Bill O'Reilly (cricketer) - Conflict With Bradman

Conflict With Bradman

Despite the mutual admiration between Bradman and O'Reilly for their cricket skills, personal relations between the pair were strained. In Australian society at the time, sectarian tension existed between Catholics, mostly of Irish descent, of whom O'Reilly was one, and Protestants, like Bradman. Bradman was a non-drinker and a reserved character, often preferring to read quietly, rather than socialise or drink with his team-mates. Coupled with his on-field dominance, this led to perceptions that Bradman was cocky and distant from his team-mates. In the late 1930s, the Australian Board of Control summoned O'Reilly, Stan McCabe, Leo O'Brien and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, all Catholics of Irish descent to a meeting to discuss the apparent schism in the team. Jack Fingleton, a trained journalist, was not invited to the meeting, but after the deaths of both Fingleton and O'Reilly, Bradman penned a letter in which he accused the former of being the ringleader. O'Reilly's eventual departure also raised speculation that a purge had occurred. In 1995, after both Fingleton and O'Reilly had died, Bradman wrote: "With these fellows out of the way, the loyalty of my 1948 side was a big joy and made a big contribution to the outstanding success of that tour"; the Australians went through the 1948 English summer undefeated.

O'Reilly became a journalist, and together with Fingleton, he often criticised Bradman. They were in the press box when Bradman was bowled for a duck in his final Test innings, when they were reported to have become hysterical with laughter. Nevertheless, O'Reilly kept most of his strongest feelings about Bradman to himself and suppressed them from his autobiography; he would say of Bradman that "You don't piss on statues". Before his death, O'Reilly gave a series of interviews to the National Library of Australia, in which he accused Bradman of purging Grimmett from the team because Grimmett had joked that Bradman had ensured his own dismissal in a match against Victoria, to avoid facing the express pace of Ernie McCormick.

According to cricket historian Gideon Haigh, "O'Reilly was a man of embedded prejudices". In retirement, O'Reilly complained to a board member that "You have to play under a Protestant to know what it's like". The Test umpire Col Egar recalled that O'Reilly never talked to him in their decades in cricket until a third party informed the bowler that Egar was a Catholic.

Despite their conflicts, a few years before his death O'Reilly wrote that, compared with Bradman, batsmen like Greg Chappell and Allan Border were mere "child's play".