GEEVES: HIS FINAL COLUMN

After three years, Geeves is pulling the pin on the pen

FOR the past eight months, and perhaps the first time in three years, I’ve been breathing clean air. And it feels good.

I’ve not written a cricket story in that time. I don’t even think I’ve made a social media comment about cricket either. I watched a little of the Ashes, watched ALL the World Cup Final — and drank 400 coffees to survive the next day — but I’ve not sought out conversations to unearth the backroom dealings of a game that was once very kind to me.

It has been bliss.

This lack of cricket activity has removed me from the negativity that exclusively fuelled my entire being, and words, over the past three years. That negativity is not something I’m keen to re-find.

In that time, I’ve written about the CT imposed sanctions on my home club Glenorchy, the ugly ultimatum and my own five-year-old son being stiff-armed from the CT Members for proudly wearing his Pappy’s custom-built-forsize Tasmanian T20 shirt (the first domestic shirt without a collar) and being made to spend $30 on a purple shirt, with no collar anyway, just so he could watch a Hurricanes game in the members seat his grandpappy (a 40-year CT member) bought him.

There is plenty that I haven’t written about, including the other ultimatum delivered by CT to the Mercury. The one that attempted to have me removed as a columnist. Now, I’m not going to embarrass those responsible for concocting such a pathetic and petty play, because my current head space doesn’t call for it. But they know that all they’ve done is vindicate my expressed views that the way cricket has operated in Tasmania has been completely flawed.

And hey, like Stone Cold — Mike Hussey SAYS SO!!

But out of all that pain caused by CT’s pettiness over that time, I’m self-aware enough to understand why I would be the target of that ugliness. I’ve been vocal. I’ve been outspoken. I’ve asked questions. I’ve had an opinion. And not just in the past three years as a result of my rage from that club-sanctioned pettiness. That was me as I entered the game as an 18-yearold professional.

It’s the Sicilian/Glenorchy in my genetic and regional make-up that says I will be default angry and that I’ll speak out against anything I believe to be unfair. It’s also not helpful I grew up on a staple diet, from the age of eight, of Monty Python, Blackadder and my father reading the scripts of

The Thin Blue Line as lullabies for sleepytime. Yes, my sense of humour is dark, abrasive and very much in line with Basil Fawlty, whose poster hung on my childhood bedroom wall.

I get it. And I take responsibility for this as a key part of my learning from the 20+ years I’ve spent in the game as a pro, grade cricket servant and writer for pay. But let me ask this. What did New Town do?

What is saddest of all in this, selfishly, is that I don’t ever think about my time in the game as a player. It is as if it never happened and my life began three years ago with the rage I felt when CT delivered that ultimatum to Glenorchy that led to a sanction. The blacklist. It is time to remember. I want that.

The celebrations after winning the state’s first one-day trophy in more 30 years. All those smiles. Jimmy Maher’s frown. And then those stinky Vics in ’08. Heck, the celebrations after any win are worth remembering.

Being given my very first Tasmanian senior one-day uniform, age 18, and hurriedly putting it on in my hotel room so I could see myself in it. Hat, shirt, pants and shoes. The full kit. My family name on my back. Geeves 63. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

The representation, for me, was about more than my individual journey up the ranks for pay. In 2000, there was no pay. So, it was the pride in representing my family, my state, the Glenorchy region and all those who had faced the same perceptual nightmare of being a savage/bogan/problem in the eyes of life’s hierarchy.

Watching Ricky Ponting clean up my projectile vomit, off that aforementioned mirror, after I’d played my debut game for Tasmania. Drinking my body weight in alcohol post-match was the only thing to erase the smile from my face on that day. Vodka and raspberry, friends, has never tasted the same.

Two red-ball premierships with Glenorchy. Again, breaking a 30-year hoodoo. A Kookabburra Cup. CTPL T20 title. A SStatewide T20 title. Two Club CChampionships. All of which made me the happiest, proudest captain-coach on the planet. Even the pain I pushed myself through. The broken, infected toes, ankle surgeries, bowling aan entire shield game — 46 overs — with multiple fractures in my back and only Panadol as a pain-masking agent.

With Dom Baker taking over as CEO, I no longer feel the want for the organisation to evaporate into the ether of darkness. This is a strong Tasmanian leader who has a wealth of experience in local people. The only agenda Dom pushes is that he wants what is best for Tasmanians. I like that.

Thanks to everyone that has walked past me in the street, said g’day, showed support, debated my points with me and have shown their passion for Tasmanian cricket. Keep doing that. I like that too.

At the end of the day, or three years, or whatever — we all want one thing: Cake.

SATURDAY: it’s for drinking a changeroom beer post-match and talking about how good you used to be. It is not for ultimatums, free crayfish or drugs.