YALLOURN HOCKEY CLUB by Wendy Hunter
Well as I'm a little memory keeper of important things from my childhood, I have come across some of my treasured Yallourn Hockey Club memorabilia.
I'd like to share this with anyone who is interested. I started playing hockey in 1975 (Grade 5) for Yallourn. We wore white tops, navy blue skirts and orange socks..... yes orange! I don't know who decided on them and we always had to defend them, but it did look nice. I played right up to the very last day when A, B & C grades all won the grand final...... we received a flag from the Yallourn Town Advisory Council for this achievement.
I was born in Yallourn and spent my childhood at Yallourn playing Hockey there. We trained twice a week, had the Soccer Club training beside us and over on No 1 Oval were the footballers. All these fields were the best grass fields in the Valley. Yallourn was a very successful Hockey Club winning countless grand finals with a number of us even representing Victoria U16's.
The trip into hockey from Newborough was always an adventure when we had 4 of us in the back seat of Houston's cars, "2 forward, 2 back & if you see a cop the small ones had to duck...." I remember having almost the whole team in the car many times.... never mind about seat belts!!! When we played 2 games of Hockey in the one day, we would hang our orange socks out the car window to dry off, and head to Houston's for lunch of a big milo drink and tin of spaghetti on toast.
Being a winter sport we played in all weather - the worst was in a hail storm, wearing short sleeves and short skirts... ouch, the worse was being that cold and I didn't want the ball to come near me as it vibrated up your stick and really hurt.
That town touched so many people in its short life and I am glad to be able to share my memory of my hockey time with others. How I'd love to have another chance to head through the town to those hockey fields to see the big trees out the front of the pool, to walk over that little bridge over the drain, to look over and see if Leonie Crozier's backdoor light was still on (as it always was!), to smell the burning leaves in the gutters and to hit those acorns from the tree at the grounds with my hockey stick again.......