The Runaway Bay Cricket Club was founded in 1978 by Dean Carter, Neville Blake and Ross Kachel.

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While Dean and Neville played their part in setting things, it was ultimately Ross who turned the Runaway Bay Cricket Club into the beloved family club it is today.

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Ross was the most influential person in the history of the Runaway Bay Cricket Club

 

Ross was a force of nature. Who didn’t just open new doors for our club, he blew them off the hinges.

He was a deep-tanned, debonair showman with massive 80’s hair and extraordinary sales skills.

Walking out to bat he resembled Michael Landon walking down the road in Highway To Heaven. He played the game aggressively and was one of the most competitive human beings imaginable. He would run himself ragged in the furious Bay afternoon breeze.

Walking off at 5pm, his hair hadn’t moved a milimetre.

Ross guided young players not to call the club “the club”, but to value it as ‘my club’.

He’d ask them where did they want to be in the future. And ask them what kind of person they want to become.

Then tell them to imagine what Runaway Bay would be like if each individual could make it a little bit better each day.

Ross was no monument. He was fallible, frank and deeply unsentimental.  Back in the day juniors would be told at the last moment in their games that they’d be making their senior debuts the next day.

These were the days of two-day cricket and 90 overs per side.

Those same juniors would turn up with their parents expecting to bat in the lower order. They’d soon be horrified.

Ross would walk to the old shipping container in the morning, pull out an ill-fitting helmet, tell them they were opening the batting and would growl - “See you at Stumps.”
 

At night he’d be behind the bar, with a twenty-deep crowd singing Hippy, Hippy Shake and flipping bottles like Tom Cruise.

Everywhere Ross went, his favourite Stuart Surridge Jumbo bat would go. He’d light up grounds all over the Gold Coast with audacious six-hitting. The bat was estimated to weigh six pounds.

One day a fired-up veteran fast bowler asked if he could borrow the Jumbo, open the batting and pinch hit. He was knocked out cold by the third ball he faced. Unable to get the Jumbo up in time.

Rosco was the person who put the Runaway Bay Cricket Club on the map. He was a true visionary. And the architect of our success. He was always trying to tie up the future of the club.

Back in the day, the club played out of the baseball fields in Paradise Point. In 1989, Ross and a few senior players kept discussing a standalone community field in what was then just known as Moralla Drive.

Something about the field just fired their imagination.

Over weeks and months, they hatched a secret plan. They organised a meeting with Alan Rickard the local council representative, and over a two-hour meeting, pitched him the idea of a cricket complex.

Two weeks later they were summoned to the Gold Coast council offices. And were notified that they had the Gold Coast’s support to upgrade Moralla Drive.

We finally had a home to call our own.

Back in those days, every club brought players. Runaway Bay was the runt of the litter. We were seen as a feeding ground for the clubs with more financial muscle.

Ross hated being the underdog and would play second fiddle to no one. He decided to play that game harder than all of them.

Armed with his legendary persuasion and people skills, he went on a recruiting drive in Brisbane.

He targeted some of the best young talent in grade cricket. He brought the State’s fastest bowler to the club. Who scared local players witless with a two-piece ball in the nets in fading light.

In 1992/93, Runaway Bay won its first and only First Grade Premiership.

They demolished everyone.

Steve Storey the captain made a Sheffield Shield century against a Test-strength New South Wales at the SCG that same season.

One fast bowler - Brendon Creevey went on to play for the Queensland Bulls.

Ross didn’t stop there. Ever the innovator, he invited the famous English fast bowler Frank ‘Typhoon’ Tyson to training. Frank was in his 60s and would just dish out abuse at lazy players.

Training in general in the early Nineties was described as a war zone. You were expected to compete and not give an inch to anyone. The heat and pressure made players sharper than a Japanese knife.

In 1995, the Southport Club folded. The club’s junior team was expected to take Queen's offer of playing there.

Ross was having none of it. With an eye to the future, he convinced them to turn their back on the Queen's offer and become Runaway Bay’s first-ever junior side.

They turned up next summer at Moralla Ave. It was barren, with a couple of shipping containers. But it felt like the start of something.

One of Ross’s final acts was the creation of the second field at Runaway Bay and the hill that adjoins it. Juniors and lower-grade players were forced at that stage to play their games on the Runaway Bay soccer fields. It was as depressing as you can imagine.

Now everyone had a home.

Ross Kachel taught generations of cricketers about the power of sports, of community, of character, of family, of mateship, of enjoying life.

He earned admiration and emulation across Gold Coast cricket.

 

Ross Kachel passed away in 2023, after a long battle with cancer.

If you asked him about his legacy, he’d probably laugh and shrug it off.

If you ask those who knew him, his legacy and magic is in the seagull players we have now, and the little seagull players we haven’t met yet.