by Craig Hamilton
EVERY SPORTING CLUB needs someone like Bobby Gray. The bloke who hands out the gear, looks after the valuables (wallets, phones, etc), collects the social club money and turns up for training and games every week to help out in any way he can. The guy that runs on with the water bottle and a sponge every time a player goes down with injury (there have been some truly miraculous recoveries made after some of the magic water has been splashed on a sprained ankle or twisted knee over the years). The person who loves being involved and making a difference, who genuinely cares about the people they deal with on a day-to-day basis, and whose contribution is made with little or no fanfare.
I met Bobby when I was playing cricket with the Belmont club in the Newcastle competition. He would have been in his late seventies. I was in my late twenties. It was during a cricket match played at the Adamstown Rosebud soccer club’s home ground, when I strained a hamstring muscle midway through a bowling stint. I left the ground immediately and went looking for an ice pack. Under the grandstand, in one of the treatment rooms, was a short, stocky massage therapist with an infectious laugh. A bloke named Bobby Gray.
Bobby was already working on one of the Adamstown Rosebud soccer players, all the while talking about sporting teams, his family, injuries, life and the importance of breathing properly while competing. Apart from being fantastic masseur, Bobby was a great talker. He saw me hobble in, introduced himself, and said that he would have a look at my hamstring when he was finished with the bloke who was already on the table. When it came to my turn, he worked on my leg for about forty minutes. Then he told me to rest it, continue to use ice, and then begin light stretches after forty-eight hours or so.
As he worked on my damaged hamstring, I found out a bit about him. His wife had died and he missed her dreadfully, loved her with all his heart, and in some ways dealt with the loneliness of a solitary life by staying involved with sporting teams. He went to that little room under the grandstand every day of the week, and to travel there he caught a couple of buses at his own expense. He was there whether anyone turned up or not.
One of the first questions he asked me was who worked with our team each weekend treating injuries? Who provided massage therapy to loosen up tight muscles and helped prepare players to perform at their best before and during games? I replied, no one.
Our club had a professional approach to most things: training, facilities, player recruitment and junior development. But we didn’t have a physio/massage therapist working with the team on weekends. Bobby said we needed one, and he was the man for the job. All he wanted in return was for the club to pay for his massage oils, heat rub, strapping tape and bus fare from his flat at Windale to the game each week. Bobby was a pensioner, lived in a tiny one-bedroom flat and didn’t have a car. He was also one of the most content and positive people I have ever met, even though materially he had very little.
After I got off the table I asked Bobby how much I owed him for the treatment. He said, don’t worry about it. For Bobby, it was never about money. There were people who had no money, and Bobby helped them. You could not get Bobby to charge what he was worth. If you offered him sixty dollars for a session, he would only accept twenty, and most of the time he only wanted ten. As long as he could afford to eat, pay the rent and cover his bills, it was enough. He had long worked out that his health and happiness were more important.
I was training three times a week at that stage of my playing career and, with weekend matches, it was pretty full-on. There were always niggling injuries, strains, muscle tears and general soreness. Bobby became my first-choice therapist, not only because he understood sport but because he loved it, and we could talk about pretty much anything. He was a wise old owl and didn’t mind sharing what he had learned throughout his life.
It was this special relationship that Bobby had with the players that saw him become our club’s official masseur, as well as the Newcastle representative team’s masseur, and that eventually led to him working with the New South Wales side when they played Sheffield Shield games in Newcastle. There he worked on many of the game’s very best players, including Australian Test captain Steve Waugh. I remember him telling me that he worked on Steve Waugh’s troublesome back for a number of hours one day to get the skipper back on the paddock. Steve at that time was nearing the end of his playing career and needed to keep his body in shape to get through the demands of four- and five-day cricket.
You could ask Steve Waugh or many of the other Blues players of that time if they remember the short, balding masseur from Newcastle, and I reckon they all would. He had such an infectious personality and was always upbeat. He also had a wicked sense of humour that saw others happy to spend time in his company, even when he wasn’t putting their bodies back together. Bobby Gray loved the camaraderie that the dressing-room environment offered. He was not only a gifted therapist, but a confidant, friend, and someone who always left you feeling better about yourself and the world.
In the time I played at Belmont I occasionally opened the bowling, but more often than not I bowled first change. I remember well the time during a match at our home ground, Cahill Oval, when I was struggling with my run-up, my action, my rhythm, my fitness … In other words, I was just struggling. I came into the dressing room during the lunch break frustrated and angry at the way I was bowling. No matter how hard I tried to fix the problem, it wasn’t getting any better.
Bobby knew nothing about pace bowling. He knew absolutely nothing about line and length, and even less about how to bowl an outswinger. When he approached me in the sheds that day, I was sitting on the bench feeling sorry for myself. Bobby told me to relax, and breathe properly. Things would sort themselves out. I had become so worked up that my breathing was rapid and was increasing the feelings of frustration, not lessening them. He told me my breath should not be shallow and quick, but deep and slow. He said to practise while I was sitting in the dressing room and between overs.
This was a simple yet profound message. In short, switch on when you need to, but learn to relax and breathe deeply when you don’t. Cricket is a game that gives you a window between balls to do that, and this lesson had been given to me by a bloke who had never even played.
When other teams saw that we had a masseur working with us, they couldn’t believe it. But Bobby was so generous with his time that many opposition players ended up receiving treatment from him too, even though he was meant to be working with our side. As word got out about Bobby’s work, he was asked to travel with the Newcastle representative team, and he kept the boys in tip-top physical shape before and during games. He loved it, and the boys loved having him around. For the players, Bobby was part of the furniture and part of the fabric of their club.
The other great innovation he brought to the cricketers he worked on was the soap scrub. If you had been slogging away on the field in forty-degree heat for a couple of sessions there was simply nothing better than getting onto the treatment table for the soap bath. During the twenty-minute tea break, the bowlers would have a two-minute shower and then get scrubbed down with a coarse-haired brush lathered in soap. That was repeated: a two-minute shower, and back into the cricket creams just in time for a cup of tea and a cake before taking the field for the last session. You had to experience one of these scrubs to believe how they could lift a tired body and mind. Having a treatment like this gave you a new lease on life, and helped enormously in reviving tired legs, back and shoulders. The bowlers had the benefit of this treatment when we were fielding — the batsmen didn’t deserve it!
Bobby Gray knew his stuff. He was pretty much self-taught, but had a gift that was refined through hours and hours of working on bodies of all shapes and sizes. Yet if you search for Bobby Gray on the internet, you won’t find him. He never made the social pages, or a newspaper story, as far as I am aware. In fact, I think the only people who have ever heard of Bobby Gray are those who were privileged enough to meet him. I remember the day I first met him at the Rosebud home ground as though it was yesterday, even though it’s close enough to twenty-five years ago.
Bobby died seven years ago, and his funeral was held in a small church at Wallsend, a suburb approximately fifteen minutes’ drive from Newcastle’s CBD. At the funeral service there were Bobby’s friends, family and soccer players and officials. And, I’m proud to say, there were plenty from the Newcastle cricket fraternity in attendance as well.
I met Bobby’s son Ross that day for the first time. Bobby often spoke about Ross and about how proud he was of all his family. I told Ross what his father had meant to all of us, and how we were improved as people through meeting and spending time with his dad. Believe me, Bobby may have gained a lot through his work with the numerous players he treated in teams over the years, but the players who met him will never forget the impact he had on them.
I know I won’t.