Bushpigs turn out to be Old Boars

by PAUL DAFFEY

UNIVERSITY football clubs are renowned for their inventive social ways. Without the influence of family members looking over the players' shoulders, as happens at clubs with closer ties to surrounding communities, creative minds find fertile ground.

The Rivcoll Football Club started at the old Riverina college of advanced education, now the Charles Sturt University, in Wagga Wagga in 1973. The club's approach to life and football was established when foundation president Maurie Hogan put the gate-takings from the club's first home match on Welcome Advice at the trots in Melbourne. The horse duly won.

Five years later, student teachers from the club were on a geography excursion in the western Riverina when they discovered that wild bushpigs have the same markings as Rivcoll's jumper: red and white stripes. On returning to Wagga, the footballers had a nickname and club song:

We're just a bunch of Bushpigs/ Bushpigs are we/Root, root, root

We're just a bunch of Bushpigs/As happy as can be/Root, root, root.

Last Saturday, the Bushpigs and their netball sisters, the Bushsows, hired a bus for the 100-kilometre journey to Ardlethan to play the reigning premier in the Farrer league, the Northern Jets. Despite the Bushpig senior team's heavy loss, 20.14 (134) to 1.1 (7), the students treated the trip home in a manner that most clubs would consider a celebration, beginning with beers at Ardlethan's London Hotel. (The Thames was nowhere to be seen.)

As the bus set out for Wagga, a phone call was made to the Royal Hotel in Grong Grong to ask whether it would be OK for a busload of student footballers and netballers to drop in. The publican was so alarmed that he said his pub was full. A call to the Royal Hotel in Coolamon was more welcoming.

The footballers filled in time on the trip to Coolamon with spontaneous nudity. On reaching the pub, they continued a club tradition by whacking Khe Sanhon the jukebox and belting out the words with their trousers around their ankles.

The Bushpigs' affection for Khe Sanh can be linked to an important moment in the club's history, a Cold Chisel concert at the university in 1978. That concert was held on a Friday night. The next day the Bushpigs were flogged at Cootamundra, prompting coach Peter Ponting, a carpenter at the university, to ask whether the activities night could be brought forward to Thursdays.

Luckily, the university's activities officer, Rod Gillett, was a Bushpigs player. The change of activities night was such a success that the Bushpigs made a late run to reach the finals. Then they beat Army and Cootamundra in early finals before seeing off Barellan United in the big one.

This Saturday, the Bushpigs' 1978 premiership team will converge on the club's ground, Bushpig Park, at the university campus in North Wagga for a reunion. Premiership players in attendance will include Bruce Graham, a professor of anatomy and physiology at the university, and David Jones, a poet in the Southern Highlands.

The Old Boars, as they're known, will watch the current generation of Bushpigs play The Rock-Yerong Creek. A good time is sure to be had by all.

This article first appeared in The Age on Wednesday 30 April.

30 April 2008

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