The history of an almost forgotten piece of the Club’s history, the original team song. As told by Ross Erickson, Life Member.
During the mid 1970s there was a short lived craze for music by Frankie Laine, an American country and western singer famous for his cowboy ballads. If you’ve ever watched the Blues Brothers you will remember a scene where the band mistakenly appears at a country redneck tavern and to escape an angry audience they break into a rendition of “Rawhide”. You guessed it, “Rawhide” is one of Frankie Laine’s best remembered numbers. Another number we became fond of was “Wanted Man”.
One of our talented members, Peter “As Clean As a Mountain Stream” Brooks (Uni Blue Recipient, All Australian University Side selection, Flower Merchant) decided that the music for “Wanted Man” could be adapted with a change of words as a Gunners’ theme song. Unfortunately the concept of a club song didn’t take off until the 90s and by then no one remembered Peter’s masterpiece. The current club song is so ingrained now that it will stay as long as we can remember the words and keep winning. None-the-less it is worth remembering the poetic genius of Brooksy.
It must be remembered that it was written at a time when the Men’s and Women’s clubs were separate, however with a bit of imagination it can be heard as gender neutral. You will also see that there were only two university rivals at the time, Melbourne and Monash. Today we could probably have another four or five verses involving other traditional rivals.
A Gunners Man
“Women at my shoulder, grog running down my chest,
twenty beers behind me and I aim to drink the rest.
Till I became a Gunner’s man I’d never even had a friend,
but now the women are all around and always, always, always satisfied.
We met poor old Melbourne, in a championship fight,
killed them with our stick work, gave them a bloody great fright.
Now Monash is out to get us, coming with their gang,
but we are out to meet them, we will crush them with a bang.
Women at my shoulder, grog running down my chest,
twenty beers behind me and I aim to drink the rest.
Till I became a Gunner’s man I’d never even had a friend,
but now the women are all around and always, always, always satisfied.
A… Gunners… Man…”
View more of the La Trobe University Hockey Club’s History.