NO TOUR TALK!Clarence Hiles takes a light-hearted look at NDCC's touring history.
NO TOUR TALK!
North Down will create history in 2007 when they become 150 years young, and to mark the occasion the club plans to tour South Africa. This is a monumental undertaking since the last major international tour was way back in 1984 when 22 of our best toured the beautiful Caribbean island of Barbados, now my home of almost ten years.
Of course there have been short trips to Majorca in between, but Conlig is hardly Bangor when it comes to talking big.
Tours have always been an integral part of the club's history, as far back as the 1890s when visits where made to Lancashire, and of course to play Rossal School where a dapper young Oscar Andrews and Ned Newett of Cliftonville fame, where being educated in between cricket matches.
Tours to the north of England and Scotland seemed to be the height of North Down's ambitions in the early years, although sorties to Dublin were occasionally undertaken between the wars.
But the real tourists in the club evolved in the modern era when jaunts to Blackpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Derry and Laurelvale became legendary. Who could forget Pearly Graham's designer tea bag in Blackpool disguised as a condom, and of course his rubber fried egg that was eventually discarded because he couldn't cut it? Or Denis Artt's stink bombs that nearly got us thrown out of the hotel on the last night!
Denis was a great tourist although he was nearly written off in Glasgow when his maiden century celebration 'Blackouts' floored him out for two days! In Barbados his post-match presentations of the Artt Awards where unforgettable, and reminiscent of the Bra Trophy Awards he instigated in the late seventies for the player who made the biggest boob of the match. Denis has never really grown up and the Barbados tour gave him a platform to excel. The same could be said for big Sangster, sore ear and all, who became the Daniel O'Donnell of the trip, and brought many a tear to Bajan eyes with his indomitable renderings of Danny Boy, Ghost-riders and anything else he made up while on his feet. Big Meat was a bit of a Ghost-rider himself on this tour, while the Whizz brought a whole new meaning to the word Jaws!
Meat's Force Eight gale snore tested the very foundations of the hotel, and the only thing that Jimmy McCall slept with during the trip was the 40 ounce bottle of Bacardi he bought at the airport. Jim was a guest on this tour and never really got to grips with Sangster and Meat's culinary delights nor their drinking habits.
Poor old Da Whizz has gone AWOL in recent times but he wasn't always Mr.Angry and in his heyday he was one of the club's great tourists, renowned for leaving Betty in Dublin and driving home on his own, a few skirmishes with parked cars, swinging a punch at Dunmurry's old Dan (he was about 90 at the time), organising two caravans at Kelly's for the Ballymena/Eglinton tour, and then staying the night with the North-West's 'Red Doc from the Rock,' an amazing character who hailed from the Faughan Valley. Ian Shields will remember that night with mixed emotions as he left the two North Down stragglers in Derry, but made the mistake of leaving his cricket bag and that took almost a week to get back to the Green.
Getting left behind was a feature of away trips but fortunately Don 'Rivelino' Shields and the Wooden Taxi Company came to the rescue on many occasions.
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The late great Jim Barry toured Barbados, but wasn't too impressed when the Scottish tourists buggered off the weekend of a cup match and poached the proceeds from winning the Ballymena Sixes the previous evening. When a call was put into the club the following day to see how the team had done, a flustered 'Wasim' said they could all **** off and stay in Glasgow!
Sammy Haire, Jim Barry, Peter Shortt and Derek Steen in Barbados
Never one to sit on the fence was our Jim, although he could hardly sit on his backside in Barbados after the guys spiked him on the first real drinking session of the tour.
It is often said that what 'goes on tour should stay on tour,' but what a lot of nonsense. If you can't tell a story or two out of school then what's a tour all about!
And it doesn't have to be 100% true as some of the best tour stories have been garnished by the passage of time, and no doubt with some license from big Raymond!
Roll on South Africa!
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