Willows Dinner 2001

(a) I have read your objectives.

(b) I have spent a lifetime working with and for the youth of this country.

Those who know me well will know that I despise those fads of the 1980’s and 1990’s—the vision statement, and the mission statement, and the time spent in formulating that which is instantly forgotten the moment it has been written.

But you people have two objectives, and while I concur with them both, I want to specifically commend you on the first—”to encourage players in secondary school first XIs to play with and against experienced players, many of whom are present or past first class cricketers”.

Not only do you have that as your objective, but it is obvious from your annual report that you carry it out, and teams from Christ’s College and Boys’ High, St Bede’s, St Andrew’s, North Canterbury Schools, Wanganui Collegiate, Marlborough Boys’ College, Otago Boys’ High School, Waitaki Boys’ High School, Mt Hutt College and Shirley Boys’ High School are or have been part of your fixtures list. I congratulate you and encourage you to continue this, not simply for cricket’s sake, but for society’s sake.

Earlier this year I was a brief speaker at a Wellington Cricket Club’s junior prizegiving, and part of what I said to them I want to say to you, and it is this:

Those of you who run cricket clubs (or rugby or netball or tennis or whatever) perform a task not simply for your sport, but for the community. I believe, as someone who has specifically worked with teenagers for 37 years, that you have every right to look upon yourselves not simply as coaches and managers but as social workers too. We all know young people who have been saved from that which they might have become by the interests, the sports, the music they have taken up with adult support. Cricket clubs and choirs are critical components of our society for good, so I thank you for the part you play in encouraging young New Zealanders, in your case, by the enjoyment of playing cricket. Long may you do it.

Lastly, by way of introduction may I say what a pleasure it is to again meet up with your patron, Walter Hadlee, the doyen of New Zealand cricket, who epitomises all that is good in it. Walter has played a straight bat on and off the field all through his life and he is much admired for it. Thank you Walter also for your note in the 7th Annual Report of the club on Life, Sport, Faith and Death, which I have read and will treasure.

I need to say now, Mr Chairman, that I have come to Christchurch and to Canterbury tonight for a purpose of far deeper significance and meaning than even complimenting you and encouraging you, and I want to be able to die a happy man, at peace with the world and even with Cantabrians. Many of my team mates over the years, like Graham Dowling and Vic Pollard, and Motzie and Peter Sharp—they know that I have been at war with Canterbury for years. Those Red and Black caps can bring the worst out in you. And so it was that I once wrote a piece called “The Ballad of the Cantabrians”, and shortly I’m going to sing it to you. It’s a poem about all the Canterbury players in the 1969 New Zealand touring team. I’ll need to explain the background of this song to you so you will understand its significance as I sing it. It illustrates my unreconstructed thoughts about sportsmen from your province. Here is the Chorus, which I want you all to sing, while Shona plays the piano.

“Oh, we’re the boys from Christchurch We wear the red and black, And we’re so good, we make up For what the others lack.”

The song was inspired in fact by the Canterbury Cricket Supporters’ Club who sent a telegram to our 1969 touring team before the first test against England: “Best of luck, especially to the Canterbury boys,” it said. So we who were not the “Sons of Canterbury” wrote a song. There were several verses, but I’ll bring you only three.

There was a verse about Dick Motz and it alluded to the situation of the 60s and 70s where local umpires officiated at home games. There was a verse about Brian Hastings and Dick Brittenden (R.T.B.) which is self explanatory; and a third about David Trist who replaced Motzie (for the India/Pakistan section of our 5 month tour), and won our sweepstake for who would be the first team member to be sick (or “to sail’) in India, and he did in style, as I recall, on the marble foyer of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay in full view of tourists and locals alike.

So—I’ll sing the verses, you all join in on the Chorus.

… Well, Mr Chairman, you can see what I was, but now as a more mature, more reflective, wiser and I hope kinder person, it is time for confession, so that I may make my peace with you and with all Canterbury. I started by thinking kind thoughts about Cantabrians, and about the province and its major city, and my confession to you is strongly linked with what I must acknowledge is the huge part that Canterbury has played in my life, a part of which for all these years I have had to suppress.

Our direct family connection with Canterbury ceased until, almost 100 years after the birth of my grandmother, I came back to Christchurch, and spent some important and happy times here.

As I look back over life, I owe a huge amount to this city, and some of its people and institutions, and it’s time for me to say so publicly.

I acknowledge a debt to Canterbury and Cantabrians that is hard to quantify, but which is significant not only in sport, where I count people like Graham Dowling, Vic Pollard, and Brian Hastings as good friends, but in those other two even more important facets of my life, education, and faith. There are numerous ways in which I can gladly say that “I thank God for Canterbury”.

The Willows Cricket Club, it seems to me, does more than promote cricket. It promotes the kind of values that can only do our country good.

And for those of you to whom a classical education has any meaning, I give you the motto:

FLOREANT SALICES ~ “May the Willows flourish.”