This popular bloke played his first game of hockey down behind the Mittagong sportsground way back in 1963. In the years that followed he has been Mittagong Club president, a team captain and honoured with a thoroughly deserved life membership of the club. He served on the local association for many years as the secretary, sold chook raffles, coached juniors. As well, he is a NSW State umpire, controlling hundreds of matches at all levels.  

On Saturday, Neville played game number 720 for Mittagong and that doesn't include the countless country and Sydney carnivals, as well as veterans matches and other games outside of the local competition over 54 winters.

When he started playing hockey they stuffed paperbacks in their football socks as shin pads. You had to bully off at the start of the game and when the ball went out, it had to be rolled back in by hand, with everyone standing behind the 'tram tracks' running parallel with the side-line. The ball bounced all over the rough paddocks, not along the ground like on the modern artificial turf. When the ball went flying through the air you were allowed to use your hand to pluck it out of the sky.  

The goalkeeper was clad in a football jumper and a dirty pair of old cane cricket pads. No helmet, padding or protection, apart from a battered tin protector for the crown jewels, borrowed from the local cricket kit and a pair of those floppy, spiky, green rubber batting gloves. Now I am told, it costs between $1000 and $2000 to equip a goalkeeper with all that fancy protective gear.  

I loved playing hockey with Neville back in the day. Captain Sandshoe, we called him then because he had this neat trick of using his feet rather than the stick – and getting away with it. He played hard with sheer guts and determination and what an inspirational captain he was, teaching many a junior those sneaky little tricks of the trade.

He also enthusiastically embraced the social side of hockey, which was once an integral part of the game under the old home-and-away system, when teams travelled to Robertson, Moss Vale or wherever to play, then enjoyed a cool libation with the opposition after.  

Neville has the most wicked sense of humour and that rare ability to keep a straight face in any situation. I could tell you many stories, but I won't apart from saying the young Nifty was the life of any party, once getting an entire hockey team into an upstairs dance at a club in some town we were visiting, with just two coats. 

I should explain. To get into this dance they had strict dress codes and you had to wear a coat. We had none between the entire team, but somehow Neville managed to borrow two coats. One for him and one for the rest of us. 

One by one he got us all up the stairs and into the dance with those two coats, smiling politely at the doorman as he went past 15 times with 15 different blokes. Only Neville Dillon and his poker face could have pulled off a stunt like that.

I can picture Neville wandering into the Bottom Pub after hockey on his 80th birthday.

“I’ll have three beers and a rum chaser thanks mate.”

Then as the barman goes off to pull the three beers and the rum, I can almost hear Neville muttering to the old bloke sitting on the next bar stool.

“I shouldn’t really be having these with what I’ve got.”

“What have you got?” you could imagine the old bloke asking sympathetically.

Neville would remain totally straight-faced and say, “Only 20 cents, mate.”

Congratulations on a stellar hockey career Neville Dillon. Your contribution, not just to the Mittagong Club, but hockey in the Highlands, has been staggering.