Alex Koolhof, the man with a million nicknames, but don’t call him “The Russian”: he’s Dutch, so he claims. Don’t call him “Big Gay Al” either: he’s not gay, so he claims. Koolie? Pigeon? Best stick with The Body*, which he still doesn’t realize is ironic. The Body has a famously weak bladder. “Alexander needs to piddle!” he used to cry on bus trips back from games, usually just as we were getting on the Tomei expressway 15 minutes after leaving the ground. A founding member, he came to the Wombats via the Tokyo Goannas Australian Rules Football Club, but never actually played for the Goannas. Go figure; the man is an enigma after all.

The Russian has the most wickets in club history and has played a shit-ton of games (95 to be precise) over a 13 season Wombat career. He was also famously one half of the attack that skittled the Chiba Sharks for 39 when they were chasing 300+ in a semi-final many years ago. (They’re still bitter about it almost 20 years later.) As a batsman, he was never much chop, but like most bowlers, thought he could hold a stick; unfortunately he has never realized he was holding the wrong end all this time! He held the record for maybe 7 or 8 years for the highest tenth wicket partnership of 2* with Luke Ray. He was always proud of that, not knowing it isn’t a record you actually want to boast about. He is also a Golden Wombat winner, but to this day no one can figure out how he won it!

Big Gay Al would wear bizarre footwear during games that had webbed feet, unprotected and natural style, called “Five Finger Shoes”, whatever the hell that means. We think he picked them up from some Taswegian cult. He conspired with Jarrad to ditch the “Worst Dressed Wombat” award when they realized without Hawaiian shirts it would be barefoot shoes vs airbrushed puppies every time.

Koolie was and still is a great club man: reliable, always willingly took on extra duties, including as the club’s second president, and long-term web mistress. He keeps the stats and club website up-to-date, which is a big effort from Tasmania, but this gives him a great connection with the past and present players.

A safe fine leg fieldsman, quite a desperate and committed fielder off his own bowling, Koolhof has held some amazing diving catches and as shown in the recent Chiang Mai 6s! Speaking of Chiang Mai, it took him twenty years to get his big gay arse to Chiang Mai, but he fired up when he did. And fired up a few others to join him. Not surprisingly, he’s the current holder of “Spank the Monkey.” Many of us are surprised he didn’t have it all week.

*There was a time when he was also called “The Holocaust Survivor” because he took his caveman diet too far and it was more of a starvation diet. He rebounded nicely from it though and he’s back to being “The Body”.