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Laurence John "Laurie" Nash (2 May 1910 – 24 July 1986) was a Test cricketer and Australian rules footballer. An inductee into the Australian Football Hall of Fame, Nash was a member of South Melbourne's 1933 premiership team, captained South Melbourne in 1937 and was the team's leading goal kicker in 1937 and 1945. In cricket, Nash was a fast bowler and hard hitting lower order batsman who played two Test matches for Australia, taking 10 wickets at 12.80 runs per wicket, and scoring 30 runs at a batting average of 15. The son of a leading Australian rules footballer of the early twentieth century who had also played cricket against the touring Marylebone Cricket Club in 1921, Nash was a star sportsman as a boy. Following the family's relocation from Victoria to Tasmania, he began to make a name for himself as both a footballer and a cricketer, and became both one of the earliest professional club cricketers in Australia and one of the first fully professional Australian rules footballers. Nash made his Test cricket debut in 1932, against South Africa and his Victorian Football League (VFL) debut in 1933. While Nash had great success in football, he faced opposition from the cricket establishment for his supposedly poor attitude towards authority. This led fellow cricketer Keith Miller to write that his non-selection as a regular Test player was "the greatest waste of talent in Australian cricket history".〔Miller, Keith in Foreword, Wallish, p. iv.〕 During World War II Nash rejected offers of a home posting and instead served as a trooper in New Guinea, stating that he wished to be treated no differently from any other soldier. Following the end of the war, Nash returned to South Melbourne and won the team goal kicking award, although his age and injuries inhibited any return of his previous successes. Nash retired from VFL football at the end of the 1945 season to play and coach in the country before returning to coach South Melbourne in 1953. After retiring, Nash wrote columns for newspapers, was a panellist on football television shows and was a publican before his death in Melbourne, aged 76. ==Early life== Nash was born in Fitzroy, Victoria on 2 May 1910, the youngest of three children of Irish Catholics Robert and Mary Nash.〔Wallish, p. 10.〕 He had a brother, Robert Junior, and one sister, Mary, known as Maizie.〔Wallish, p. 11.〕 Nash belonged to a sporting family; his grandfather Michael Nash and great-uncle Thomas Nash were leading players for Carlton Football Club in the 1880s,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=M. Nash )〕 his father Robert captained Collingwood Football Club and coached Footscray Football Club,〔 and played cricket, opening the bowling for Hamilton in a match against the 1920–1921 touring English side,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Hamilton v Marylebone Cricket Club in 1920/21 )〕 while Robert Junior also became a leading footballer in Tasmania and country Victoria. Nash's mother was an orphan who was probably adopted several times, allowing historians no opportunity to determine any sporting links on her side of the family.〔Wallish, pp. 11–12.〕 Nash's biographer also claims that former Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir Walter Nash and pianist Eileen Joyce were related to the family.〔Wallish, p. 12.〕 Nash's father, who had initially worked as a gas stoker, joined the police force in 1913〔 and served in a number of postings, including Hamilton in western Victoria, taking his family with him.〔Wallish, p. 14.〕 In Hamilton, Nash attended Loreto Convent and began his interest in sport, practising kicking a football made of newspapers and tied together with string.〔Wallish, p. 20.〕 When Nash Senior was transferred back to Melbourne in 1922, the Nash brothers attended St Ignatius School in the Melbourne working-class suburb of Richmond, where Nash became best friends with fellow student Tommy Lahiff, who would also become a leading Australian rules footballer.〔 Although short and stocky, Nash and his brother Robert Junior developed into star junior sportsmen,〔Shaw, p. 124.〕 excelling at football and cricket, although Nash Senior preferred Laurie to become a cricketer, considering it a better and longer career option〔Dunstan, p. 156.〕 and forbade his sons from playing senior football until age 20.〔 Nash's performance in junior cricket led Victorian district cricket club Fitzroy to sign him for the 1927/28 season.〔 Nash made his first grade debut for Fitzroy as a seventeen-year-old and spent two and a half seasons at Fitzroy, earning plaudits for his performances and, until he broke his wrist in a fielding mishap,〔"Cricket", ''The Argus'', 11 February 1929, p. 11.〕 there were suggestions that he was close to Victorian selection.〔Wallish, pp. 23–24.〕 Nash Senior was a member of a group of 600 police who went on strike in 1923 for better wages but was dismissed from the force〔 and required to find another livelihood. Nash Senior went into the hotel business, firstly in Melbourne before eventually moving his family to Tasmania in 1929 to run the hotel at Parattah.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Laurie Nash」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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