Although the childhood heroes of popular comedian Anthony Lehmann, stage name Lehmo, wore the famous brown and gold colours of his beloved Hawthorn, his heroes weren’t Hawks but rather the players of the Brown’s Well Football Club in the South Australian Mallee.
Lehmo spent his winter Saturday’s following the fortunes of the Bombers in the Riverland independent football competition and his heroes were the likes of former North Adelaide player Rick Schubert, the first man ever to run on to the field at Football Park, SA’s home of football.
He recalls those times as glorious, when 10 cents worth of lollies were worth much more than the two Minties you might get today.
“I loved those days, watching Brown’s Well with my dad, who would have a transistor to his ear getting the footy scores from Adelaide and Melbourne,” he recalled.
Having left an accounting career to try his luck at comedy, Lehmo’s road to fame started in Adelaide media and has progressed to the stage where he is now heard on Melbourne breakfast radio and is a regular on Channel 10’s football program ‘Before The Game’.
However, it is his Mallee roots that Lehmo still harks back to, as evidenced by his show ‘White Line Fever’, which will commence its season at the Melbourne Comedy Festival later this month, following a stint at the Adelaide Fringe.
Lehmo’s is a sporting background which saw him serving beers to his cricket team-mates at 14 and partaking in football, cricket, golf and tennis in the small Mallee town.
“Writing the show has been lots of fun, thinking back across all of those years,” Lehmo said.
“As soon as I started thinking about it, all of the memories came flooding back.
“I became very nostalgic.”
An unashamed sports fan, ‘White Line Fever’ takes Lehmo back to the Mallee and his days of first watching, and then playing, football and cricket with Brown’s Well.
It is the traditional childhood of many an Australian youngster.
The Lehmann family name is synonymous with the Brown’s Well district, which is based around the pinprick town of
Paruna.
Lehmo grew up on a farm at Peebinga, an even smaller dryland community just east of Paruna.
It is such a small community, that Lehmo once told a joke about how the local council tried to create a tourist attraction there and called it ‘The Big F**K All’, which pretty much tells you how big the town is.
However, come Saturday in winter, the local farming community would down tools and find enough players to play football and netball.
Until 1969, Peebinga played in the Brown’s Well Football League, before the clubs in that competition merged to form the Brown’s Well Football Club.
In its first year, the combined Brown’s Well side took out the premiership, winning four more premierships between then and 1982.
“My best memories of Brown’s Well was playing in the colts (under 17s) grand final in 1983, which we won when I was 14,” Lehmann said.
“I tell a joke in my show that it’s not that great a performance, because it’s kids ranging from ages five to 16 playing in that grade.”
The Bombers also played in the senior grand final that day, going down.
On that same day, Brown’s Well lost the senior grand final, to Moorook-Kingston by 31 points.
It could be from his colts experiences that Lehmann first saw the comedy of sport, as five year old kids fumbling the ball were quickly rounded up by their teen opponents.
This sort of team make-up still occurs in the Independent colts competition today, providing plenty of laughs but also opportunity for an occasional unexpected heroic cameo from a five year old filling the numbers in a forward pocket.
Today, the Bombers struggle bravely, week in, week out, having won less than 10 games in the past eight years.
Their last premiership was against Mallee rivals Wunkar, a game in which Lehmo’s brother Tim, then a veteran player, was a part.
A rise to media identity has taken Lehmo away from the game, but he still keeps tabs on the Bombers, the club with which he managed to play one game (against Cobdogla) with his older brothers Kelvin, Bernie and the aforementioned Tim.
However, the club has never asked him to make a guest appearance, one which would surely attract some media attention, even if only from the crowd at Before The Game.
“I can guarantee you they would really have to be struggling for numbers if they called me,” he laughed.
“I would be like (legendary North Adelaide full forward) Grenville Dietrich), I’m not quite as nimble as I was in those days.”
And, of course, like in most country towns, once the footy boots were hung up for the season, the cricket bats would come out and these times also get a fond mention in White Line Fever.
“My first sporting memories include playing for Brown’s Well in cricket,” he said.
“It was such a struggling team that as soon as you became a teenager, you had to play.
“It was like a typical suburban competition with a dodgy kit that had only a couple of bats and some barely usable pads and two boxes; you had to get the box off the outgoing batsman – hardly hygienic.
“After three o’clock everyone had a beer in their hand, and after five they were catching one handed.”
Older brother Kelvin spent a bit of time shielding a young Lehmo from the better bowlers but he did manage to a top score of 70 or 80 at Wanbi, on a cracked pitch behind the local pub.
Although his memories of country sport are fond, Lehmo is under no illusion about his ability to play today.
The days of wondering if he would still be good enough are long gone.
“I always considered myself a chance as long as I was younger than the oldest player (on the footy field), I stopped doing that in 2002,” he said.
Just for the record, the Hawks fan believes his team can win the AFL flag again this year, winning the title from reigning premiers Collingwood, who he believes will go into the decider as favourites and choke.
We’ll have to wait and see whether his prediction of a Collingwood choke comes true but one thing is certain, the seasoned veteran himself won’t fail on the stage.
‘White Line Fever’ plays at the Portland Hotel, Melbourne from March 31.
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