2020 BC

The Event

The Format: Teams of four playing single stroke Friday, two-ball ambrose strokeplay on Saturday and four-ball ambrose strokeplay on Sunday.

The Rules: Since slow play is a potential problem for our gangs, these rules are designed to encourage play in the right spirit and at the right pace. Teams play their chosen best ball on each shot and play preferred lies – you may place your ball half a club length (about 50cms) from where the chosen ball lies, no nearer the hole. Balls must be placed in the same cut as the chosen ball.

In the interests of fast play from tee to green, teams are NOT required to mark balls and precisely measure from the chosen ball as they play each shot. Pace of play is important so do not waste time unnecessarily. Team members can play in any order on a shot. Once on the putting green, Bushrangers should mark near the chosen best ball so each team member putts from near enough to the exact same position.

No Gimmes: Some nutter once gave someone a short putt in a Cup. This is not on under any circumstances. We are here for fun, but the golf is (slightly) serious. The Bushranger Cup is a strokeplay event (not match-play) and every ball must be holed out. You can concede putts in one-on-one matchplay, but strokeplay is the field vs the field so no gimmes.

Handicapping: Each person is assigned a handicap by the handicapper based on official handicaps and/or info supplied by the Bushrangers. The handicapper will be governed by a commitment to rewarding good play according to a player’s ability. Team handicaps for the ambrose groupings are calculated from the individual handicaps.

Playoffs: In the event of a tie, a sudden-death playoff will be conducted. Teams play together as a foursome (taking alternate strokes playing one ball). Once established on the first hole, the order is continuous and carries over from one hole to the next until the playoff is decided.

Nearest-the-Pin & Longest Drive: Will be contested on all days and, in the interests of team gloating and solidarity, any player who wins a LD or NTP wins prizes and glory for his entire team.

The Rodeo Rule: This is minimum drives for each team member and will be enforced. Each team’s individual rodeo requirements will appear on their scorecard.

A Brief History of The Bushranger Cup

The Bushranger Cup was founded in 2004 with intention of bringing a group of pals together for a weekend of golf and fun. Gents who had accumulated other commitments in their lives, were playing less golf and mates were not getting together so often. The intention of the Cup was to address this work/life/golf imbalance by establishing an event so chock full of fun and drama that it could fulfil a fellows golfing, emotional and spiritual needs for a full 12 months if necessary.

The four-man team format is intended to be a vehicle for mates to enjoy the camaraderie and fun of teaming together. Since most of the original participants did not have official handicaps, the perennial challenge of managing Bushrangers became the guiding principle for the development of the handicapping system and format of the event.

Although it has been the catalyst for the formation of Bushranger Golf and Social Golf Australia, the Bushranger Cup remains a private invitational event. The Cup has forged a reputation for remarkable moments, great drama and hilarious fun and is now, some people say, arguably the most sought after prize in the golfing universe.
 

Editor’s Note: Reader discretion is advised. These reviews are merciless.

The Kelly Gang - The last and most infamous of all the Bushrangers, Ned’s crusade to secede from the colony and start his own republic fell slightly short of the mark. An expert self-promoter, he always knew the importance of snappy dressing for a photo opportunity.

Matthew Pitt (Dubs)         Michael David (Mikey D)
Nick Honey (Ho)              Roger Brown (Arbeige)

Last year they drew a heap of acclaim as they got the band back together and then performed a perfect Bradbury to swoop in at the finish as all the other contenders fell over in the last few holes. The original and greatest Bushranger Cup team that this event was built to serve came back from the wilderness and was ready to rumble. Alas, as they return here as the defending champs, they are already looking a little wobbly before a ball has been struck. One of them has been playing more golf than ever and the wheels have come screaming off that bandwagon and the other three have not played enough to draw any kind of form line on their capacity to jag another win this week. As the winningest mob here, they cannot be discounted, but eventually every great champion succumbs to the ravages of time. No doubt this mob is the GOAT of the BR Cup, but are they just a ceremonial entry now? May well get off to a slow start on Friday and then go backwards from there. They have not attracted any attention from the more savvy punters. Could they be just making up the numbers for the first time?
 

The Stringybark Creek Freaks - At Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges in October 1878, the brooding confrontation between the Kelly Gang and the police exploded into all-out war. Three police officers lost their lives and the Kelly outbreak had begun.

Tim Holroyd (Hatman)           Brett Simpson (Simmo)
Greg Cousins (The Geesh)         Martin Bayliss (Buzz)

This mob have had an interrupted preparation and appear a little confused. They might think they know something we don’t as their lacklustre title defence last year did not suggest they are a likely threat this year. Perhaps they want us to think they know something that we don’t or that they know that we know that they know something that we don’t know. Then again, maybe we know something that they don’t and they are hoping that what we know isn’t the same as what they don’t know we know. Who knows? They have all won here and they have 7 Cups in total and certainly know how to contend here. What they lack in skill and form they more than make up for in pedigree, wits, character & humour, so may be a smokey if things fall their way.
 

Captain Melvilles - Captain Melville was a shabby small-time thief who was apprehended by police on Christmas Eve 1852 when, in a drunken stupor, he fell off his horse outside a Geelong brothel. He had aroused suspicion (and little else) among the local sex-workers by boasting to them about his illegal exploits. A real class act.

Ian Crotty (Crock Diddy)       Liam Anderson (Lima)
Sebastian Shand (Bastros)      Mick Van Raay (Da King)

Three past champs and a champion in waiting here, this mob look like the real deal. Notwithstanding the trauma of losing Dr. F-Tard just days from tee off, this mob seem to have landed on their feet by replacing the irreplaceable with the even more irreplaceable. Not only has the pseudo-Dr been replaced in the team, but he has given up his mantle of the ‘Best player to not have won a Cup’ to his replacement. The other three gringos in this unruly mob have all saluted here but none of them bring any form into this event. At all. Lima always looks the goods, but the same cannot be said for Da King an’ Crcoken-Bass who all look hideously underdone having taken their infrequent flirtation with golf to another level of infrequency. And flirtatiousness. Dusting cobwebs off the clubs on Friday morning is always a bad sign. Unlikely.
 

The Aaron Sherritt Gang - Aaron Sherritt was Joe Byrne’s great mate and a trusted lieutenant to the Kelly Gang. Folklore has marked him as a traitor, but he played a delicate game of espionage pretending to be a police informant. He came undone when the cops got wise and spread rumours he had betrayed the gang. In the end, he was murdered by Joe Byrne for his apparent, but unproven, treachery.

Dave Warwick (Deisal)      Phil Peacock (Dust)
Dave Pollock (Toto)         Tom Tomlin (Tommy)

So often in life, the approach of under-promising and over-delivering is a recipe for success. This makes it easier to exceed the expectations of others and can take the heat off those who don’t handle the blowtorch of white-hot pressure-package challenges such as the Bushranger Cup. With their warped logic and suspect intellects, this semi-articulate mob of devious reprobates may attempt to flip that philosophy around and work it to their advantage. Alas, the don’t appear to have the armoury to attempt to over-promise and over-deliver, which leaves them two unenviable options: to over-promise and under-deliver or to under-promise and under-deliver. The latter looks the most likely. They believe they can win, which counts for something. Alas, self-delusion ain’t self-belief. Don’t rule out subterranean-under-delivery.
 

The Canvas Town Mob - A rare city-based mob of Bushrangers who operated in South Melbourne in the 1850s. They would knock off ships at port and then frivolously drink and gamble away their booty.

Gav Doran (The Rose)      Ian Steer (Steery)
Peter Calverley (Cuddles)    Paul White (Whitey)

This mob, like many here, loves a wet track (he's a mudder. His mudder was a mudder, etc), which is handy as this Cup is tipped to be one of the dampest on record after a 21-month drought between Cups. Not that their imbibing capacity will help them on the golf course. This one-trick pony is not quite good enough for the glue factory, nor high-enough-quality for low-grade dog food. In fact, we are not even sure if it is an actual horse and it was last seen running clockwise in an anti-clockwise track. The largest number in the world is known as a googolplex. If someone offers you a "googolplex-to-one" odds, then bet on this mob and then kiss your money goodbye as they have less than a googolplex’s chance in hell of troubling the engraver here.
 

The Ben Hall Gang - Originally the Frank Gardiner Gang, it became the Gilbert Gang when Gardiner was captured in Queensland in 1861. Then it morphed into the Gilbert & Hall Gang and later, the Ben Hall Gang. Their revolving-door policy remains strong to this day.

Mark Henderson (Hendo)     Leon Doyle (Leondo)
Shane Lawlor (Shano)     Wayne Ball (Ballo)

Destiny? Well, that’s a short word, but it is also chock full of hugeness. I looked it up: the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or Bushranger Cup team in the future. Coincidentally we are considering the chances of one such team here. And then there is Manifest Destiny which is more of a sense of mission to redeem the world by high example. Wow! Who are these guys? It has been said that old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. Whether or not that is true, there is no doubt that what this mob lacks in treacherous exuberance, the make up for with antiquity. They appear to have the pedigree of a potential champion, but they lack the work ethic, technique, ticker, athleticism, nous, spirit, match-fitness and all-around spiritual and spatial awareness to compete at the highest level. Really more of a Show Pony than a legitimate racer, this mob are happy to be here, but just can't be bothered with the actual working and training and stuff. Here for a good time and will not disappoint there, but just making up the numbers on the leader-board.

The Captain Moonlite Gang - The devious Andrew George Scott, a man with three first names, became the infamous Captain Moonlite when he began robbing banks in the 1870s after throwing in a promising career as a preacher.

Richard Fellner (Quigley)        Darren Nelson (Dazza)
Atholl Johnstone (AJ)       Dean Mitchell (Deano)

If you have ever wondered what you get when you take half a team of rejects and papier-mache it together to another, almost identical, but slightly uglier, half a team of rejects, well, now you know. Both pairs of reprobates here have been forsaken by their mates and set loose here to drift aimlessly across their own endless oceans of mediocrity and seas of indifference. This marvellous mob of scurrilous highwaymen come in here as one of the most disparate assortments of disorganised rabble ever assembled at a Bushranger Cup. Ever. But what they lack in breeding, form, skill, character, temperament, ticker, wisdom, experience and ambition, they slightly make up for in good humour. This mob believes that, on paper, they are a major-winning-machine that appear to be a dead-set-certainty to take out this year's BRC. But as we all know, golf is not played on paper. It's played on grass. These are papier-mache soldiers with origami swords. Will be recycled.
 

The Harry Power Gang - Harry Power was the wily old lawbreaker who mentored the young Ned Kelly in the refined bush arts of horse stealing and bravely hiding from the law in the scrub.

Rob Lugton (Luggo)          Joel Matthews (Shatter)
Matt Thomas (T-bag)                Kirk Hayward (Joe)

This semi-articulate mob of devious reprobates comes in here as the most disparate assortment of flotsam ever assembled in a futile effort of pretension vainly attempting to approximate the type of hardness and lunacy required to forge the unbreakable bond of power necessary to put even the slightest dint into imitating being a contender for the Bushranger Cup. On golf form alone, they are among the favourites here this weekend, but this big-hitting, beer-swilling, knee-slapping, gut-wrenching, ball-bursting, rib-tickling, nut-busting, side-splitting mob with a devil-may-care attitude could lack the ticker required to carry all before them. They will fly home in the 4-Ball but they may have already imploded on Saturday. Or Friday. If there is any mob here that is a risk of self-harm, it is this lot. Hardly a recipe for success. Will look magnificent in the mounting yard and that’s about it.