The gentlemanly voice of NZ sport
Iain Gallaway’s dulcet tones oozing through the radio airwaves have been described variously as an aged port wine and liquid caramel as he commentated sport from his citadel at Carisbrook in Dunedin.
That voice has now been silenced at the age of 98 with Gallaway’s passing two weeks ago, but the memories will linger long after his death.
From the mid-1950s through to the early 1990s, Gallaway was the voice of ‘‘the Brook’’, firstly covering rugby matches and then overlapping with cricket from provincial to test level before retirement in 1992.
Those were the days when the broadcasters painted pictures for the audience with their words. Accurate, balanced and articulate, the gentlemanly Gallaway’s voice doubtless helped get many a house painted or garden dug by Sports Roundup listeners around New Zealand.
His skills ensured he soon became part of New Zealand’s test cricket commentary panel, alongside the likes of Alan Richards initially, then Bryan Waddle and Peter Sharp. Gallaway lost nothing in his delivery, knowledge, and insights to the game’s commentary greats – the Arlotts, McGilivrays and Johnstons from England and Australia.
However, he missed calling New Zealand’s historic first test win, against the West Indies in 1956 at Eden Park, because work was mounting on his desk and he had attended the other tests in the four-game series.
The previous year he covered a trailblazing New Zealand tour of India and Pakistan, where communications were poor, and at times the players and press slept on straw mattresses.
He called time on his broadcasting career at the end of the 1991-92 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, concerned that his waning eyesight might lead him to misinform listeners.
Yet, despite how astonishly good he was at it, it was not his vocation. Gallaway followed his father into the family law firm, but not really by choice. Journalism was his first love and he began working life as a cadet reporter at the Otago Daily Times.
World War II intervened and he spent two years as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal New Zealand Navy in Europe and Britain. On his return to Dunedin in 1946, and feeling an obligation to his supportive father, he turned his back on a career in journalism. ‘‘It was a sad state of affairs,’’ he later recalled, ‘‘because it had always been my first love.’’
He told the story in his 1997 autobiography Not a Cloud in the Sky ,a phase he became known for using whenever the skies above Carisbrook would allow – or even at times when not always completely clear.
He told then ODT cricket writer
Richard Boock that, for 50 years, he practised law but rarely enjoyed it. ‘‘For most of that time I didn’t wake up one single morning and look forward to a day in the office.’’ He believed his sports commentating sojourns helped him maintain his sanity.
He also shared with Boock the life lesson he learnt about having a passion for one’s work. ‘‘If you’re going to be happy sweeping streets, then sweep them,’’ he said.
Gallaway was also great proponent of obituaries, noting that everyone had a story to tell and some were absolutely fascinating. He believed older people should write their memoirs, if only for their descendants to have something to remember them and their times by.
Gallaway’s life certainly falls into the more memorable category. Apart from law and sport, he was heavily involved with the church, community and charitable interests. He was awarded an MBE in 1978, and a QSO in 1986.
Born on Boxing Day 1922, of Scottish stock, Iain Watson Gallaway attended High St school and John McGlashan College in Dunedin, before boarding at Christ’s College in Canterbury.
There his sporting skills as a rugby player and wicketkeeper-batsman began to flourish, and he won Otago cricket selection in 1941-42, while also becoming a senior rugby player. When overseas he played for a New Zealand Combined Services team in England alongside test stars including Stew Dempster, Martin Donnelly, and Walter Hadlee.
Another couple of seasons for Otago followed, while he also developed an interest in rugby refereeing and officated at two international matches between the British Lions and West Coast, and the Wallabies against Southland.
In between his career and sport, he met and married wife Virginia in 1956 and together they raised four children, Sarah, Annie and twins Garth and Alice. Garth shared his father’s love of sport and followed him into cricket commentary, after also becoming a lawyer, first in Wellington, then Dunedin and Christchurch.
Such was Iain Gallaway’s stature and recognition in the cricket world that he became New Zealand Cricket president in 1997 and had the good fortune of being at Lord’s in 1999 when New Zealand won its first test match at the hallowed home of the game.
‘‘Tears welled up and I moved hurriedly into a corner of the president’s box, back turned, until I composed myself and returned to receive the congratulations from all the good and great surrounding me,’’ he recalled.
When the subject of a new covered stadium was mooted in Otago, to replace the aging and outdated Carisbrook, and a new cricket ground proposed across the road, Gallaway was less than enthusiastic, having spent almost a lifetime there.
He recalled first attending a test rugby match in 1930 in bitterly cold conditions, and never missing a rugby or cricket test there until 1999, when in England.
He revelled in Otago’s rugby glory, as Ranfurly Shield holders in the 1940s, and watched from the players’ area as Bert Sutcliffe made 197 and 128 in 1947 against the MCC, and Gallaway himself stumped great England batsman Denis Compton.
He believed Carisbrook could have been saved had it been given a makeover and extended, but the Dunedin City Council ruled otherwise and the city does now have two splendid facilities side by side – but at considerable cost.
A sought-after speaker, Gallaway gave generously of his time to various organisations, never charging a fee and usually paying his own way.
His latter years were spent, as his health declined, at Yvette Williams retirement village in Roslyn. His funeral was held last Friday at St Paul’s Anglican cathedral in the Octagon. At the time of his death, he was New Zealand’s oldest living first-class player. –
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