Bill O'Reilly (cricketer) - Sydney Teachers College

Sydney Teachers College

O'Reilly won a scholarship to the Sydney Teachers College at Sydney University, to train as a schoolmaster. However, the financial assistance was only for two years and merely sufficient for O’Reilly’s rent at Glebe Point. When he was in Sydney, O'Reilly received an invitation to join an athletics club based on his performances in Goulburn, but was only able to join after the secretary Dick Corish waived his membership fee. Jumping 47 feet, he came second in a triple jump competition behind Nick Winter, who went on to win gold in the event at the 1924 Summer Olympics with a world record of 50 ft. O'Reilly also placed second in a high jumping competition, clearing six feet. Corish was also a cricket administrator and invited O’Reilly to play in a David Jones Second XI. Not knowing anything of his new recruit’s abilities, Corish did not allow O’Reilly to bowl until he explicitly complained of only being allowed to field. O’Reilly promptly finished off the opposition’s innings by removing the middle and lower order. After an encounter with journalist Johnny Moyes, who wrote glowingly about O'Reilly's skills.

While training as a teacher, O’Reilly joined the Sydney University Regiment, a unit of the Militia Forces (Army Reserve). He did not enjoy his time in the military, and along with most of his peers, regarded the commanding officer as inept. O'Reilly was a non-conformist who did not enjoy taking orders, and was unimpressed with the firearm drills, because the recruits were armed only with wooden sticks. However, he signed up for a second year to raise money for his education. Fed up with military routines he considered to be pointless, O'Reilly volunteered to be a kitchen hand.

During a vacation, O'Reilly caught the train from Sydney back to Wingello, which stopped at Bowral mid-journey. There, Wingello were playing the host town in a cricket match, and O'Reilly was persuaded to interrupt his journey to help his teammates. This match marked his first meeting with Bowral's 17-year-old Don Bradman, later to become his Test captain. O'Reilly himself later described thus:

How was I to know that I was about to cross swords with the greatest cricketer that ever set foot on a cricket field ? ... by the close of play, 17-year-old Don Bradman was 234 not out. The match resumed a week later, according to the local custom ... I bowled him first ball with a leg-break which came from the leg stump to hit the off bail. Suddenly cricket was the best game in the whole wide world.

The wicket ended a period of suffering for O’Reilly at the hands of Bradman, who had hit many fours and sixes from him. Bradman’s counter-attack came after he had been dropped twice from O’Reilly’s bowling before reaching 30 by Wingello’s captain Selby Jeffery. On the first occasion, the ball hit Jeffery in the chest while he was lighting his pipe; soon after the skipper failed to see the ball "in a dense cloud of bluish smoke" as he puffed on his tobacco. The match was the start of a long on-field relationship between the pair, who were to regard one another as the best in the world in their fields. O’Reilly recalled that Bradman "knew what the game was all about".

O’Reilly did not enjoy his time at the overcrowded Sydney Teachers College (STC), decrying the lack of practical training and the predominance of pedagogical theory. Regarding it as a waste of time, he happily accepted an offer of work experience from Major Cook-Russell, the head of physical education at STC, to help at Naremburn College instead of attending lectures. This angered Professor Alexander Mackie, the head of STC, whom both Cook-Russell and O’Reilly regarded as incompetent.

O'Reilly's initial posting after abandoning his training was to a government school in Erskineville, a inner-city suburb in Sydney. At the time, the suburb was slum-like and impoverished, with many unruly students. Many of the pupils were barely clothed and tested O’Reilly’s ability to discipline. He said that he learned more in three months there under Principal Jeremiah Walsh than he would have in ten years at STC. Major Cook-Russell then started a military cadet program in New South Wales schools; O’Reilly started such a program at Erskineville and his students won the statewide competition "in a canter". O’Reilly’s time at Erskineville also marked the start of work-sport conflicts that hampered his cricket career. He joined North Sydney Cricket Club in 1926–27 and was selected at short notice to play in an invitational match under retired Australian captain Monty Noble at the Sydney Cricket Ground. As the education department required a week’s notice for leave requests, O’Reilly declined, but was then ordered by the Chief Inspector of Schools to play after turning up at school on the morning of the match. Having taken six wickets, the match was then washed out, and O’Reilly then had his pay deducted, much to his chagrin.