Playing Away 3: Resilient Red V hockey and remembering a lost teammate

St George Randwick has a proud history in the Sydney Hockey League. And they showed their unbreakable community spirit in their Michael McDiarmid Memorial Round.

Hockey is one of the great mysteries of Australian sport. Every four years Australian public expectations are sky high for the Kookaburras and Hockeyroos to win gold at the Olympics and then it disappears from view.

Loved fanatically by its players, it hasn’t yet cracked the code of becoming a big tv sport (although its getting closer) and its still largely played on an amateur basis.

I was keen to get out and see a game and thought I’d check out my closest club, the St George-Randwick Hockey club, founded in 1928.

The club’s home ground at Kyeemagh in Sydney’s inner south is one for the true believers.

The ground is adjoined by the Chinese market gardens which has faithfully supplied vegetables to Sydneysiders since 1892. The artificial turf pitch backs onto to a tributary of the Cooks River.

Across the river, planes take off every couple of minutes from Sydney Airport and players and fans can see the top of the plane tails cruising busily like multicoloured shark fins.

The St George Randwick Hockey Club could not be more tucked away from the bright lights of Sydney, a metaphor for hockey’s resilience in the shadow of Australia’s big sports.

I arrived at the ground just in time to see a guard of honour by Glebe for the Randwick St George 8^th grade team running on to the field.

To the casual observer, it was just another Saturday in the Sydney Hockey men’s competition.

But for the St George Randwick Hockey Club, this was the Michael McDiarmid Memorial Round, a brave and necessary reckoning with a tragedy that still ripples through the club.

Two years ago, Michael “Mick” McDiarmid, a stalwart goalkeeper, and a man woven into the fabric of the club, took his own life leaving.

In true club man style, he had played three games that final Saturday.

He was, by all appearances, fully embraced by the love of his clubmates, yet he left the clubhouse and never came back.

This year’s Michael McDiarmid Memorial Round was the second to be held after his passing.

Posters were up around the ground, balloons placed in front of the clubhouse and headbands and wristbands were purchased and worn. Donations were raised for suicide prevention charity Gotcha4Life.

And there was something else in the air. The sense that this club refused to let one of its own disappear into silence.

Founded 98 years ago, St George Hockey Club was one of the original clubs in Sydney hockey and later merged with Randwick in 2005. The Randwick Club was also co-incidentally founded in 1928.

Anthony Roberts, the Club Secretary, is a man who carries the club’s story in his head

According to Roberts, the club’s fingerprints are all over Australian sporting history.

“The history is as deep as any club in Sydney. It has produced 15 internationals and the red V on the jersey started at this club, not on the jersey of the St George Dragons Rugby League club.” he says with a grin.

The club’s “Golden Era” saw them dominate the Sydney first-grade competition through the 60s and 70s, with a strong elite player base including dual-international Brian Booth, who represented Australia in both cricket and hockey.

Booth passed away in 2023, but his daughter Alison subsequently took up the role of club patron.

St George now effectively plays in division 3 and below but were once the heavyweights, along with Glebe their opponents today who also have a proud history.

But as the game moved from grass to synthetic turf in the mid-80s, the landscape shifted. While clubs like University of NSW, Ryde and Moorebank Liverpool flourished over recent years, older clubs like St George and Glebe have had to fight for every inch of relevance.

Michael McDiarmid was a product of this proud and resilient culture. A Randwick junior who stayed through the 2005 merger with St George, he was the definition of a “club man”.

Peter Hayes, the Executive Officer for Sydney Hockey and a teammate of Michael’s, remembers a man who lived for the game.

“He was a goalkeeper, a great club person... if you needed him to play an extra game, even if it was up at Pennant Hills, he was always up for it, never a question.” Hayes reflects.

On that final weekend, Hayes was a teammate on the pitch with Michael and celebrated with him afterwards.

“Personally, I felt it because I was playing with him on the Saturday afternoon and on the Sunday morning, he was gone,” Hayes says.

“Nothing was obvious to his playing mates at the time... we knew he was going through relationship troubles but he seemed to be handling it and there were no alarm bells that rang out.”

Watching Sean Glassford, the team captain, lead his side today, is to witness the peculiar blend of toughness and respect that defines hockey culture.

With flowing grey hair and big smile, he’s now 60 and squeezing the last out of his legs, using the cunning of congealed experience. His grandfather and dad played hockey, his kids played hockey. He played hockey at state level and the game is in his blood.

Glassford also played with Mick in his final match and knew him since he was a kid. He offers a raw perspective on the “man’s thing” - the tendency to internalise pain until they snap.

“Mick was just the loveliest guy... friendly, loving, kind, and soft – he would do anything for anyone,” Glassford says.

“But in the goals, he was passionate and solid at the back. He had a big voice. He would yell at us.”

Glassford sat with Michael in the changing rooms after his final game - a 1-1 draw.

From a social media post, they knew he was struggling with a personal relationship, but the community’s support didn’t seem to reach the place where Michael was hurting.

“I’ve been there myself with my own suicide ideation,” Glassford admits candidly.

“It’s a thing for men, we think we’re letting people down. We think we’re not good enough... That’s the thing with Mick, that’s probably what he thought: ‘I’m not good enough, so I’m out.’”.

The Michael McDiarmid Memorial is a “sombre topic,” as Peter Hayes puts it, but the club chose to be “front and centre”.

They held an open-mic night where players could finally talk about the “warning signs” and are now more informed and vigilant in the signs to look out for.

The tragedy of Michael’s passing has spurred the club into a partnership with Gotcha4Life, an initiative focused on mental fitness and suicide prevention.

According to Gotcha4Life, three out of every four suicides in Australia are male, and suicide remains the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15 to 44.

Around 7 men take their lives every day and its officially an epidemic.

They take care of their own in hockey, but the St George Randwick club faces an uphill battle for survival on another front: infrastructure and funding.

While hockey is glamourous in the Olympics, it remains a “poor relation” in the Sydney sporting landscape, overshadowed by the colossus that is rugby league, and the ubiquity of football.

Anthony Roberts doesn’t mince words about the financial strain on amateur clubs.

The high cost of playing - nearly $1,000 once you factor in registration, sticks, and uniforms along with maintaining the costly infrastructure, is a barrier to growth. But every year, more than 100 teams turn up to play in the Sydney men’s competition.

After a spirited contest, St George Randwick see off their old rivals Glebe.

The game is played in the highest spirit and there is a camaraderie and warmth between opposing players that is increasingly rare in modern sport.

Captain Sean Glassford gathers the team in front of the Cooks River and devotes the singing of the team song to Mick.

They belt out ‘When the Saints go Marching in’ with gusto as the sprinklers rain down on them.

Between matches the artificial turf is kept wet by sprinklers and on this day, at this time, it produces a beautiful rainbow, romantic and a little heartbreaking.

In front of the club rooms, players from both teams honour Michael’s memory together led by club President Andre Cabral who introduces me around the players and to Mel, the faithful volunteer queen of the barbecue.

Cabral, who moved to Australia from Tamil Nadu when he was 10, is fresh from playing in the tribute match.

He is a living legend of the sport in Sydney and in his prime won the Brian Booth medal for the MVP in the Sydney Hockey league.

He’s a believer that Hockey needs to stay tight as a community across club lines.

“It’s a small sport and we need to get along,” Anthony Roberts says of the bond between rivals.

“You’d think with sticks flying there’d be danger, but in 40 years of playing I’ve only known one instance where somebody used a stick violently.”

Instead, there is a sense that these teams are joint custodians of something fragile - a suburban sporting family keeping a shared passion alive.

St George Randwick might not be in the top grades right now, but two years shy of their centenary celebrations, they are “consolidating and growing” according to Roberts.

Around community sport, the ongoing grief from suicide is often handled with a quiet retreat, but St George Randwick have chosen another path.

They are building a culture where it’s members can feel more comfortable talking about their lives outside the game.

And on the banks of the Cooks River, the Red V stands for more than just victory.

It stands for a community that refuses to leave the memory of a teammate behind.

Copyright @Patrick Skene