moment for the frugal team coach, Billy Letice (66), a former electrician from Gorgie, Edinburgh, who has lived in Australia for 43 years.
A man in whose breast beats the heart of a Bill Shankly, Billy’s passionate team talks are legendary. They might actually be working, too. For, deviating from the TV series script, this group of ex-pats has been actually winning, moving up three divisions in three seasons.
Strolling round to the first match of the new season, where my son, a veteran player, was captaining the side, the team’s players were patently on the sluggish side. By the half hour it was beginning to look like a doctor’s asthma clinic out there; well into the second half, tactical decisions like a wild shot that vanished into the shrubbery over a fence provided a much needed breather for the lads, whose average age is by far the highest in a league full of teenage Aussies.
Later in the match, an own goal featured when a pass-back to the keeper suddenly morphed into a full-blooded shot which, had it happened at the other end, would have been cheered to the raſters. However, Barnstoneworth gamely fought back and in the final minute scored an equaliser to make it 3-3.
A couple of days later, in a Sydney pub, we ran into the team coach. “Your boy,” he pronounced morosely as he ordered a schooner of beer, “is no’ fit.”
True enough. But he wasn’t alone in that respect. And the team, fair play to them, gave their all. Despite the club’s world-wide reputation for wackiness, Barnstoneworth actually take their sport extremely seriously.
For the club’s 25th anniversary last year, a grand plan was hatched to film Barnstoneworth the
Movie. Michael Palin, the club’s honorary president, was keen to take part and had this message for the players. He said: “Twenty-five years of glorious disaster and failure; a team like no other. It’s been kept going more than anywhere in Australia, so good on you.
“Graham Rumbel contacted me years ago to ask permission to use the club name. I said, of course, provided you keep on losing. A few years later he owned up to the fact they had won their division; that’s when I was about to disown the club.”
He added: “I think it’s great that Barnstoneworth are still playing. It just shows you that failure can turn into success. I think the Barnstoneworth experience corresponds to a deep-seated awareness that supporting a football team is about failure. You know it’s not about success, you just get terrified and frightened that it’s not going to last; failure is the default point for supporting most teams.”
Fin Cuthbertson, the club president, currently
back home in Glasgow on holiday, said: “The significance of the 8-1 score line was immortalised in an episode of Ripping Yarns, so we decided to put it in the club’s constitution: if ever we had an 8-1 score-line the commitee would buy beers for all the players. This always proved popular with the lads, if not the Treasurer and commitee members trying to keep some money in the coffers.”
The club’s moto, A hard, ruthless, tough, fighting unit, is also taken straight from Ripping Yarns.
78 August 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100