I’ve put up George Harrison “When We was Fab” a few times so a different one echoing the same sentiment.
How good it was indeed.
Anyone who has been part of a sporting team will know a tour is an integral part of things. A friend once told me chess tours were a festival of booze, drugs and sex (no doubt helped by both lads and lasses being along).
There was one to Ireland when I was playing rugby where a lad in his early 30s, ahem, misbehaved with a 64 year old local. On this occasion I was not in attendance as was getting married and already in plenty of trouble for acquiring a gash above my left eye a few weeks earlier that threatened to make the wedding photos look like a police lineup.
I had foolishly exacerbated things by opting to go to a post match party rather than A and E. I was duly frogmarched down there the next morning. A and E on a Sunday morning is just as bad as Friday night but fortunately the cut was clean and no stitches required ( which was what she was really worried about).
There was one cricket one that particularly sticks in my mind and even kids rugby ones were great ( it’s just a pissup for the Dads for anyone not familiar). I went on a couple of work tours to places in Europe that were wild but we will focus on football here.
Football tours were in early October (season in Oz finished late September). Those of us who also played cricket had to compete to not play that weekend.
There was a format.
The ones I went on were always 2 or 3 hours up the coast from Sydney. Somewhere with a beach to stop people laying into the booze before noon. It was always staying in a local motel. These places in Oz were quite good at the time – cheap, nice rooms with a big balcony and a pool. More of interaction with the motel and it’s staff later.
I’m going to try and do this in order of activity so I may bounce around between tours but I think it will work better.
It always kicked off on a Friday lunchtime returning home on Sunday evening. It was usually 20 blokes or so ranging in ages from late teens to mid 30s. If you’ve read some of my earlier stuff you will already know the cast of characters who featured in those tales are heavily involved in this as well.
It was a meet at noon with a plan to leave at about 2pm. I just used to take the whole day off so I was always there right on time. I can’t quite recall how I got to the pub where we met but it was home to one of Sydney’s biggest bikie gangs and not the place to leave your car in the car park for 48 hours.
Roy Lister from Salisbury North, South Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
After an hour or two wellying them down we boarded the transport.
It was always the same – 24 seater minibus. No idea what it’s like here but an extended driving licence was required in NSW to drive these things. Fortunately a couple of guys did things like couriering and had the right qualification to do so.
Patiparn.Nice2002bkk, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
They were kind of like this
Rules were clear though. If you drove up on the Friday you didn’t have to put your hand in your pocket to buy a drink on the Saturday. If you drove back on the Sunday same applied for Friday. We all gratefully bought them beers or bourbon and cokes.
The bus trip was always interesting. Loading 20 half cut blokes on to a minibus is a task in itself but once you were on the road it got, let’s say, difficult. I wasn’t present on this occasion but heard about someone I played footy with vomiting out of the window before the bus had got to the tollgates at the start of the northern freeway ( it was about 15 miles from the pub).
The two serious issues though were keeping beer cold ( remember it’s north of 30C) and urination.
The first was dealt with by having coolers ( we called them Esky’s) and plastic dustbins full of ice.
The second was trickier so we had this thing colloquially known as the pissaphone.
It consisted of this 4 or 5 foot long piece of clear industrial rubber piping and a plastic funnel.
The plastic funnel was attached to the top end of the tubing with masking tape. The tubing was then attached to the handrail on the entrance to the bus with further masking tape and the bottom end poked out at the bottom of the bus doors.
Seems like a simple solution to a pressing problem right?
Ever tried having 6 or 7 pints and then trying to direct your urinary stream into a 4 inch wide plastic funnel standing on a minibus doing 80 or 90 mph down a motorway?
I don’t care how smooth the tarmac is or how good the minibus suspension was it was bloody difficult to have a wee standing at the front end of a minibus.
You definitely made sure you weren’t sitting next to this apparatus.
On occasion though the cumulative effect of 20 odd blokes drinking beer overwhelmed the pissaphone’s capacity and a pit stop was required. No real services so we just parked in the emergency lane. Everyone poured (literally in some cases) off the bus to take a wazz over the crash barrier. Remember cars are whizzing past at 80 miles an hour.
It should have all been straightforward but one colleague decided that getting beeped by passing cars wasn’t enough entertainment. Moving to the edge of the inner motorway lane he dropped his trousers and undies, pulled his, ahem, old feller back between his legs to look like a woman and started waving at the passing traffic and shouting “Hi Boys” like some street corner scutter.
Marvelling at his luck in not getting run over by a passing Mazda 323 we eventually ushered him back on the bus and the journey could recommence.
The bus ride was usually about 3 hours depending on where we were going. As you can imagine 5 hours of drinking (if you include a couple of hours in the boozer beforehand) meant that everyone was in boisterous mood by the time we arrived.
The order of play here was simple. We’d always taken the precaution of telling the motel we were golfers. If you tell them you’re a football team on tour they wouldn’t take the booking. The driver, who was probably the only one sober, went into reception and sorted out room keys while the rest of us waited quietly on the bus.
Did we fuck!!
A combination of inebriation and boredom kicked in and the singing started. And we’re not doing “Jerusalem “ here. There was a particularly pleasant one that started with :
You can tell
By the smell
That your girlfriend isn’t well
As long as we were all safely on the minibus though there wasn’t usually any problem.
Unfortunately on the odd occasion this simple task of remaining on the bus for 15-20 minutes was beyond people.
One lad decided he wanted to get off the bus while check in negotiations were taking place. He approached the folding doors at the front of the bus. These things can only be opened from the driver’s seat and being frustrated by his inability to disembark opted to pass out in a standing position with his forehead resting against the doors.
Another more knowledgeable individual climbed into the driver’s seat and hit the button that opened the doors.
Our intrepid driver i[n the process of checking us all in was horrified to see someone fall out of the bus like a tree coming down and doing a face plant on the concrete of the car park. I think the motel manager just pretended not to see it.
Anyhow once we were all allocated rooms it was time to put the glad rags on and the fin could really begin.
That’s for the next instalment though.
© ArthurDaley 2026
