 Stobo Salute v Mosman
Sorry about missing the last two rounds. I’ve only played Blacktown a couple of times, and I was away in the lead up to Easts – or Waverley, as they were years ago.
Maybe next year.
But Mosman this round. The club that derailed the first Ferrari in the 4th Grade final a few years ago.
(The famous quartet, Kevin Roberts, Adam Gilchrist, Warwick Adlam, Phil Emery)
But also the club that holds a lasting place in the memory of all of the players who were around in 1990-91, when the 1st Grade side defended its Premiership.
Mosman was the side that we played in the Final. And what a memorable match it was.
Gordon crept into 4th after the Rounds, and played a titanic semi-final against the Minor Premiers, Balmain. Managing to get past them, we then came up against a very strong Mosman side in the Final.
 Played at Bankstown Oval – a neutral ground, of course, but not terribly handy for two North Shore teams – the first of the three days was washed out, after the toss had been made. Mosman won it, and elected to bowl.
Good decision, it seemed.
(R.M.Stobo in the early 90's)
At 5-70 early on the second day, I distinctly remember sitting in front of the pavilion, thinking that we’d done very well to make it that far, and second place wasn’t a bad result. Greg Rowell was bowling beautifully, and had cleaned up the top order, including Emery and O’Neill for bugger all between them.
I forget exactly who did what next, but Gilchrist, Adlam, and Liggins did a great job of making a fist of it, and we crept to 164.
We had a handful of overs to bowl at the end of the second day, and what a good thing that was.
Adlam got rid of one opener, but then Emery did something that will live long in the minds of all that witnessed it.
I was at square leg, and had a good view.
Adlam was bowling over the wicket to Scott Atkinson, a left hander. Atkinson glanced a ball off his hip – we had no fine leg.
 Emery, standing wide on the off side, because of the angle, moved quickly, launched himself far to his right, and held on to one of the most wonderful catches I’ve ever seen. He covered an enormous distance, and got both gloves around the ball.
The effect it had on the team was electric.
(What a catch...Phil Emery)
We turned up for Day 3 with a glimmer of hope, but no one took the warm up terribly seriously. Gilchrist spent his time in the nets smashing balls in all directions; a portent of things to come, perhaps.
But it was a team that was very good at switching on at game time.
Day 3 turned out to be an exercise in will power. The Mosman batting was strong right down – their No 10 had scored a 1st Grade century during the season. We knew that we had to make our lowly total seem enormous, by strangling them with every delivery.
A classic exercise in building pressure.
Every bowler did his bit. Mosman crawled to 2-70, and seemed to be doing well. However, such was the tension in the middle, that a wicket might well bring two, three, …
 Eventually wickets did start to fall, but not in a rush. We held every catch – including a terrific grab my O’Neill in the gully – and at lunch the game was evenly poised.
Just before we went out for the second session, Steve Day – playing with a split webbing received the previous week against Balmain – said, prophetically, that, as was often the case in such tense games, a run out was possible in the next session, and we had to be on our toes to make it happen.
(Mark O'Neill)
We picked up where we’d left off in the second session.
Mark O’Neill’s spell of leg spin was quite extraordinary.
I’m fairly certain that he bowled 18 overs, and took 2-10.
His wickets included another superb catch by Emery, off the left-handed Gary Bensley. It was a googly that Emery did extremely well to hang on to.
Anyone who played with or against Gary knew that he could hold the result of a game in his hand, whether with bat or ball.
Steve Day also held on to a catch remarkably similar to his extraordinary effort in the semi-final (which resulted in the split webbing). Running away from the wicket, from midwicket, to the far side of Bankstown Oval, he judged it perfectly.
We had to catch everything.
It was at some time during the second session that Gordon’s 3rd Grade captain, Alan Farrer, did the best thing he could possibly ever have done in his life. He walked into Bankstown Oval with the 3rd Grade premiership trophy held aloft, just won a short while earlier. All of the Gordon supporters – and there were a lot of them out there – cheered, and it gave all of us on the field a great boost at just the right moment.
Eventually we were within sight of winning, but the Mosman tail looked like it might wag. They were only about 20 shy, with a couple of wickets in hand.
And then the run out happened. A ball pushed into the covers, a quick single, and Adam Gilchrist (who was fielding there) did the rest.
The next thing we knew, the ball was being ballooned up to cover, where Paul McLean took a simple catch, and the Premiership was Gordon’s, for the second time in two years.
 O’Neill has often said that it was an almost unbelievably simple end to such an extraordinary effort.
A thousand ghosts had been laid to rest.
We all got very drunk that night.
Even Sammy Buono smiled.
(A smiling Sam Buono! Well sort of! )
The details of the night are very hazy, but I do seem to recall Gilchrist and Roberts parading around the old Gordon Rugby Club with the stag’s head and antlers that they’d managed to get down from the wall.
Happy days.
Richard Stobo | 
