Reginald Wilmot

Reginald William Ernest Wilmot (1869–1949^[1]) was a leading sports journalist in Melbourne, Australia in the early 20th century, well known for his writing on cricket and Australian rules football. Wilmot's writing on football and sport in general were authoritative and displayed wisdom and generosity.

Along with Hugh Buggy, Wilmot was believed to have coined the term "bodyline" during the 1932/33 Ashes Test cricket series. Wilmot also wrote several books on cricket including Defending The Ashes 1932-33 which gave a rare Australian perspective on this historic and controversial series.

Wilmot was a student at Melbourne Grammar School and from 1889 at Trinity College (University of Melbourne), where he studied law.^[2] He would later be heavily involved in organising amateur sport in Melbourne and often used his newspaper columns to promote the value of school sport, particularly as it was played in public schools. He supported amateurism in school sport strongly because, as he commented in an article on professional coaches in 1914, "the professional very often misses the spirit of sport in his desire to gain".^[3]

Wilmot strongly held loathing of professional sport carried over to his love of football. In 1915, then the vice-president of the Metropolitan Amateur Football Association, he used his position as the The Argus football scribe, "Old Boy", to launch an attack on the mercenary nature of professional football, arguing that professional football did not improve the calibre of man and did nothing to improve the sport and, as such, was of no value to the community.^[4]

In July 1935 the Victorian Football League presented Wilmot with a mahogany log box for 46 years service to football as a journalist. In 1939, a long article on his reminiscences was published in The Argus,^[5] and he died in Melbourne in May 1949 after an illness of several months.^[6]

Wilmot's son, Reginald William Winchester "Chester" Wilmot (1911–1954), was a famed World War II correspondent and historian.^[7]

Wilmot was inducted to the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, with his citation reading:

Writing for The Argus in 1935, he was given an award by the AFL for 46 years of journalism. His work was characterised by authority, wisdom and generosity.

In 1998 Wilmot was inducted to the Melbourne Cricket Ground's "Rogues Gallery", with his citation reading:

Wrote as "Old Boy" for The Argus and the Australasian from 1902 until the mid-1930s. Correspondent for The Times and Observer and The Times of Ceylon. Author of Defending The Ashes in 1932/33.

References

• Ross, John (1999). The Australian Football Hall of Fame. Australia: HarperCollinsPublishers. p. 142. ISBN 0-7322-6426-X. 
• Australian Football Hall of Fame
• Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Amateur Athletic Foundation