—Bullant 17:59, 22 September 2011 (EST)
The author did not identify himself by name but is easily identifiable as William McIntosh, the son of Andrew McIntosh, a long serving councillor and prominent baker in High Street. As the article reveals, William and his great friend James Morris were stalwarts of the cricket club and although McIntosh’s article doesn’t touch on football, they were both active in winter months as well, Morris actually playing for Melbourne for a couple of seasons before moving into an administrative role
“About the spot where I was sitting in the Sunday School hall at the jubilee re-union stood the bottom wicket of the old Northcote cricket pitch where the writer batted for Northcote for nearly twenty years. The top wicket stood on a north-west line between the corner of the Presbyterian Church property and the Roman Catholic people opposite.
Just behind long slip here stood the giant tree of the hill, and under its shadow I fielded at short slip for long years. For convenience, often I stood on a little hillock there which represented the grave of two aboriginal chiefs of the Merri Merri tribe. If only one of the spiritist’s chiefs now in Melbourne would re-call the ghosts of these Merri chiefs, what a tale they could tell of ancient Northcote and their battles with the Yarra Yarra tribe. …
… where the Northcote town hall now stands was the home of the Pages. The house stood well back and had a fine orchard in front of it and I remember our ball had a bad habit of getting over the fence or through it, with the results that the fieldsman often got more interested in the apples than hunting for the ball.
These were the halcyon days. The hill was covered in trees and I believe there were more staging birds, parrots, etc in those trees that you now find anywhere within 50 miles of Melbourne. Many a summer morning half a dozen of us – the ringleaders of the club – were out on the hill at 4.40 and had a couple of hours practice before breakfast and a long days work.
Here you have the secret why the team that I was mixed up in scarcely lost, on average, more than three games per season. Being a real left-hander – I say “real” because there is nothing more a “real” hates more in cricket than a “mongrel” left-hander as we call them – that is a man batting left and bowling right and vice versa …
… When batting at the top wicket I got from 6 to 14 runs for leg hits down to Railton’s yard in Clarke Street when the ball had to been thrown back by relays of fieldsman. In my young days on the hill, a Northcote Married Men’s Cricket Club was formed and it has been a puzzle why they asked Jim Morris and the write to play for them. We did all the bowling and very often much of the batting for them.
There was another profound mystery in that Married Men’s Cricket Club. Alex Jamieson, whom all the girls claimed was married, and all we boys used to hunt and try and find his wife! But if he was not married, he was a grand long stop and a solid Presbyterian. I think his success in the “lower” game of bowls is due to his long practice as a cricketer with his under-arm deliveries.
In 1874-75, our team walked up to play Preston one Saturday afternoon on a green situated at the corner of Bell and High Streets where the six mile post stood.
We won the toss and went in to bat and were all out for 36. Waterloo was nothing compared to the matches between Northcote and Preston in those days, such was the feeling between the two places.
The writer started bowling against the Preston team and his first ball went so close to the bails that it bluffed our wicket keeper and struck him on the side of the knee off which it glanced and a bye was run. The next five balls clean bowled five men. The late J. J. Morris (Morris and Meeks) who was killed in a motor accident some months ago (old the oldest cobber I had, we went back to 1868) took up the ball at the other end and got three wickets. In the third over, the writer took the remainder and the side was out for a bye. The bowling figures were : 16 balls, no runs, and 10 wickets.
The world, I know, is too full of discords caused by people blowing their own trumpets, but my object in introducing these personal matters is to show the present generation of cricketers that they will never get to the pinnacles we reached in those days any other way than by sheer hard practice”.
Jim Morris
“Jim Morris was the biggest ‘sport’ that ever handled a bat, ball or football in Northcote down to 1920. Amongst the youth of our village Jim was the life and soul. Every boy and girl loved him. He was a many-sided youth, a very fine pianist, could play “Home Sweet Home” on his teeth by using a fingernail as a hammer, and Harry Rickards, the original starter of vaudeville and the old opera house, (now the Tivoli) said that Jim Morris was the best “Bones” he had ever heard. Many a night if you had been walking through Northcote, you might have met two boys pasting up bills for a social concert and a dance to enable them to buy some new cricket gear. One of the boys was Jim Morris and the other his aide-de-camp, the writer.
From the cricket and football field where he represented all that is best in the Melbourne club in her palmy days to the champion rose grower of Victoria is a path not often trod. Jim put the same fire and energy into his roses as he put into his cricket, with the result that for many years he was our ‘Rose King’ and a well known member of our Royal Horticultural Society.
While he was hon. Secretary of the Melbourne Football Club, he went into a barber’s shop that stood near the old “Bull and Mouth” hotel in Bourke Street one Saturday for a shave. When sitting in the chair with his chin covered in lather several players and supporters of the club filed into the shop. As one of them passed, he took the piece of paper that the barber was wiping his razor on and plastered it over Jim’s mouth, who sprang out of the chair, seized an improvised weapon and after the culprit who bolted out of the shop up Bourke Street, along Swanston Street, down Little Collins, through the Arcade and up Bourke Street again into the barber’s shop and Jim after him, with the cloth round his neck and one side of his face all a-lather.
When the crowd saw who was chasing the man, the cry got up : “a madman” with the result that Jim had the clearest run through the town on a Saturday that ever fell to the lot of anyone from that day to this. Jim had six brothers and his old home still stands on the corner of High and Bayview Streets”.
Some Bowling Averages
“During the writer’s first ten years of hard cricket, he never kept any of his records; played three years with the East Melbourne Cricket Club 2nd Eleven in the club’s balmy days with Boyle, Horan, Gaggin and Charlie Alee, and also with the Warehousemen Cricket Club on the St. Kilda Road, and never lost a bowling average during his career of six-and-twenty years.
The figures for his last fourteen years bowling are as follows : Balls 12,633, runs 3425, maidens 507, wickets 884; average 3.8 per wicket. His best season with the ball was 1876 as follows 1085 balls, 2 maidens*, 261 runs, 107 wickets, average 2.5, and in 1888 with 1176 balls, 46 maidens, 300 runs, 81 wickets; average 3.5.
The president’s prize (the late George Plant) for best batting average was also won by the writer I that season with J. J. Morris as runner-up in both sections. The latter was the finest all-round cricketer that I ever met and I am sure Northcote has not had his equal …”
- The two maidens are obviously incorrect but this is what appeared in the report. Although there was some experimentation with the lengths of overs, the report of the 1875 match against Preston reveals that six balls was the norm at the time. It seems odd that he had the figures to hand – McIntosh was born in 1860 and this would certainly have been of the first ten years of “hard cricket” where he suggested he “never kept” records.
The story about Preston being dismissed for one run has appeared in several publications including a 1933 article in The Age on the history of Northcote Park and in a souvenir booklet published for Northcote’s Golden Jubilee in 1934, but McIntosh’s article reveals for the first time that the match was actually played in Preston and not at Northcote Park as the other instances claim.
In a similar vein, his reminiscences about playing in the early days on the peak of Rucker’s Hill debunks the theory that the early teams played on Plant’s Paddock at the bottom of the hill below the Peacock Inn. The area that McIntosh is referring to was probably that known as James’ Paddock or James’ Park, also a popular picnic spot for both the locals and others making the trip from Melbourne
