and beat the socks off them. I remember one match where the opposing team was so out-classed, we even let our goalie take off his pads and run up and score a goal. Result was around 43-0.

Strange thing was we never trained together, had a regular coach, did weight-training, running, or dieted to produce form. We just clicked. Makes us wonder about the spoiled puppies running around today. On field, tactics used to be conjured up in your head, relying on your mates to decipher what the hell you were up to. Luckily, they didn`t involve Einsteinian processes and a goal resulted, so who cared?  Forwards and halfbacks looked after the scoring, and the fullbacks and goalie tended to defence business at their end of the field. Corners brought us together, but that wasn`t a regular thing. No shouted commands, even by the captain as I remember, so we must have had a sixth sense to play in position.

Occasionally, clubs ran seven-a-side carnivals on Sunday where other clubs turned up to play several matches of shorter duration (15 minutes each way) for the whole day unless eliminated. Most of us hung around after our segment was completed just to chance another game. Sometimes, we even wore opposing clubs shirts. Anything to get another game. Of course you paid for it either that night or next day, with leg cramps to remind you of overdoing it. Worst of all was to go to the pictures afterwards, forget about your pain, cross your legs at some interesting part of the movie, and cramp up. You had to stay cross-legged and in pain till the spasm passed, toilet call or not.

One favourite carnival was at Ipswich which meant we all had to pile in the back of an open truck, and with an early morning start in winter, freeze on the way to the carnival. None of this riding inside as the modern generation insists. We were tough. I can`t remember what we talked about on the trip up and back, but you were playing your favourite sport and amongst your favourite people, so it didn`t really matter.

            Junior hockey was played from midday onwards and the senior grades followed on later in the day. Sometimes, we would hang around to watch Valleys ‘A’ team play. The corners were particularly inspiring. Valleys used to call up their full-back, Dougie Siggs, to hit the corner. He specialized in a slight undercut which was guaranteed to take off the goalie`s head if he didn`t duck. Not many were brave enough to take the chance.

In spite of solid hockey sticks and hard balls, I can`t remember any serious injuries, though my shin-bones still resemble a corrugated iron roof. It does help keep golf socks in place.

However, times change and so do rules. Gone are the penalties for raising your stick above your shoulders. Forgotten is the sideline roll-in when you could fudge a delivery and slip the ball to a strategically-placed mate. Just a memory is trying to dribble a ball around and between clumps of grass that the Council mower found too wiry to cut. No more the silent cry of hockey-one, hockey-two as we bullied off at the start of each play, and after goals were scored. Bury me with the dinosaurs.