The good ol’ days of cricket and sly grog

THE foiled attempt of a young punter trying to sneak a bottle of vodka into the races last weekend brought memories flooding back.

Like most sporting venues around the globe, Southwell Racecourse in England has banned punters from bringing in their own grog.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying.

The young lass came up with a novel approach of hollowing out a subway style foot-long bread roll into which she placed a bottle of vodka wrapped in salami and tomato.

However, an ever alert security guard became suspicious at the weight of her lunch-box and, looking into the ingredients of her “sandwich”, the gig was up.

I’m sure the security guard was impressed by her efforts, as was I, one once adept to similar sporting venue smuggling capers.

Her smuggling efforts brought back memories of the Ashes tour of 1990 when a group of us attended the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.

I was living in Melbourne at the time and a couple of Toowoomba-based mates had joined me for the festive season.

We had enjoyed a long and hearty Christmas lunch of turkey, chicken, ham and the usual seafood, much of which was left over... as we had planned.

The next day, the three of us rose to prepare for the Boxing Day Test.

In those days, patrons were allowed to bring an esky full of food, soft drinks and water etc. into the ground but, of course, no alcohol was allowed to be brought in.

The MCG sold only light beer in cans, VB 2.2 as I recall and we couldn’t face spending a hot day at the cricket drinking that lolly water.

So, we bought a carton of full-strength beer cans which we placed carefully across the bottom of the esky and covered that with a false bottom of cardboard taken from the carton.

We then filled the space above that with ice, and containers full of left-over turkey, ham and chicken as well as cans of Coke - which was for our friend Sue who planned to smuggle in a bottle of Bundy Rum in her larger than usual handbag.

We caught the train into the MCG and approached the gate as nervous as a drug mule going through customs at an Indonesian airport.

Fortunately, it was a hot day so the beads of sweat rolling down our foreheads didn’t attract any undue suspicion.

Dags, Banjo and I approached the gate and lay at the foot of the security guard our esky of “snacks”.

The security guard took one look at the esky, then looked up at us, then back at the esky.

He lifted off the esky lid to see the containers of food and ice before a broad grin came across his face and he started laughing.

“You blokes are good,” he laughed, shaking his head.

“I’m not even going to look in there, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble.”

“What?” the three us replied in unison.

“Hahaha! Go on in... I know what’s in there, but go on in!”

Looking as angelic as we could, we grabbed the esky and waddled in.

Fortunately, as long as one has a stubby cooler that covers the label of the beer can, the top of a VB heavy can looks pretty much like that of the 2.2 variety and we got away with it. We also learned why Bay 13 always sang “We got pissed on 2.2!”

❝angelic Looking as as we could, we grabbed the esky and waddled in.