There’s a beautiful tree-lined oval at Pickering Brook. We visited on a horrible windy wet Sunday to see the Hawks take on Gidgegannup in the final home and away game of the season. The wonderful new scoreboard stood out in the gloom but alas there was no scoreboard attendant.

Then at quarter time a white-coated goal umpire marched over the board and put up the score – it was just what we wanted. “I’ll see if can find someone to do the job at half time,” he said, “It can be hard to get volunteers, especially on days like this.”

We headed off, there were more boards to find, and noticed the old scoreboard behind the new – layers of scoreboard history.

Pickering Brook has been in and out of the Hills Football Association since 1973 but has enjoyed a period of stability since 2010 – in 2019 the Hawks made the preliminary final.