By Mark Emery - memories from Clive Emery

Reading the Bugle’s last issue, I noticed that yet again, Gerringong has won the group 7 rugby league premiership. The club has produced many magnificent players. Some like Paul Quinn, Rod Wishart and Michael Cronin have represented our country.

However, the footy boots have now been packed away and attention moves to a different set of sports. One of those, of course, is cricket.

A hundred years ago Gerringong was very strong in both cricket and rugby league. Gerringong Rugby League Club played in the very strong Illawarra competition and in 1925 won the premiership in front of 3000 people! Gerringong Cricket Club's A grade won the premiership in the 1925-26 season and again the following year. There was also the Gerringong and District Cricket Competition with teams such as Foxground, Crooked River and Toolijooa in full swing playing on grounds such as the one on Graham’s farm opposite the golf course. These, however, were not as lovely as the ones Gerringong CC are going to play on this season.

There are few firsthand accounts of playing cricket from so long ago. However, there is one from Clive Emery, who was heavily involved in the Gerringong and District Historical Society and had a long association with cricket in the Gerringong area. Many great times were had, and lifelong friendships were made. 

I personally can remember playing on cement pitches as a child around 1970. When you were the home team, the first job was to drag the coir mats out that pitch and cover them ready for the game. Our coach was Norm Carradus, surely one of the most dedicated junior coaches, in any sport, that Gerringong has ever had. 

But, of course, the grass was always mowed and there were no big holes in the ground if you were the fielder at long on.

Cricketers playing around 100 years ago did not have such luxuries. Clive’s account will give you an idea of the difficulty they had to face sometimes. 

Cricket days by Clive Emery

From the 1900s onward Gerringong had a cricket team; likewise, there was one in Berry and further south, so a competition was organised in which many teams played.

One member of our Gerringong team of that era explained how he remembered milking the herd of cows in the morning, then the whole team of eleven players rode their horses to Cambewarra, a distance of almost twenty miles to play the local cricketers, and as the locals had no provisions, rode on to Nowra at twelve for a meal, then rode back to finish the game. We then rode home to Gerringong and did their milking in the dark!’

The early cricket was played on a farmer’s grass paddock, in the days before concrete pitches were invented, consequently a score of twenty runs for a team took some beating! In Gerringong there were five local teams from which a team was picked to represent us in district games, which were hard fought. In the 20s we had district teams in a local district competition of our own. Omega, Toolijooa, Foxground, Crooked River and Gerringong (called the Seagulls). The Seagulls team was made up of talent from the township, and the other teams were almost entirely of dairy farmers. The pitches were strips of concrete, covered by coir mats, which were laid down before the game was to be played. The pitch at Jubilee Park in Gerringong was of glazed concrete for a time until finely woven green mats were placed thereon. The matches were keenly contested.

Other grounds were usually in paddocks belonging to a certain farmer, probably the most level paddock to be found in each locality. It was fortunate if a paddock was mown of the long grass, and the games were played over two consecutive Saturdays during the morning and afternoon, with the exception of the Gerringong team that played their games on the Recreation ground (called ‘the Rec’) in the afternoon. All the others played between milking times as it were, meaning ten in the morning and until three in the afternoon with a luncheon break between twelve and half past, provided by the wives and girlfriends of team.

If a farmer did not have a grass mower and mow his paddock prior to a game, it was possible for a fieldsman to trip in the luxuriant growth of the paspalum grass when attempting to field a ball. Likewise, the batsman had his own difficulty in forcing the ball to the boundary, indicated by a few white pegs, sometimes hidden in the grass. As an alternative to mowing the ground, a farmer was likely to put his herd of cows on the ground overnight to eat the grass down, and this brought problems of another nature, that of trying to clear the pitch and grounds of bovine excreta before the game!

The long grass was not a problem to the fellow who had the capacity to loft the ball instead of trying to drive it, but there was the danger here of being caught out. Sometimes of course, if the grass had been mown and not raked up, the ball could lie hidden under the mown grass, and perhaps four fieldsmen spent time searching while the batsmen kept on running. All these games were taken very seriously, and in later years the scores were shown on the screen when the pictures were on in the School of Arts on a Saturday night, to the delight of the younger players, whose job it was to take a girlfriend to the pictures or have the cheaper delight of sitting beside one.

Foxground team c. 100 years ago. Photographer unknown