City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYNicholls in Australian Rules, Bill Lawry in cricket and Pam Kilborn in athletics. For themajority of Darebin people who did not achieve fame, sport has been an important form ofsocial cement, engendering local loyalties and community involvement as people worked forfacilities and enjoyed recreation together. In earlier years the churches had their own cricket,football and tennis clubs, and some of the factories also fielded teams. Northcote had theprivately owned Croxton Park sportsground in the nineteenth century and early part of thetwentieth century, where a great deal of community’s sport took place, and the FitzroyRacecourse which attracted racing fans from outside Darebin. In Preston the hub of sport hasalways been the Preston City Oval in Cramer Street, with Edwardes Lake Park a popular venuefor water sports. Many other parks and open spaces have also been used as sportsgrounds.Cycling was a popular sport in the early twentieth century, when road races were run from theJunction to Epping and as traffic increased, from Reservoir to Woolert (Forster 1968: 68).Cycling was also a popular professional sport on the 1930s, when work was hard to find.Darebin also has a distinctive history of women’s sport. The post-war immigrants brought theirinterest in soccer, and one of Victoria’s leading clubs was established in Preston by theMacedonian community.Darebin’s interest in sports, and the availability of space for sportsgrounds, is highlighted bythe recent establishment of the Darebin International Sports Centre (DISC) at John CainMemorial Park as the home of the State Lawn Bowls Centre, State Cycling Centre and StateFootball Centre (darebininternationalsportscentre.com.au).CricketSettlers in Darebin’s small communities began to play organised sport in the 1870s, withcricket, always popular in Victoria, being one of the first and most popular games. It is believedthat Preston had a cricket club as early as 1869. By 1876 Preston Park Club was playing on thenewly acquired oval in Cramer Street, now known as Preston City Oval. A few years later thePreston Cricket Club was using the oval - it was probably the same club with a change ofname. The Gowerville Cricket Club was formed in 1881 in South Preston. Both clubs sharedPreston Park, with an intense rivalry, but after Preston Cricket Club disbanded in 1886 theGowerville club assumed the name Preston Cricket Club.By the late 1870s there were two clubs in the Northcote area, the Northcote Cricket Club,which played at Plant’s Paddock, and the Northcote Park Cricket Club, which played atNorthcote Park in Westgarth Street. In 1878 Northcote changed its name to Northcote Star.During the 1880s the two clubs competed for local supremacy, which was eventually gained byNorthcote Star.In the 1889-90 season, Northcote Star moved its base to Croxton Park, which had betterfacilities than Plant’s Paddock. In 1890, the club won the first cricket trophy for Darebin, theAlliance Trophy, by defeating Fitzroy Imperial. The game was played at Sumner’s Paddock,next to the Inebriate Retreat. In 1894 Northcote Cricket Club, having dropped ‘Star’ from itsname in 1892, won the Melbourne Sports Depot trophy. It seems that the Northcote CricketClub moved to Northcote Park after the improvements were made in 1903. In 1906 theVictorian Cricket Association formed a new two-division district competition and NorthcoteCricket Club gained entry to the second division. After winning the inaugural second divisionpremiership, Northcote was promoted to the first division, where it has remained ever since.Northcote has provided some first-class Victorian and Australian cricketers, including BillLawry who led Northcote to victory in the Melbourne District final in 1965-6 and went on tocaptain the Australia team from 1967 to 1971.Preston Cricket Club became a member of the second tier ‘Sub-district’ competition inMelbourne in 1922. They continue to play their matches at Preston City Oval as they havedone for over 100 years. The club claims a history that dates back to the 1860s, although thereare some breaks in the historical timeline (dhe.darebin-libraries.vic.gov.au/encyclopedia;www.mcc.org.au).121