THE UNPREDICTABLES By Greg Hopgood, 1 RAR, 7 Pl, C Coy, The Unpredictables
With 1 RAR back in 1994, on Thursdays we were at sporty’s after lunch. Everyone had to do a sport – no excuses. Well, I had a fucked shoulder and could not get in the Aussie Rules side and had my discharge in with a heap of other soldiers. It took six months to get out after putting in ya notice and many of us were keen to see the end of the Army.
So myself and a few others got together and came up with this bogus squash team. We got a few members and said we would play against other units, but none of us knew how to play apart from one, who was apparently a gun at it.
The thing was, we had no intention of playing. We all headed off to the local pub in Townsville and got pissed every Thursday. My mate used to give bogus scores and apparently we were very good and won all our games. After a couple of months, people, especially the ones with rank, were getting suspicious, as we were always drunk at the start of presentations and we stuck out like dogs’ balls. Sometimes the CO, Martin would read out our scores, but it all fell to shit when we would often be late coming back and everyone noticed we would be pissed. Then some officer wanted to join our team. Some careful talking, dodging and promising were conducted and to save some embarrassment for the battalion, it was kept quiet and we were forced to become spectators for the Union side and Aussie Rules.
I cannot remember the name of the pub but the barmaids sure missed us on Thursdays after we got caught.
