Bill O'Reilly (cricketer) - Youth and Early Career

Youth and Early Career

Of Irish descent, O'Reilly's paternal grandfather Peter emigrated from Ulster in 1865. Arriving in Sydney, he had been a policeman for four years in Ireland and continued in this line of work in New South Wales. After a period, he was sent to Deniliquin in the Riverina, where he settled and married another Irish immigrant from County Clare. O'Reilly's father, Ernest, was a schoolteacher and moved around the areas surrounding the Murray River to study and teach. O'Reilly's mother Mina was of mixed Irish and Welsh descent, of a third generation family from Adelaide. O'Reilly was born in the opal mining town of White Cliffs, New South Wales. Ernest had been appointed to open the first school in the town, and had helped to build the school and its furniture himself. Bill was the fourth child in the family, with two elder brothers and a sister.

O'Reilly's cricket skills were largely self-taught; his family moved from town to town whenever his father was posted to a different school, he had little opportunity to attend coaching. He learned to play with his brothers, playing with a "gum-wood bat and a piece of banksia root chiselled down to make a ball." He learned to bowl because his older brothers dominated the batting rights. His bowling action was far from the classic leg spin bowler's run-up and delivery, indeed, according to Wisden, "he was asked to make up the numbers in a Sydney junior match and, with a method that at first made everyone giggle, whipped out the opposition". From a young age, O'Reilly was a tall and gangly player.

In January 1908, a month after Bill had turned two, the family moved to Murringo, after Ernest was appointed the headmaster. O'Reilly said in his autobiography Tiger that the move played no vital part in his cricket education. The area had much more vegetation than the desolate White Cliffs, and an Irish Australian majority. O’Reilly later described the period as the happiest of his life. There the children played tennis on a court on their property and took up cricket. During this time, O'Reilly's mother gave birth to another son and two more daughters. In 1917, at the age of twelve, the family moved to the town of Wingello. Ernest made the decision because there were no high schools near Murringo and his older children were about to finish primary school. Nevertheless, there was no high school in Wingello where Ernest had been appointed headmaster, so O'Reilly had to catch a train to Goulburn—50 km away—to study at the local public secondary school, where his elder brother Tom had been awarded a scholarship. Wingello was a cricket town and "everyone was a cricket crank" according to O'Reilly. It was here that he developed a passion for the game. O'Reilly played in the town's team and also won the regional tennis championships. O'Reilly bowled with an action reminiscent of the windmill that his family erected in the town. However, school life was difficult, especially in the winter, as the Southern Tablelands were harsh and cold. The O’Reilly children had to leave Wingello at 7.45 am by rail and caught a slow goods train that delivered them home at 7 pm; these vehicles did not provide protection against the weather, and the boys did not participate in any school sport as the only train home left after the end of classes.

In the early 1920s, O'Reilly's eldest brother Jack moved to Sydney. One afternoon, Jack watched spin bowler Arthur Mailey in the North Sydney practice nets and managed to describe the famous bowler's 'Bosie' action in a letter to Bill. O'Reilly claims to have perfected the action of changing the spin from anticlockwise to clockwise without any discernible hand movement within a couple of days. O'Reilly said that "The bosie became my most prized possession. I practised day in, day out". Ernest decided that the train journeys and frozen limbs were too much for his son, so he sent Bill to St Patrick's College, Goulburn as a boarder in 1921, where he quickly showed his athletic flair by becoming a member of the school's rugby league, tennis, athletics and cricket teams. He held a state record for the triple jump. At the same time, he also represented the town team. During his time at St Patrick’s, O’Reilly developed his ruthless and parsimonious attitude towards bowling. After three years at the Irish Catholic school, funded by a scholarship, O’Reilly completed his Leaving Certificate.