Bert Woolley dies
Bert Woolley, a Test referee 40 years ago, died in Durban in the early hours of the morning of 7 December 2010 at the age of 92.
He turned 92 on 21 November and was clear of mind till just before the end. His son Brice said that his father was reluctant to die. “He wanted to stay on till next season.”
Woolley was a keen sportsman, playing first league rugby for Springs as a flyhalf or centre and provincial cricket, and he stayed involved in sport to the end.
He refereed one Test – the fourth between South Africa and New Zealand in 1970 when he was already over 50, but a remarkably fit and energetic man. He is probably best remembered for sending off John O’Shea at Pam Brink Stadium when the B&I Lions played Eastern Transvaal at the Battle of Springs in 1968.
Recalling the incident in 2009 O’Shea wrote about what happened afterwards: “JBG Thomas, the leading sports writer of the Western Mail took me aside at the team reception and introduced me to Bert Woolley whom he had met him when Woolley had brought a South African schoolboy cricket team to Wales.
“I offered my apologies and said I understood his decision to send me off.
“We kept in touch and even exchanged Christmas cards for a while, in fact 11 years later Woolley in an interview with a South African newspaper stated that under the current laws involving touch judges, ‘he would not have sent O’Shea off’ on that fateful day in Springs – just a bit late!”
He was for many years on the executive of the Eastern Transvaal Referees’ Society and was Piet Robbertse’s vice-chairman.
He was chief licensing officer in Krugersdorp before he moved down to Ramsgate on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coats in 1981. He stayed involved in rugby, coaching Port Shepstone and was for a while the president of the Southern Natal Subunion. At the time of his death he was an honorary vice-president of the KwaZulu-Natal Rugby Union and a regular at matches in the President’s Bay.
Bruce says that the last match he watched angered him – South Africa against Scotland, the day before his birthday.
Thomas Herbert Woolley is survived by his wife Natalie, his children Barbara, Bruce and the twins Alan and Graham, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren – all in Durban.
