Luke Wintle a man for two sporting seasons
There haven’t been too many better suburban sportsmen than Luke Wintle, who captained St Bede’s Mentone Tigers to three consecutive premierships and played excellent Sub-District cricket.
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For most people, the letters A, B, C roll off the tongue.
For Luke “Juice’’ Wintle, it’s the reverse.
When he thinks of his time in sport, he thinks mostly of C, B, A, the three premierships won on the bounce by St Bede’s Mentone Tigers in the VAFA: C grade in 2006, B grade in 2007 and A grade in 2008.
What a rattling run it was. Luke Beveridge was coach. And Wintle, a mobile 191cm ruckman, was captain.
When Wintle, 41, quietly confirmed his retirement from Noble Park and Sub-District cricket this week, it brought to a close a tremendous career in community sport.
He was a fine cricketer, good enough to make more than 800 runs in Subbies at the age of 40 and be named captain of the team of the season.
But for quite a few years Wintle played no cricket, preferring to concentrate on his amateur football. He was an outstanding player in the VAFA, having more than 300 games for the Tigers, winning best and fairests, representing the association four times and captaining it in 2011, and gaining life membership of his club.
The three premierships were the obvious high point of his football. He’d been made captain in 2001 at the age of 21 and went through to 2008.
In two of the grand finals he received the medal as best-afield. He was a big man and he relished the big occasion.
And he thrived under Beveridge, who had joined the club in 2005 as a playing assistant under Russell Barnes and took over the following year, after the Tigers had been relegated from Premier B in a tight year.
“It was great fun … he (Beveridge) was learning his trade and working out whether he was interested in pursuing it in a more full-time capacity,’’ Wintle said of Beveridge.
“He loved it. He tried things, and we went along with it. He was a bit left of centre and that suited us, because we were as well. We were happy to engage in that sort of stuff. It didn’t all work but we were happy to have a go at it.’’
Could anyone have predicted what was ahead for “Bevo’’?
Wintle said Beveridge was “always intelligent enough and was always going to work hard enough at it … and he was great with relationships and people’’.
“He ticked all the boxes, but it’s a fairly tough industry to crack into, isn’t it? Whether he got the opportunity and whether he wanted to do it, they were the two unknowns. If he got a seat at the table somewhere, he was always going to do well.’’
When Beveridge coached the Western Bulldogs to the 2016 premiership, Wintle and his brothers Paul and Michael joined him on stage at the celebrations, singing the club song. A photo did the rounds on social media; VAFA people chortled.
Of the three premierships, Wintle said a lot of people assessed the C grade success as the best of them because it involved the best game. But he thought the A grade flag was tops.
“When you win in C, people say, ‘Well, it’s only C’. But when you do it in A grade, there’s no dispute about it,’’ he said.
He attributed the Tigers’ run of flags to the togetherness of the players. They were not only teammates, they were great mates, socialising together. Most had attended the school.
“We clicked on field and off field,’’ Wintle said.
“That was our point of difference. We spent so much time together. We’d train Tuesdays and Thursdays, have meals on Thursdays, play on Saturdays, have beers and hang around together on Saturday nights. We’d do voluntary rehab at Edi beach or Mordialloc or Parkdale on Sunday mornings and then go for brekky. Win, lose or draw, we were really tight, as thick as thieves.’’
He said the Tigers were without the big names of opposition teams, but had a lot of talented players who could have played at a higher level.
Wintle himself took calls from VFL clubs but was happy to stay at Brindisi St, where he progressed from a key position player to a ruckman who conceded inches to most opponents but covered the ground more like a midfielder.
His roaming role also allowed him to give leadership around the ground.
While he and Beveridge drove the Tigers to flags, Wintle’s cricket took a back seat.
“I would have liked to play cricket the whole way through, to be honest,’’ he said.
“I probably had about 10 years off. But doing both, footy and cricket, it took a lot of time. I chose the footy. Probably enjoyed that a bit more.’’
As a young player, Wintle had tried his luck at Premier level, with Melbourne.
He thinks he picked the wrong club. The Demons were strong in batting and “it didn’t matter how many runs I’d make in the twos, there were too many big names in the ones’’.
Wintle returned to Kingston Saints (he had joined the club when it was known as St Bedes St Johns) then had a few years away from the game. There was a comeback at Mentone – he was coaxed into playing and coaching – then another break.
Cricket saw him again when he retired from St Bede’s Mentone Tigers. He went back to Kingston Saints as coach, made good runs and crossed to Noble Park five years ago. In 2018-19 he totted up 811 runs as “an old bloke’’.
“I was disappointed we didn’t win flags at Noble but it was nice to be Subbies captain of the year,’’ he said.
“Most of those guys have been cricketers for their whole lives. I always jumped in and out.’’
And “Juice’’ usually had the jump on opponents too.