Almanac Memories: Drinking with Billy Serong Part 1

 

Bill Serong passed away recently, a couple of weeks after his 88th birthday.

Rod Gillett, who grew up at Rochester, remembers Bill as the coach of Echuca, Rochy’s great rivals.

In the first of two Almanac pieces about drinking with Bill Serong, Rocket tells the story of having one with him at the Shamrock Hotel in Rochester in 1964.

The Collingwood Past Players tribute to Bill follows at the end of Rocket’s piece.

Vale Bill Serong.

 

 

 

 

Drinking with Billy Serong – at the Shamrock Hotel, Rochester – 1964

By Rod Gillett

 

Perched on a stool at the end of the main bar in the Shamrock Hotel, a glorious old double-story pub with a verandah, in Rochester, I had a raspberry and lemonade and packet of Colvin’s chips in hand, a veritable feast. All around me, the men were swilling glasses of draught beer and rejoicing in Echuca’s long awaited win over arch rivals Rochester.

The person at the nucleus of all conversations was Echuca star player, Bill Serong.

Bill had just accumulated 45 possessions in a match-winning display in the centre and led Echuca to its first win over Rochester since 1956 thus ending a run of 25 defeats.

The 1958 Collingwood premiership player, who had been runner-up for the 1959 Brownlow medal, had been recruited as captain-coach by Echuca in 1963, from North Melbourne, for the express purpose of beating Rochester and making Echuca a power in the Bendigo League.

Rochester had ended that bid in a controversial preliminary final defeat when the Murray Bombers bought in Serong’s Teachers’ College mate, Neil Roberts, who had retired as St Kilda captain at the end of the previous season.

It didn’t end well. Named as 19^th man, Roberts came onto the QEO in Bendigo in the third quarter but had been promptly run through and taken out of the game. Rochy went on to win easily and then beat Golden Square in the grand final for its fourth premiership.

Serong returned as a player for the 1964-65 seasons winning the Michelsen medal in 1965.

And at that moment on the night of 15 June 1964 I was in the same pub as Billy Serong!

While the supporters, including my father, thronged around him as Billy held “court”, those closest to him were officials of the Echuca footy club. But I was within range not that I can recall anything he said. I was only nine years old.

Bill told me in an interview I did with him in 2009 about his time playing at Echuca that he distinctly remembered that occasion because the Rochy footy club secretary came to him at about 7.30 pm to tell him that mine host was concerned that given the closing time was six o’clock he really should be closing.

The response of Bill’s drinking partner Keith McLeod, the district licensing inspector was “tell him he’ll be in even more strife if he closes up!”

I can’t remember what time we got home but I do remember that dad and his mates were so happy that Echuca had finally beaten the mighty Rochester.

 

 

Read Collingwood Past Players’ tribute to Bill Serong HERE.

 

Read more from Rod Gillett HERE.

 

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