IF BILL Roycroft was there to witness the tributes flowing for him at a memorial service in Camperdown yesterday afternoon he would have told everyone to stop standing around and get back to work.
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"He'd look around and say 'what are all these bludging bastards doing?'," son Clarke Roycroft joked.
Suggestions of a state funeral were quickly scoffed at after the five-time Olympian died in his sleep early last Sunday morning.
The 96-year-old wouldn't have wanted such a fuss.
Instead his family organised a private cremation and a "gathering of friends", in much the same way as they did for Bill's wife Mavis when she died three years ago.
Held by the bar at the golf club and in the shadow of the Lakes and Craters equestrian course, it was a fitting tribute for the man who many years earlier had entered the sporting books as an Australian legend.
It was a gathering of old and familiar family, friends, neighbours and a who's who of the equestrian world, sharing stories about a man whose death was mourned across Australia and internationally.
Clarke said his father was a social commentator and was not hesitant about telling people exactly what he thought.
"He was as bright and as intelligent as you would come by ... he hated people who wouldn't work.
"He hated bludgers in the street. He hated a lot of things in a nice way," he joked.
Clarke recalled attending a function in England where the team was training for the Munich Olympics:
"The Poms have got a very bad habit of referring to people by their surnames, not by their Christian names," he said.
"A duke or a lord was there and he kept saying Roycroft this and Roycroft that and Roycroft whatever and Bill just said to him 'Mate, my name is Bill.
"Roycroft was Mister and that was my father and (if) you keep calling me Roycroft, I'm gonna flatten ya'."
Wayne Roycroft described his father as "an amazing man."
"What a wonderful time we've had with dad, and of course, mum. It was a team.
"It was a Roycroft team. We always felt safe when dad was around. He was such a soft, kind-hearted man.
"As a horseman (he was an) amazing, natural, wonderful horseman."
Wayne said his father was always very protective of the Olympic uniform, wearing it with much pride and firmly believing that "no mug gets to wear the uniform ? no one".
Bill was there when Wayne coached the Australia Olympic team to gold at Barcelona in 1992.
Bill was at the fence line before the competition and saw a man in an Australian team uniform who he did not recognise.
Knowing his father may have erupted in horror, Wayne did not want to reveal that the "guy in the glasses" was a psychologist.
"I said 'look dad, he's just somebody who helps us around. He's just a really good guy'."
It did not take Bill long to suss him out: "He came to me and he said 'you've got a shrink'," Wayne remembered.
"He said 'you tell these guys what to do and if they don't do it, kick 'em in the bums'. I said 'dad, he's not for the riders, he's for me'."
Oldest son Barry Roycroft named the 24 horses that came off the Roycroft's Boorcan property for Olympic competition.
Bill provided horses for at least 50 per cent of the team at five consecutive games.
"That was a true gauge of the person's ability to take horses off the track and turn them into champion horses," Barry said.
Mates Robbie Leishman, Ken Horspole and Geoff Morgan caught up with Bill at the Camperdown saleyards every Tuesday morning, taking up seats around a table that was dubbed the Old Bull Stable by canteen staff.
Bill sat at the head of the table and always had a hip flask of whisky at hand.
The friends would then retire up the road to "the office", better known to most as the Commercial Hotel sports bar.
Then every Wednesday night they would gather in a room at Bill's Park Avenue home, where he lived for the past three years, to enjoy a few glasses and talk "bullshit".
An emotional Barry Roycroft paid tribute to those friends and many others who helped care for his father and make his final years happy ones.
"That's going to be one burden off me now, because each time I went overseas, I used to come home ladened with as much whisky as I could carry.
"They seemed to drink it quite quickly," Barry laughed.
Mr Leishman said Bill Roycroft could hold his place in a conversation with the Queen or the Prime Minister of England, people he described as being at the "top end of the tree".
"He would come back to the saleyards and he'd be friends with myself, which is the bottom end of the tree.
"That was Bill. He was such a great man right throughout whatever he did."
malexander@standard.fairfax.com.au