Pollins says the next episode in his “chequered history” with Laming came in 2016 when the MP attended the dying minutes of the AGM of the Wellington Point cricket club, of which Pollins was a member for 10 years.
Laming boasted that he would widen a local road and then suggested that the club’s young players may be ice users, which prompted outrage.
“We weren’t aware of any players on ice,” Pollins says. “It was such a generalised statement. Yes, ice is a very bad thing – but there are ways and means of saying something. This was very clumsy. We just all said ‘what an absolute dickhead’.”