New column: welcome to Off the Bench with Tugboat and help make it a winner

Welcome to Off the Bench with Tugboat that, hopefully, will bring you some local sport news, plus an opinion on anything to do with sport.

The reason it’s called Off the Bench is due to the fact that as a sportsperson, that was where I was best situated, sitting on the bench until the game was either won or lost and it was safe to inject me into whatever game it was.

Let me say there had to be a pretty good lead before anyone that coached me was game to put me on.

Did I say “coached me”, well that was impossible as I already knew everything, so I was mostly unable to be coached.

As a kid I played most sports, including tennis, cricket, AFL and rugby league, water polo and most water sports.

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Later on in life I had a knack of finding teams that had other very good players that could carry me through.

But early on I did learn how to lose really well. In my first two years playing cricket for Eudlo in the 60s, I don’t think we won a game and actually used to get really excited when we had a draw, or a match was washed out.

Getting beaten outright was the normal result, but dreams that a win was just around the corner kept me interested. You know the old saying light at the end of the tunnel, well mostly there was a train behind it for me, but I kept looking.

Early failures definitely taught me persistence and picking good teams to play in.

Now why am I telling you this? Well, it’s simply so when I write something you don’t agree with that you don’t get offended as it is an opinion of a person of a very limited sporting ability.

What I’ve become good at in my later years is sitting not on the bench, but on the lounge watching all sorts of sport.

SEND IN YOUR SPORT TIPS: If you have a newsworthy sporting story, or even a fundraiser for a club, team or individual, please drop me a line at Tugboatash@gmail.com and, hopefully, I can help you out and I must say it is awesome writing for a local publication, owned by locals supporting our community.