Upon the Uni Blues Reserves winning the A-Section Premiership in 1999, the club presented the team captain Leigh “Tweeds” Tweddle with an umbrella as a memento. Tweeds notes wryly that it has barely rained in Victoria since.
Hailing from Boort, Tweeds donned the number 33 jumper with Uni Blues during a stint that lasted from around 1994 until 2001 and was interrupted by a season back at his home club and a trip overseas. He recalls that his first outing with Blues was a pre-season night fixture against Melton in Melton playing alongside the current Senior Coach John Kanis and President Grant “Treeo” Williams. Tweeds says the ground was so hard that he lost 5 layers of skin off the balls of both feet, the smell of marijuana wafted from the sidelines throughout the game and the Fire Brigade arrived at one point to douse the clubrooms which were ablaze.
The most naturally gifted player that Tweeds saw during his time at Blues was Nathan Cavalier. According to Tweeds, after Nathan kicked a freak goal in the 3rd quarter of an Under 19 game during his first season at the club, the coach remarked that it was "about time that he sobered up". Tweeds says that the player that made the most of his available talent was Toby McIntyre: “hardest attack on the football seen in the Ammos and most unorthodox kicking action seen in the Ammos”.
Tweeds has been known to make an effort to be present at a Blues social event. He drove his own car to Adelaide for one end-of-season football trip, camping overnight in a swag in a paddock somewhere between Nhill and Bordertown. Unfortunately however, Tweeds will not be present on Saturday when members of his 1999 Premiership team get together. He has recently departed these shores to resume life in County Limerick with his wife Edel, an Irish national.
Leigh and Edel were married on AFL Grand Final day last year, with former Blues players Nathan Cavalier and Al McLeod on hand on the altar as his groomsmen and to toast the happy couple with a pint of Guinness at the reception at the Bunratty Castle Hotel. Resuming life in Ireland will also see Tweeds continuing his burgeoning Gaelic football career with his local club from the township of Bruff: http://bruff.limerick.gaa.ie/
