The winner of the Scottish ClubSport Service to Sport award, sponsored by Forsyths is David Ormiston. The award was presented at this years ClubSport Tweeddale awards evening to recognise David`s long standing commitment and efforts towards community and club sport.
This years recipient of the Scottish ClubSport Service to Sport award, sponsored by Forsyths is David Ormiston.
Extract from the awards evening presentation:
This year the award goes to a gentleman who has given more than 50 years’ service to the sport of cricket, and more notably to Gala Cricket Club.
The Ormiston’s is a legendary name up at Mossilee and David was introduced to the club at 7 years old by his dad who was a Gala Cricket Club stalwart. Our winner wanted to play for Gala Cricket Club BADLY and I can safely say he achieved his goal as I witnessed him have a few howlers playing up at Mossilee when I was growing up!!
Gala Cricket Club is in the Ormiston blood, David was fortunate enough to play with his Dad, brothers Stevie and Ian and in the twilight of his career he also played alongside his son, Graeme. His Daughter, Caitlin is a keen cricketer and over the years his wife Cathy got heavily involved in the club.
David was a left arm orthodox spin bowler and he loved playing for Gala. I was surprised to find this out, but the first time David won a border league with Gala was in 1996 after more than 25 years playing. The standard of the Border teams around this time was frightening, despite the talent Gala had in their team.
David’s talent on the cricket field led him to play for the South U23’s, the South Seniors followed by international honours with the Scotland U25’s and the Scotland “B” team.
I asked David for one match that stood out in his playing career and unsurprisingly, the match was playing for Gala. In a victory over St Boswells in a border league match, David took 9 wickets for 24 runs with his best bowling figures in his career.
As David’s playing career was coming to an end, this didn’t spell the end of his love affair with Gala Cricket Club or indeed, the sport of cricket.
David was not only playing when needed, he was umpiring on the Saturday’s, preparing the wicket and ground (which I will go into) and he was also Coaching, which in his very own words “he absolutely loved”.
David started coaching the Gala Juniors and he got great satisfaction out of this – giving back what the game had given him all these years. He then moved onto the Borders U15s with the then Cricket Development Officer from Sports Development and winning the Area Championship. David then went onto coaching the Gala 1st team in a very successful time for the club, with the team winning far more titles than he ever did!
Unfortunately for David, with him umpiring, coaching and preparing the playing area something had to give and with David’s love of preparing wickets then he had to give up the coaching.
David has been volunteering his time on the ground at Mossilee since 1988, over 35 years. It was actually introduced during training practice and David took to it straight away.
David can be preparing 7 wickets at any time; this can be for the Juniors, 1sts, 2nds and the Sunday team. The preparation can take hours upon hours as you have to cut it to certain length and then roll the pitch to 5/6 millimetres depending on the conditions.
A typical match day for David will consist of arriving at the cricket club for 7am to prepare the wicket, cut the outfield and boundaries for the game starting at 12. If he has not taken the game in then he will be back up at 7pm to tidy up and put the covers on to protect all his hard work from earlier on. This can be the same routine on a Saturday and Sunday if there are games on all weekend.
To summarise, at Gala Cricket Club, David has been a supporter, player, captain, umpire, Chairman, Coach and still to this day prepares the playing surface. However, there is one thing that he is not allowed to do at the club. In the words of one of his long time colleagues at the club “Davie – you can prepare a superb wicket to play on, but you can’t pour a bloody pint, get away from behind that bar”.
Every year David says, one more year I will give it one more year. He is very embarrassed with this award, he doesn’t do this to receive any recognition – in his words “I do it for the love of the sport and love for my club”
Well Davie – you will need to give it another year after winning this award.
Ladies and Gentleman, your Scottish Clubsport Service to Local Sport Winner, David Ormiston.
