My Grand Final nightmare

Dean Magee | May 28, 2023

In season 2006/07 Bankstown beat Randwick in the One Day competition Grand Final and as we were well placed in the overall competition the thought of wining the double was quite exciting.

It became even more so when we beat a star studded Sydney University team in the semi-final to advance to the big show. The Sydney University team included Stuey MacGill, Ed Cowan, Greg Mail, and Mark Cameron just to name a few. So we were pretty excited to win and we, well I did, wanted to celebrate.

Our grand final opponents was to be Fairfield, my old team and where many were and still are some of my best mates. Grant Lambert (Lambo) Dougy Bollinger, Anthony Clark, Benny Rohrer….. you beauty, this is going to be a cracking grand final.

We’d actually won a competition together a couple of season earlier so it was a funny kind of feeling, and I was pumped.

Known for a celebratory drink or two I struggled to convince the Bankstown boys to kick on after we won the semi and had a couple in the dressing room.

It was a was a Sunday night and it was also Anthony Clark’s 30th birthday so while the Bankstown lads headed home, I found myself in a taxi hurtling towards the old General Bourke Hotel in Parramatta (now PJ Gallaghers) to celebrate Clarky’s birthday and have a few beers with my mates who’d I’d be playing against in the Grand Final starting on the Friday.

It was getting late and near closing time however as was customary for Lambos and I, if we hadn’t quite re-filled our tanks, irrespective of the time, we’d always accept the challenge of finding another bar.

We headed outside to grab a taxi but no luck, so we thought we’d just go back inside the General.

Unfortunately we were stopped by the bouncers as it was right on closing time so we thought we’d wait for our mates to come outside and see if we could grab a lift off the guy who hadn’t been drinking Mitch Tremain. Mitch also now happens to be my future brother in law.

This is where my grand final nightmare begins.

Lambo and I had been having a couple of darts and as he handed me one, I dropped it, and I’d only ever had dropped one catch off his bowling too. As I bent down to retrieve the cancer stick, a guy who’d been misbehaving inside and was being chased by the bouncers burst through the door and knocked me off balance.

As I hit the deck and a stray schooner glass caused a strange sensation across my ear.

Under the influence we were unable to determine if it was a superficial cut or something more serious. We didn’t know if we required a band aid or towel but someone thankfully produced a towel.

I say thankfully because there was quite a lot of blood and I soon found myself heading off to Westmead Hospital where the nurses duly reported my ear was only hanging on by the proverbial bees ….

As the night grew longer, the pain kicked in and I started thinking about my Bankstown team mates all tucked up in bed. How was I going to explain I’d been out drinking with our grand final opponents, almost lost an ear and in need of emergency plastic surgery?

Mates are mates and through the whole sage, one of the greatest all-round cricketers I’ve ever played with, and a great mate Grant Lambert never left my side. At times we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, we did both.

The pain was incredible as were the tears when I came to the realisation the surgery needed to repair my ear would mean I’d be missing the grand final.

It was bloody sobering after working so hard to get there and be part of a great team that were about to achieve something that not many teams have ever achieved by winning the one day and two day competition in the same year.

Grant’s bedside manor left a bit to be desired. As a fast to medium pace bowler he cheekily informed me that if the glass hadn’t attacked me on the night, he would have made it his responsibility to cause similar pain when he would’ve been bowling to me in the grand final.

I missed the grand final, but thankfully the good guys won. It was a happy ending to a nightmare week and it was good to get one over my old Fairfield mates one last time..