DIGGERS, BEER AND OYSTERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 246, 16 October 1937, Page 4

DIGGERS, BEER AND OYSTERS

VICTORIAN GOLF EVENT 572 PLAY FOR A.I.F. CUP Beer, comradeship, golf. These are the three things that matter at Victoria’s now-famous A.I.F. Cup event, held annually on Show Day at Eastern Club—and the least important is golf, comments a writer in the Sydney Referee on the Victorian returned soldiers’ golf tourney, similar to those promoted in Wanganui, Manawatu and Hawke’s Bay. Golf, of course, is played, but then that happens on the other 364 days of the year.

A.I.F. Cup Day is not like all the others. It’s not just a grim battle against par on your opponent. There’s glorious freedom and fun. And wherever you look, there’s beer—not only in the clubhouse, but in estaminets at focal points on the course.

The club statistician recorded that there were 45 “nines” and 50 dozen

bottles consumed during the day. And to help them on their way, the 5».’2 Diggers swallowed 8400 oysters’ Early in the season the committee announced that this year’s army would be restricted to 500 players. A month before entries closed they had 540. Later the pleas of Diggers who had not missed one meeting, others who had come even from New South Wales, and others again who claimed that their hearts would be broken if their entries were refused, were altogether too much for the soft-hearted executive. And so 572 joined the merry-making and the sluicing. “Der Tag” had its usual accompani-ment—two-up schools, crown and anchor boards, loud speakers that urged the slow to move faster and carried across the fairways stories that—anyhow, there wasn’t a lady within, the precincts of the links. Beer to those without a button was proclaimed in big letters to be “Verboten.” Seriously, A.I.F. Cup Day is a marvel of organisation. How 572 souls can be sequeezed on to one 18-hole golf course in one day is a miracle, even though car headlights show the way to those heroes who start at 5.30 a.m., and the tail-enders at dusk. Innovations this year were a field post office and a special newspaper, “The Eastern Timez.” The post office did a roaring trade in alibis—messages per phone and telegram to the family that dad would be a iittle—hie!—later than expected. Of course, there were endless inward calls for missing husbands, and one, very late at night, contained a request to keep a watchful eye for dad’s teeth. He had arrived home without them!

The cup was won this year by A. J. Sinclair/of Albert Pane, al7 marker, who although a right-hander, has his left hand below the right on the shaft. He belied his handicapping by going round in 82. His card of 6up was I,he second best ever recorded in the event. Sinclair enlisted when 16.