Ken Piesse saw his first game of VFL football at old Glenferrie in 1963.

His Dad went to Scotch and barracked for Hawthorn and the ground became a second home for young Ken growing up.

In time he played a game of cricket there, for the Prahran second XI against Hawthorn East Melbourne and as the youngest in the team (16 turning 17)  his job was to fetch the  straight hit balls onto the railway tracks.

He still loves Hawthorn and many of his 80 books have been written on behalf of past Hawk giants from Dermie and Dunstall to the Rat, the Big Fish and Dipper.

Ken is a master storyteller and is Australian sports most published living author with a rare passion for cricket and football.
He will again be working  for P & O cruise lines as a guest speaker, when cruising resumes.

Ken has been the President of the Australian Cricket Society for 15 years

He is a member of the Melbourne Cricket Club Media Hall of Fame and the Australian Football Media Hall of Fame.

Cricket Victoria awarded him its Major Media Award for the third time in 2015 for Cricket’s Cinderella Story, Chris Rogers’ extraordinary comeback, published in the ACS’s ‘Pavilion’ magazine.

There is no more published living sports author in Australasia.

You will have the opportunity of buying a signed copy of his two new books Favorite Football Yarns and Favorite Cricket Yarns via Ken’s website: cricketbooks.com.au

Photo: Ken Piesse website

AGM and Fellowship

Catch up with Rotary friends and Club business. Following the Annual General Meeting to be held during this week's regular Club Meeting on Zoom, there will be time for fellowship and an opportunity to find out about upcoming Club activities and plans for future projects. 

What is "creative thinking" and creativity? It is more than just "having good ideas". Most experts define creativity as producing something new and useful - ie “appropriate novelty”. At its core, creativity is basically a mixture of novelty and utility. It is relatively easy to get ideas that are one or the other. We want to avoid Samuel Johnson's criticism of an author whose book he was asked to review. "Your book is both new and interesting. Unfortunately, the parts that are new are not interesting, and the parts that are interesting are not new".

Several studies have concluded creative thinking can be taught, and there are effective ways to do it. Successful techniques involve the use of toolkits and strategies that can be generalised.

This talk will look at a couple of useful tools for developing creative ideas, and ways in which ideas can be evaluated, with examples drawn from some of history’s most creative thinkers.

Speaker:  Phil Dolan
Topic:       Creative Thinking

Our guest speaker this week is Rotary Hawthorn member, Phil Dolan. Phil has held multiple positions in academia and business, including Dean of the Business School at the University of Western Australia, and Head of Investment Research at Macquarie Bank. Along with his current interest in investing in start-ups, Phil is an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University where he teaches Creative Thinking and Creative Problem Solving, in the Schools of Business and Humanities and Social Sciences.

What is "creative thinking" and creativity? It is more than just "having good ideas". Most experts define creativity as producing something new and useful - ie “appropriate novelty”. At its core, creativity is basically a mixture of novelty and utility. It is relatively easy to get ideas that are one or the other. We want to avoid Samuel Johnson's criticism of an author whose book he was asked to review. "Your book is both new and interesting. Unfortunately, the parts that are new are not interesting, and the parts that are interesting are not new".

Several studies have concluded creative thinking can be taught, and there are effective ways to do it. Successful techniques involve the use of toolkits and strategies that can be generalised.

This talk will look at a couple of useful tools for developing creative ideas, and ways in which ideas can be evaluated, with examples drawn from some of history’s most creative thinkers.

Anthony 'Harry' Moffitt recently retired from the Australian Defence Force after almost thirty years.

He has served in eleven active deployments, including being wounded in action in 2008. He's a Registered Psychologist and runs a human performance consultancy, Stotan Group, working with sports teams, the military and industry.

Harry's other lifetime love is cricket. An improvised game of cricket was often the circuit-breaker Harry and his team needed after the tension of operations. He began a tradition of organising matches wherever he was sent, whether it was in the mountains of East Timor with a fugitive rebel leader, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan. Soldiers, locals and even visiting politicians played in these spontaneous yet often bridge-building games.

As part of the tradition, Harry also started to take a cricket bat with him on operational tours, eleven of them in total. They'd often go outside the wire with him and end up signed by those he met or fought alongside.

These eleven bats form the basis for Harry's extraordinary memoir. It's a book about combat, and what it takes to serve in one of the world's most elite formations. It's a book about the toll that war takes on soldiers and their loved ones. And it's a book about the healing power of cricket, and how a game can break down borders in even the most desperate of circumstances.

 

Anthony 'Harry' Moffitt recently retired from the Australian Defence Force after almost thirty years.

He has served in eleven active deployments, including being wounded in action in 2008. He's a Registered Psychologist and runs a human performance consultancy, Stotan Group, working with sports teams, the military and industry.

Harry's other lifetime love is cricket. An improvised game of cricket was often the circuit-breaker Harry and his team needed after the tension of operations. He began a tradition of organising matches wherever he was sent, whether it was in the mountains of East Timor with a fugitive rebel leader, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan. Soldiers, locals and even visiting politicians played in these spontaneous yet often bridge-building games.

As part of the tradition, Harry also started to take a cricket bat with him on operational tours, eleven of them in total. They'd often go outside the wire with him and end up signed by those he met or fought alongside.

These eleven bats form the basis for Harry's extraordinary memoir. It's a book about combat, and what it takes to serve in one of the world's most elite formations. It's a book about the toll that war takes on soldiers and their loved ones. And it's a book about the healing power of cricket, and how a game can break down borders in even the most desperate of circumstances.

Stay tuned.

More to come

Lindy?

The speaker will update us on  our recently completed project: 

The installation of a Disasteraid Skyhydrant: providing safe clean water to a remote village in Myanmar near the border with Thailand. 

This project idea started with our road trip to Nhill, after John Millington, from Rotary Nhill, addressed our Club and told us about the Karen people and the story of the hardship they had faced and their successful settling into the Nhill community.

Photo:  facebook.com

Join us to hear from Dr Peter Brukner, the stories, the latest research and more!

Peter Brukner OAM, MBBS, FACSP, FACSM, FASMF, FFSEM is a specialist sports and exercise physician and the founding partner at the Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre in Melbourne. Peter is a world renowned sports medicine clinician and researcher. His most recent team appointments have been as Head of Sports Medicine and Sports Science at Liverpool Football Club and, until 2017, Team Doctor for the Australian cricket team.

He is currently Senior Associate Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine and has previously been Senior Associate Editor of the Clinical Journal of Sport  Medicine and Current Sports Medicine Reports as well as being a past editor of Sport Health.

Peter has been team physician for Melbourne and Collingwood AFL clubs as well as national athletics, swimming, soccer, men's hockey and cricket teams. He was an Australian Team Physician at the Atlanta Olympic Games, Team Manager of the Australian athletics team at the Sydney Olympics and a National Selector for Athletics Australia. He was the Socceroos’ Team Doctor for the 2010 World Cup campaign. In 2008 Peter was elected to the Board of Hockey Australia.

More recently Peter has become interested in lifestyle issues and their relationship to health. In particular he is interested in the role of diet, especially a low carb diet, in both health and athletic performance. Peter has established the not-for-profit campaign SugarByHalf with the aim of reducing the intake of added sugar in Australia. He lectures regularly on these topics and has recently published a best selling book A Fat Lot of Good.

Photo:  peterbrukner.com

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