Tinkering

by John Clarke

  Dave Sorenson: The Early Years

  Dave Sorenson was the product of the union of Brian Sorenson and Mary Shannon. For them, as for so many others, the postwar years represented a period of rebuilding.

  Brian had returned after five years of active service pitted against the might of the Nazi war machine in North Africa and the Levantine and another demanding period turning back the Japanese menace in the Asian theatre. He elected not to follow his father and his elder brother Geoffrey into the family’s well-credentialled footwear-wholesaling concern in Melbourne’s Ascot Vale, but instead to seek a future in the Australia he had heard other men talk about, the Australia he had read about in books, the real Australia.

  With his bride of only three weeks, he purchased from the late Jimmy Cobden a 140-acre vineyard, six and a half hours’ drive due west of Brisbane, in the heart of the inhospitable blanket of territory that runs from the Queensland border in the south through to the Gulf country at its northern extremity.

  Mary Shannon was a fine, tall woman with a cascading laugh and an inner faith. She had the charm of the Shannons, and from her mother had learned the fierce dedication of the Busbys. Intelligent, quick, both in anger and forgiveness, she had played hockey for the New South Wales B side and had beaten Frank Sedgeman’s father at tennis. It was Mary’s determination and cheerful disposition that qualified her uniquely for a shareholding in Brian Sorenson’s dream.

  Brian himself was a quiet man, a dreamer, perhaps even a mystic, a man who once left a tractor running while he travelled to Adelaide to attend the wedding of a younger sister.

  When David, the third child, was born, the farm was not going well. Conditions were as unfavourable as anyone could remember. Rain, the life’s blood of the vintners’ trade, was not forthcoming. For nearly eight years, the district had insufficient rain, and the little vines shrivelled and burned in the pitiless sun. A series of crippling loans were negotiated. Still no rain. Irrigation was planned, but the government containing the neighbour’s brother-in-law was swept from office. Brian retreated further and further into himself, at times becoming completely inaccessible to rational discourse, entering the house only to consult almanacs and tell the children stories about Crete.

  The damage done by the 1959 floods was devastating. From Ningham to Wollawolla, almost everything was lost. Even the soil was lifted from the Sorenson property. As the family vacated Brian’s vision in a makeshift raft with what personal effects they could carry, the young Dave swore that this sort of thing would never happen again. Not to him anyway.

  Within a month, they were resettled among the saltbush of the South Australian cattle town of Wyhoonoria, where Mary’s brother Vince was the farrier and assistant librarian and where the Sorenson children could recommence their schooling. On 24 April 1961 a barefooted eight-year-old lad was ushered into the single classroom. The teacher bent slightly and extended his hand. ‘Good morning, Dave,’ he said.

  History records that the man’s name was Dieter Togbor, arguably the greatest arkeler of the pre-war period and certainly the best mixture of height and length ever to come out of Europe. His stamina, his speed and his ability to feign movement in one direction while proceeding in another had made him almost impossible to out-manoeuvre. In the 1934 World Championships, he had an average of 16.8, despite playing with a pinched nerve in his elbow and a greenstick fracture in the clavicle as a result of the attentions of the Welsh in the first round.

  Mr Togbor moved to the blackboard, while appearing to move towards the door. The new boy walked to a vacant seat, while appearing to feed the fish. Togbor liked the young boy immediately, and so began one of the great sporting apprenticeships in history.

  Australian Farnarkeling Back in Business

  Finland. Wednesday.

  Last night the national side staged an amazing comeback to retrieve the fat from the fire at the last minute in the second half of injury time in the group 1 quarter finals of the European championships being played at the indoor farnarkeling centre in Helsinki late last night, Australian time.

  The Australians came from fifteen arkles two tackles and a bracket-and-a-half down, to get up off the paving and defeat the highly credentialled and very well-performed Scotland who are ranked second in the world and haven’t been beaten on a European grommet in nearly four years.

  The Australian side, undermanned since its much-vaunted backline drove a small catering van into a water hazard at a charity equestrian event on Saturday, has had it all to do since arriving here for the European campaign. Already troubled by lack of form in recent outings and in particular by lack of drive in the centre where both Graeme Graham and the evergreen Dave Sorenson have been sidelined, Graham with extenuated shoulder ligaments and Sorenson with a corked thigh, the team arrived in Budapest a fortnight ago to find that their equipment was sitting on the runway at Broome airport due to a filing error.

  When it arrived two days later it was found that the material in some of the flukems and the outside ends of the boot-wafting had been altered by exposure to temperatures in excess of the boiling point of some of the carpet nails used in the construction of the upper sections of the transom-housing. Replacement equipment was sent for but, as far as team officials were aware when I spoke to them a few minutes ago, it isn’t here yet.

  Australia went into last night’s affair with most of their gear borrowed from the Canadians and with the dorsal hinges and much of the scrotal padding borrowed from the South Koreans.

  In the event it was nip and tuck all evening, Australia mounting good attacks, principally up the right wing where Neville Dorf was as fluent as we’ve ever seen him, and in the centre where thrust was coming from Lo Bat, the Chinese boy from Port Adelaide.

  Australia’s finishing was not good, however, and too many opportunities went begging to arkle from quite handy positions. It wasn’t until Plinth was taken from the grommet with what looked very much like a nasty knot in the clavicle that Australia began to regroup up front and go about the business of actually building a total.

  Dave Sorenson is one of the great converters of the postwar era, although he hasn’t arkeled at the top level for quite a few seasons now and when he was dragged out of retirement for this tournament there were plenty of those who thought he’d never be able to keep up with the modern game and, when he came on last night just before the umlaut, I have to say he looked in all sorts of trouble. He was slow. He was sluggish. At one stage he tried to turn while moving laterally across the back of the cotyledan and if he hadn’t run into the side of one of the hospitality tents he may well have sustained permanent damage to the entire upper part of his person.

  This seemed to steady him, however, and within moments he began to arkle with all the authority of a master. He notched up three or four absolute beauties before the Scottish coach shifted Fergusson and put the Quinn brothers in around Sorenson like a blanket. In the next six minutes Sorenson arkeled fifteen times and took Australia from nine behind to full of running and in front by two.

  It was this passage of play that altered the nature of the fixture and, although Scotland jumped away again in the latter stages, Sorenson pulled one out from well behind the tripod and the Quinn brothers, who must have thought they had him, were completely outflanked. By the time they looked up the gonad had reached its cruising height and there were Australians all over the ground swinging towels round their heads and enhancing the air with well-meaning obscenities.

  Perhaps out of this Australia have sensed that this thing is possible over here. They withstood wave after wave of attack in extra time to hold the plucky Caledonians out and they looked a very determined outfit at the after-match function.

  The cost of this victory might well prove to be catastrophic. Tragically, Dave Sorenson may take no further part in proceedings following an unfortunate incident on full time when he arkeled successfully but lost control while attempting a reverse hasselblad and caught part of his lower mandible on a heating fan. Surgeons
are non-committal about his condition but are apparently quietly confident they can get him down out of the roofing by Friday.

  Australians Hit their Straps

  Korea. Thursday.

  The Australian farnarkeling team gave every indication on Friday night that it might be running into form at the business end of the season as it accounted for Italy in a majestic and confidence-building first-round display at the world championships being contested in somewhat balmy conditions under lights here in Seoul.

  The programme for Australia’s defence of the bevelled orb has been the subject of some scepticism in recent months as the troubled national squad has registered a string of lack-lustre performances against often boisterous but fundamentally inferior opposition sides drawn principally from the rest of the world.

  When they arrived in Seoul there were immediately problems. The hotel had double-booked four floors and there was no possibility of getting in anywhere else as the whole town was packed to the gunwhales and it was past three in the morning. Ian Geddes and Stewie Davidson slept in a telephone booth in the hotel car park. Neville Dorf spent his first night on foreign soil in a goods lift with his feet in the ashtray and his head in a potted plant. Dave Sorenson, whose pelvic brace wasn’t due to come off until the Thursday, slept standing up in the foyer and woke in some surprise to find that he was holding nearly two dozen umbrellas and a fair range of gentleman’s millinery.

  It was a somewhat bedraggled sight which met the eyes of team management as they arrived for breakfast fresh from a working session on threats from some of the Western Bloc countries to pull out of the championships unless the playing surface at the Hyperbowl was changed.

  There had actually been suggestions as late as mid-morning Thursday that the Astro-Arkle© surface, which is not universally favoured by the players, might be replaced by Flexi-Gromme©, the rather more spongy substance developed by the Swedes in order to cope with variations in temperature and atmospheric pressure.

  In the event, organisers decided that the surface was playable as it was and the festivities got under way at the appointed time as per the attractively designed brochure. The Italians began confidently and displayed their traditionally well-balanced combination of strength and speed with perhaps a slight tendency to waste opportunities out wide where Bartocelini was giving away a metre or two to the rapidly improving Graeme Graham and where Australia consistently found an overlap by running one player through the bracket and another down the back of the shifting tube. There were seldom fewer than three Australians to the left of the hasselblad and by the midpoint of the second warble Sorenson was arkeling with ominous authority.

  The Italians made a surprising tactical error shortly after the umlaut by concentrating their defensive effort on the unlikely Dorf. Dorf had intercepted a pass from Martinetti to Rossi and the Italians obviously assumed the interception to have been intentional. As far as coach Donnatesto was concerned, Dorf was the danger man. This left Graeme Graham to roam the circle and he fed Sorenson with good gonad until Boreo was shifted forward and the Italian reassessment of Dorf began to make its presence felt.

  Australia had the fixture parcelled up by that stage, however, and it was encouraging to see the defensive operation knitting together so well after all the problems of recent months.

  The next encounter will be with either Peru or the Ross Dependencies who saw Denmark off in an elegant affair late on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Sorenson pulled a bank of lockers down on top of himself while grabbing for his towel in the ablutions facility and it will be another few days before the power of speech is revouchsafed and he can comment on his condition. Australia can ill afford to be without him for long in this class of competition.

  Australian Farnarkeling at Crossroads

  Colombo. Monday.

  Australian farnarkeling was rocked to its foundations this week. On Tuesday, a seemingly aimless Australian side containing no fewer than seven of the world championship players was humiliated for three warbles by the Zambian Under-19s, and only a purple patch from the still-injured Sorenson prevented the team from bowing out of the competition altogether and heading homewards before the commencement of the second round. It was an unfortunate exhibition, and some very serious thinking is necessary at selector level if further catastrophe is to be averted.

  The Australians were especially poor in defence, which allowed the agile Zambians (particularly Kwee) to carve out huge tracts of territory at will, operating from the centre and exercising complete control of the flanks. And big Stewie Davidson must be wondering why he came here. He was left standing by little Ngawa, and the only thing he did properly all afternoon was consume half an orange.

  Other big name players to be completely eclipsed were Leslie Stavridos, Robin Wylie and Neville Dorf. On one memorable occasion, Dorf had only to stroke the gonad slightly forward of his own feet in order to set up a cascading Widdershins Pincer involving three players and salvaging a tincture of self-respect before the umlaut. In fact, if he had made any proper contact at all, the rest of the manoeuvre would have looked after itself. But for some reason not apparent from my point of vantage, Dorf chose this moment to deflect the gonad backwards into the path of Nriwi, whose alacrity had been a feature of proceedings, and who arkeled without slowing from a curving run that finished in front of the main stand with the delighted crowd rising in its place and calling his name. Dorf claimed later that he had failed to allow for the wind. When told that the wind was recorded at zero, Dorf said that he had possibly failed to allow sufficiently for a lack of wind.

  The young Zambians lack cohesion, but their arkeling has a wonderful spontaneous quality, and there can be little doubt that Tuesday’s final score flattered the victors. Nriwi, particularly, is a player of whom we shall hear more.

  This was not the first close shave for Australia in recent days. The Cubans came within a blither of a famous victory in Perth the previous Thursday. Had Sorenson not been moved into the centre in the final minutes, and had he not imposed his authority on the fixture by peeling off three arkles of surpassing subtlety (one of them while lying down as his thigh was being strapped by a handler) and had he not neutralised the hitherto devastating Tostaro, the result would undoubtedly have favoured the visitors.

  Of the leaden performance against Scotland on 27 October, enough has probably already been written. It is easy to find fault with the players, and certainly on the grommet, where it counts, mistakes have been made. Of course they have. No one would deny it. Wylie’s lateral traverse against the Cubans opened up the entire left-hand end of the splicing zone. Dorf’s almost complete loss of confidence in his teammates and the team’s nearly total loss of confidence in Dorf are possibly driving a wedge between Dorf and the rest of the side.

  Things are not good and the players will need to find something if their world ranking is to be retained. But it can’t all be put at the door of the players. The decision by the world farnarkeling body to ban Australia from further competition after the next world championships has had a very debilitating effect. Players who used to train for hours with smiles on their faces now sit and look out the window. The talk is of retirement and of the past. The Australian government’s attitude to Aboriginal policy is well known, and it is difficult to see any softening of their position.

  The South Africans have proposed a tour and have outlined a programme of encounters between the two nations beginning in January and running through until somewhere in the second half of April but, with the exception of Dorf, the players have declined the offer. Sorenson is said to have been offered $250,000 to take an unofficial invitation team called The Official Australian Farnarkeling Team and appear in selected cities for three weeks. Three weeks is known to be a bad time for Sorenson, and he is not expected to accept. The standard of play by the national representatives has fallen off by all means, but it is a difficult and very disappointing period for them.

  What they need at the moment is support and encouragement and w
hat they do not need is Cyril Dorf writing to the newspaper with his unusual interpretation of international politics. Cyril Dorf, it should be remembered, led the movement against the introduction of the fifty-three-metre penalty line because, he said, it punished initiative and favoured players with frizzy hair. He also appeared on ‘Have Your Say’ and argued the point with Evan Harrua and Grgtrt Ydklg. The spectacle of members of the federal executive sniping at each other on national television was a lasting embarrassment to the code and not one to be repeated. Cyril has a son in the Australian squad and a daughter in Telecom and should be well pleased. He must consider the consequences of his actions, however, and those members of the press who seek to fan the fires should study their history. The last time Cyril Dorf turned up at an after-match function an incident occurred which reflected badly on the character of the louvre windows and obliged Sorenson to miss the game against Honduras.

  Challenge Round Wide Open at this Stage

  Tuesday night.

  Ideal conditions prevailed in Perth late yesterday for the staging of the first two fixtures in the regional section of the challenge round build-up for the world championships currently expected to be decided in either Rangoon or Amsterdam in early August, Australian time.

  In a fast-moving and very enjoyable curtain-raiser, the gallant Nepalese went down to the more experienced Canadians, but not before giving the Great White Northerners a little something to be going on with. Lacking the height or the reach of their opposition, the Nepalese brains trust had worked out a series of well-prepared running moves, particularly through the centre and down the right-hand phlange, playing mainly to Nanyad, the deceptively fast utility back whose dominance of McSixpack will surely have the Mounties in the back room grouped in a circle.

  The second encounter was delayed for forty-five minutes when it was discovered that the clock was running forty-five minutes fast and that to start on time would therefore be to begin forty-five minutes early. The committee decided that rather than start on time and be forty-five minutes early, they would start forty-five minutes late and be on time. As a result, the radio broadcast of the main fixture was replaced by an announcement that because play had already finished, the live commentary would be transmitted as soon as it hadn’t started yet. There followed some light music and a list of river heights.