by Les Everett

Kojonup is a little town on the Albany Highway that has produced two of Western Australia’s finest footballers – Stephen Michael and Peter Bell.
It turns out that Bell was a regular scoreboard attendant at Kojonup on Sundays after he had played juniors on Saturdays. “That used to be my second preference because to run the boundary used to pay better,” Bell admitted to Scoreboard Pressure.

“It was a pretty good vantage point – up high among the big white gums looking back at the oval. The other thing I used to do was if a goal was scored at that end and went over the fence I would go scurrying over to retrieve the ball for the umpires,” Bell said. “So not only was I doing the scoreboard but I was doing the ball retrieval as well.”

The scoreboard attendants at Kojonup had an extra helper in the form of radio commentator Peter Sheridan and his crew on local radio. “I don’t think I made any blues with the scoreboard,” Bell said. “Mainly because I had the commentary and they’d keep you up to speed. I’ll always remember the guy’s voice and the unmistakable commentary.”

Kojonup moved from the Great Southern Football League to the Lower South West Football League in 2008. It was a move that meant changing their colours and their nickname – from Magpies to Cougars.