Iain Gallaway’s deeds in cricket, sports broadcasting and the law are well known nationally and also throughout the world. Here are two tributes — one from broadcaster and author Jim Sullivan and the other from Willower Ken Rust, long serving coach of the Otago Boys’ High School 1st XI. We are especially grateful to Jim who has kindly given us permission to print his article which was published on 20 April 2021 in the Otago Daily Times.
Iain Gallaway, QSO, MBE (1922–2021)
Honorary Member of The Willows (1994–2021)
Iain Gallaway never made his century, but his 98 years leave us with fond memories and perhaps this column is the place for some light-hearted ones.
For a quarter of a century Iain was the Carisbrook voice of rugby and for an even longer time was the voice of cricket. It was a lonely job, ending in the winter dusk, but in the 1970s a change came with the 4ZB’s Scoreboard. Iain would come to the studio to summarise the day’s play and was invited to join the “after match” at the Oriental Hotel. Pub-going was not his usual relaxation but among his Scoreboard team he felt at home. Avuncular towards the bevy of attractive young ladies who ran the control room and something of a hero to the broadcasters who wished they had his skills, Iain was great company and always supplied the crisps. His family later noted that he looked forward to those Saturday sessions as a change from the more formal times with the great and the good of the city.
Iain kept his own sporting achievements in the background, but in later times held his own in the commentary box when superb storytellers like Jeremy Coney were his colleagues. When asked about his own cricket career, Iain would say nothing of how close he came to being picked as a test wicketkeeper and instead told of the time he was applauded as he left the wicket at Carisbrook. “I followed Bert Sutcliffe after he had made his usual pile of runs, but so short was my stay at the crease, bowled first ball, that I returned to the gate hard on his heels and the applause for Bert was still ringing in my ears.”
Iain had planned to be a journalist but, after a brief pre-war spell with the “Otago Daily Times”, served in the army and navy before being persuaded to join the family law firm. His contributions to the profession and the Otago District Law Society are well-documented but in farewell mode we can turn to cricket which for Iain was “the game that’s done/the game that’s never done.”
Here in Patearoa Iain will certainly be long remembered. From 1947 he played in the Easter cricket matches at Patearoa. Tom Fraser’s XI, usually with a test player (often a Hadlee) and a crop of Plunket Shield players, would take on the Patearoa XI. The visitors socialised at the pub and various Maniototo homesteads where, as Iain recalled, “good wine and good conversation and song flowed until dawn had broken.” The songs included “Dark Haired Marie” performed by 1930s All Black Joe Procter with “tears of passionate sentiment streaming down his cheeks.” Some of us were privileged to witness Iain in similar mood one hot summer’s afternoon in the Patearoa pub when the talk turned to music and Iain volunteered that country singer Tex Morton was his boyhood favourite.
To our surprise this unassuming man then took centre stage and, with appropriate gestures, gave us all seven verses of “Old Shep”. By the time he came to the last verse the tears of sentiment were flowing from us all:
Now Old Shep is gone
Where the good doggies go
And no more with Old Shep will I roam
But if dogs have a heaven
There’s one thing I know
Old Shep has a wonderful home.
The Easter visits to Patearoa and Iain’s own Maniototo connections led Iain to look for a holiday home in Patearoa, and in 1962 he bought the house once owned by the gold sluicing company, and the room used as an office from which the miners were paid, became a sitting room with a roaring open fire.
Soon he was called upon to speak at Patearoa sports clubs functions and give them pro bono legal assistance. In a foreword for the history of the Gimmerburn and Patearoa rugby clubs Iain revealed another connection. “In the early 1930s we spent our holidays at Linnburn or Puketoi. Knowing my childish passion for rugby, Billy Wilson, the cowman-gardener erected goal posts so that I could convert the countless tries I scored against an invisible opposition.” On the Sowburn walkway the Gallaway bridge (damaged but a priority for restoration) remains just part of his Patearoa legacy.
To farewell Iain, perhaps a piece of cricket writing, Francis Thompson’s “At Lord’s” which captures the melancholy of transience and loss:
For the field is full of shades
As I near a shadowy coast,
And a ghostly boatman
Plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears
On a soundless-clapping host
As the run stealers flicker
To and fro, to and fro.
— Jim Sullivan
Like anyone who grew up in Dunedin listening to broadcasts from Carisbrook, the name Iain Gallaway was synonymous with cricket and rugby. Much has been written about his many qualities as a broadcaster, but he was equally impressive in person. Casual conversations on the boundary at Logan Park, Tonga Park, and even Littlebourne highlighted his genuine interest in young cricketers and anyone involved with the game.
On two more formal occasions, Iain was involved with cricket at Otago Boys’ High School. In July 2010 he was one of the “heavyweights” (the others being ME Dormer and Sir John Hansen) who attended a special Cricket Blues Assembly. Iain presented Tom Rutherford (7/20 v Willows 2009) with the Shadbolt Trophy for the Best Performance against The Willows and the First XI with the ’49ers Cup for the Most Meritorious Performance by a Secondary School.
Less than a year later, Iain was a special guest at a luncheon held on the first day of the annual Christ’s College inter-school match. The luncheon was to mark 125 years since the first cricket inter-school was played between the two schools. As an Old Collegian and proud Otago supporter, Iain played the role of diplomat perfectly in his address about the enduring qualities of the game.
Seventy-two years earlier in 1939, Iain played in the annual inter-school won by Christ’s College by eight wickets. Below is the short scoreboard:
Christ’s College 199 (DW Monaghan 36, WN Wright 22, CR Morse 32, EG Rutherford 44, IW Gallaway 18, RP Partridge 4 for, TW Somerville 3 for) and 31/2
Beat Otago Boys’ High School 91 (FK Rennie 29, B McSweeney 4 for, LJ Castle 3 for and IW Gallaway 2 catches) and 130
— Ken Rust