The 70s, a story of Premierships and Club Spirit at St Peters Cricket Club
Kevin Pike | June 04, 2023
The atmosphere at the St Peters Club’s watering hole on Saturday after cricket was wonderful! Mind you this was in the days before RBT started changing our bad habits for the better. The Club’s longest period of patronage was at the New England Hotel and the atmosphere in the front bar was humming and packed to the rafters, with jovial conversation and lively stories being told, often exaggerated!
Players were keen to hear progress scores of all the teams and the most important being the match result of our leading team playing in A Grade.
In 1975/1976, my first season at St Peters, the A Grade players formed a formidable squad combining a group of seasoned players, with a selection of younger fellows being” blooded” for future experience.
All the Club’s records and score-books have gone missing ,apart from an incomplete minute book, so to my best recollection the A Grade team that represented the club throughout that season comprised, Stephen Mc Mahon, who was thrust into the captaincy, based on “Sydney- experience”, Bede Ryan, Ian Watts , who I have referred to previously, Stuart McDowell, David Mitchell, Keith Smith ( wicket-keeper), David Armitage ( Snr), Luke Foster, John Thompson, Mark McCann and youngsters, Stuart Hutton, Brian Bower and David’s sons, David (Jnr) and James Armitage.
It was a great team of fellows with lots of interesting hobbies! Mark McCann was an accomplished dance-band pianist, David Mitchell played the bagpipes and Ian Watts was an expert on the Pianola and loved to sing!
Both Keith and Luke had played against touring England teams, Bede and Ian were Northern Tablelands representatives, Bede as batsman and Ian selected early as an off-spinner and later as a wicket-keeper, and Stuart was, a season or two later, selected as a Northern NSW “Emu “club member.
In 1975, after nine years, it was good to catch up again with Mark McCann, the teams highly regarded “leggie”, in a different sporting club. Mark and his brothers, Paul and Phillip were all very gifted sportsmen and all excelled at cricket, rugby and rugby league. After leaving school, I played two seasons of rugby league with the Armidale YCW Club, Mark was the captain of the A Grade premiership winning team in 1966 -Group 5 Second Division, whilst I played in the B Team, which I read in a 2022 YCW Reunion magazine, were minor premiers that year, but unfortunately not champions like the A’s.
Mark was a great leg-spin bowler and to tell a funny story, he was bowling for New England representative team in the Inter-town competition, when a particularly short but very large fellow came into bat. Mark complained, in jest, to the umpire, when the batsman took up his stance,” Ump- I can’t see the wicket!” To which the Umpire replied “Tell you what Mark, if you hit him on the bum, I will call it a wide and if you hit him on the stomach, I’ll give him out LBW!”
Brian ‘Duster’ Bower, I was reliably informed, was the quickest bowler in Armidale in the previous season, whilst still at De La Salle College. He was light of frame but with a long run up and whippy action, and yes, he was quick! Stuart Mc Dowell was very consistent and scored a good number of runs this season.
Although the official club- minutes, from time to time, record general slackness in practice attendance, my recollection is rather dis-similar, as I re-call early morning practice sessions with Alan Donges, Duster and Steve Reading (Waratahs) around 1980. We practiced, before heading off to work, at the single bay of nets at the corner of Kirkwood and Dangar streets (near the pedestrian bridge). These practice sessions took place well before helmets were invented for country boys!
One morning, Alan seeing that I was backing away to the short bowling, bowled another, which hit me in the jaw to a grinding sound of leather on ivory! 40 years later, my smile now has two distinct gaps, both on the left and right sides, from that practice delivery!
John Thompson was a quietly spoken man, but an excellent and experienced opening bowler. Both he and Luke had a great impact on Duster’s development as a fast-bowler, by providing their young protégé with on-field bowling advice. This advice I know was much appreciated by Brian.
John, was for many years a most highly skilled and respected A Grade bowler in Armidale cricket, having the ability to move the ball in the air and off the wicket. With these skills he well deserved the accolades of his club-members in winning both the NECA, A Grade bowling aggregate in 1975/1976 and the A Grade bowling average trophy in 1978/1979.
A few years later in the 1985 Armidale 2ND Grade finals, I was umpiring at the bowler’s end, with John, a right-hand opening bowler, bowling the first over from around the wicket.
With his second ball, his delivery pitched on or extremely close to the leg stump line and straightened the ball beautifully to hit the opposing right-handed batsman, on the pads in front. These were the days when batsmen were often accorded “the benefit of doubt” and much to John’s disappointment, I turned down his appeal! In the years since, I reflect that it was such a great delivery, I wish I could have had the fortitude to uphold his appeal.
That wasn’t my only umpiring mistake! Again, some years later I was umpiring a lower grade match, in which I was participating, at Bruce Browning Park. The batsman hit the ball up in the air and the ball bounced on the full onto the top of the stumps at the bowler’s end and flew directly into the hands of the fielder at mid-off! As the ball had definitely bounced off the stumps and would have otherwise have bounced on the ground before any fielder’s interference, I gave the batsman, one of my own team -mates, not out!
On checking my rule book later, I saw that my decision was incorrect and I apologised to the bowler next Saturday. My apology was accepted with smiles all around, as it was certainly a strange dismissal!
Kevin Pike - Back Row 2nd in from the left
St Peters was the first club in Armidale cricket to field 3 teams in the main competition and fielded three teams in 1975/1976. Mike Seery was the President that year and he was followed by Ian Watts for two years and Dennis McGiveron, for one year, to see the Club playing strongly in all three grades through to the eighties.
Cricket premierships were the “holy grail” and the competition was fierce between the many teams in all grades in Armidale! St Peters had the honour of taking out the Davis Hughes Shield for the 2nd Grade Premiership in 1973/1974. (Davis Hughes was the local Member of Parliament and the NSW Minister of Works and under his watch the iconic Sydney Opera House was completed).
But in 1975/1976 St Peters cc A Grade team was the toast of the city, with a most convincing win against Waratahs in the final after both those great clubs had tied in the minor premiership rounds.
Thanks to Peter Langston from Waratahs, I can proudly record “FIRST A GRADE TITLE TO ST PETER’S”! The Armidale Express reports:
“St Peters are the new first grade cricket champions following an easy win over Waratahs in the final on the weekend. St Peters scored 259 and Waratahs could only manage 106. Hero of the game for St Peters was David Mitchell, who hit up a century, 106. His knock included three massive hits for six. Mitchell received strong support from Keith Smith 61, Stuart Mc Dowell 49 and Mark McCann 15. Waratahs did not recover from a bad start. The combination of pace and spin from Brian Bower and Mark McCann, always had them on the defensive. Bower took 3/21 and McCann 4/38.
Two seasons later (1977/1978), both these rival clubs shared the A Grade Premiership, with similar squads as in 1976, after the finals were washed out. Both, Ian watts and Dennis McGiveron, presided over the club’s on-field successes, with Club Championship trophies in 1977/1978 and 1978/1979
St Peters completed the decade of the ‘70s on a relative-high, with four teams entered in the Armidale competition. The A Grade again performed very well but were defeated finalists in 1978/1979 and the B Grade kept the Club flag flying by winning the Premiership that year. The B Grade final was memorable because of a superb century from Jim Whatson, who had an amazing defensive batting technique, and some fine bowling by the team’s trio of fast bowlers, Michael (Shorty) Wayte, Clive Pearson and youngster, Stephen Hodgson. My own part in the match was cut short, when a ball struck hard into the ground, bounced hitting my chin fielding in a very silly position, and requiring a couple of stitches at the Armidale and New England Hospital casualty!
At ADCA Association committee level, Brian Gream took over the presidency from Terry Betts and devoted much energy in leading the campaign for ground improvements in Armidale, involving the improvements to The Armidale Sports Ground and the building of practice nets and laying of synthetic turf surfaces on concrete wickets across the town during his presidency.
He felt most strongly about the “proper” naming of the Armidale and District Cricket Association and was instrumental in advocating for that name change from the historical New England Cricket Association, because the geographic region known as “New England” far exceeded in area, the geographic region known as “The Northern Tablelands”, and the parent, cricket-council-zone comprising, Armidale and District, Guyra, Glen Innes, Inverell and Tenterfield.
The seventies were an eventful decade for Australian cricket and for Armidale.
In 1976, the annual Tooheys’ Cup matches between Tamworth and Armidale commenced under the management of Bob Simpson. Then, in January 1979, Armidale played host to World Series Cricket with the WSC World X1 captained by South African, Eddie Barlow, playing the WSC “Cavaliers”.
Bob Simpson, was a most impressive leader of the team groups, comprising the New South Wales squad members, and as the establishment’s man, was the complete opposite to Eddie, who gave me and others the impression of being a frank-talking, hard-nosed campaigner for professional players’ rights.
From that time, cricket changed for-ever!
