Tompkins Park is the home of the WACA club Melville, home team of Adam Voges. It’s located right on the river so long afternoons in field can be made bearable by the nice view and cooling breeze that is sometimes a howling gale.
I went recently to see a one-day game between Melville and Gosnells but got there too late to see Ryan Duffield smash 96 – the previous day he’d scored 94 against Rockingham-Mandurah at the same venue. You might remember Duffield as the bowler who put the ball on the stumps when Glenn Maxwell wanted it somewhere else in the Big Bash in 2014.
There are two scoreboards at Tompkins Park… the electronic one was in use the day I was there.
Tompkins is also the home of Palmyra Rugby Union Club and boasts one the best pavilions you could imagine.
It will be the centre of attention this Saturday 4 February with a Sock-it-to-Sarcoma event featuring games at all levels between Melville and Perth.
Scoreboard pressure 
My boss is a busy man. He’s got a school to run. This morning I trouble him with a problem with my work-email account. Not exactly what a principal needs to know the day before school opens for the year. He points to his screen and says, “I played my first game of football at Tompkins Park.” I look at his screen and see he’s looking at Scoreboard Pressure. Man’s gotta have a hobby, I think. “It was the Under 12s. I was 10 years old. I’ve got a team photo somewhere, all of us in front of the old pavilion.” I’m starting to think my email problem is not that important after all. “That ground used to be rubbish tip.When we were kids we’d spend all weekend at the tip and bring home all sorts of things. That’s what kids did back then. That, and playing footy.”