It was such a big occasion for the Richmond Union Bowling Club, members in their late 60s had come out of retirement.
Some clubs recruit star players from overseas to succeed. Richmond – the tiny, unpretentious bowls club that inspired the movie Crackerjack – never has. Instead, its players are made up of rough diamonds and bar stragglers, brought together by acceptance and fun.
If they were to win, it would be the first time in the club’s 153 year history to have qualified for the Victorian Bowls Premier League, and the second time in two years to have been promoted.
It had been the equivalent of leap-frogging from country footy to the AFL, seeing a trickled return of star players from the old days eager for a share in the glory.
So, when the last bowl to determine promotion to the Premier League ricocheted off the green on Sunday afternoon, sailing Richmond to a 79-73 “fairytale” win, commentators expected its members to flood onto the pitch.
Instead, the reception at Dandenong Bowling Club was strangely mute – saved for a few back taps and the shaking of hands. Richmond was too moved by the moment to celebrate. They were crying in the stands.
‘It’s a safe space’
It took four decades and a bowls club for Tony “Ricky” Baker to find his place in the world.
Until his late 30s, Baker toured regional Victorian bowls clubs, battling with his identity as a queer man in rural communities. When he eventually arrived in Melbourne, the first thing he did was seek out a local club.
As fate had it, Baker found the Richmond Union Bowling Club, an easily missed spot tucked on a side street between a town hall and a swimming pool.
“As soon as I walked in here, I felt like I was back in the regions where everyone’s looking out for each other,” he says.
“But here, for the first time, I had the opportunity to be myself with my sexuality. As soon as I walked in, I was encouraged to be who I want to be, be who I am.”
Richmond Union is the only bowling club in Australia to have its own annual Pride Cup, to take place this year on 15 May.
The third-oldest club in Australia (or fourth, depending on who you ask), the site has withstood fires, development and gentrification for 153 years. Baker says the members make the club – “always have”.
Nowadays, it has 20 gay members, “a few fence-sitters” and its own pride uniform: a rainbow kit splashed with Richmond’s iconic tiger.
“It’s hard to find community in this new age, it’s rare,” Baker says. “But it’s a safe space here, even if you’re not a bowler. It’s somewhere you can come in and get support. Day two I got here I was already nicknamed Ricky.
“And as soon as you’re comfortable in all aspects of your life … if your head’s in the right place, if you’re happy, you enjoy it more, and you bowl better.”
‘You accept everyone for who they are’
David “Bestie” Best established the first Pride Cup in lawn bowls history in 2018.
“I wanted the LGBTI community to have some fun and let their hair down. So the first year we had eight teams, and the second year we had 16,” he says.
“It started at 10 and finished at five, it was brilliant. And as soon as the bar’s open, it always kicks on.”
Best says Richmond Union has always been different, for some reason or another. Even these days, they’ll still play clubs that are “very anti-female, anti-gay”.
“Gay people might bowl in certain clubs but they won’t be relaxed because it’s not safe, they’re not recognised. Here, you still get people you don’t like and might have to bowl with them for 14 weeks, but you accept everyone for who they are,” he says.
“I’ve been here six years and this is my home. I live in Coburg, but this is my home.”
Out by the green, Noelene “Bash” Gerty surveys the bowlers from the sidelines with a can of coke and a cigarette.
She says her “big hands, big feet and small body” make her a natural at the sport.
But it’s been a fight since she rolled into the club three decades ago. Back then, women were still in their own division until a landmark court case in 2001.
“We had to go to court to get to play on Saturday,” she says.
“Women started here in the 1930s but they weren’t allowed in the club, they had their own clubhouse.
“It wasn’t until the 70s or later they were allowed in, to do the afternoon teas. The men would send the women letters saying ‘we’ll need 10 women to do the catering’ for their opening days.”
When Gerty started in 1990, she says, the club had missed “the whole sex revolution in the 60s and 70s”.
“They still had ridiculous things about uniform, so your dress had to be a certain length, which was really dumb,” she says.
“Instead of saying just below your knee, they had 15 inches from the ground, and a little measuring stick. A girl I knew was told her dress was too short so she just took it off and said you go fix it, and kept playing in her petticoat.”
Still, some clubs offer women reduced subscription fees, giving them no real rights and the expectation that they do the catering. Others remain segregated, with women unable to bowl at weekends.
The current Richmond Union president, Bob Hutton, says the club has no all-male league – it’s either mixed, or women’s only.
“Richmond is one of the most diverse suburbs in Melbourne, and we want to be inclusive,” he says.
“Bowls is the only sport that’s not discriminatory. It doesn’t matter your gender, your body type. We just want somewhere people feel safe. Nothing more complicated than that.”
A reverence for the greats
If you cross the green to the back of the club, a marble statue of legendary bowler Walter Nation stands at the original level of the pitch, first laid down in 1868.
Before his death by drowning at 41, Nation won the 1888 UBG Single Handed Bowls Championship while he was club secretary. Hutton says his ashes are scattered among the chips in the club’s garden.
Times have changed since Nation’s day, but a reverence for the greats and respect for the game still reverberates, on and off the green.
Over lockdown, bowler Michael “Stats” Quayle spent 500 hours making trading cards of Richmond players dating back to 1905, and has printed thousands of them to be sold over the bar.
It’s the first time ever, as far as Quayle can tell, that anyone has made a full deck of trading cards for a bowls club. Nation features in the deck, of course.
“I’ve googled it, found some cards of Australian players but nothing’s been done like this,” Quayle says. “Pretty much 95% of the club are in it, there’s three or four who just didn’t understand what it was, it’s not compulsory but when I started it I wanted 150, and I’ve got 153.”
The idea had been brewing quietly for years, but when Quayle got an iPad for his 50th birthday in March, he took it as a sign.
“I thought, ‘I can do this now’,” he says. “On that day I went ‘I’m going to do this’, even made a speech on my birthday saying ‘I decided I’m going to do this thing’.”
Quayle says his “obsessive” personality helped him, but liaising with more than 100 bowls players over lockdown was hard.
“I just thought it would be cool to have my own trading card. Then I did a few of us, thought … ‘I’ll have to do these guys as well’, then just went ‘ah … all right, everybody’s in’,” he says.
“A lot of people are really old and don’t have internet, so I had forms floating around the club and got people phoning.
Local students ‘put us to shame’
Money is always pretty tight, but the club somehow survives.
A few years ago, it was under threat of development,but a hard fight earned it a 99-year tenure on the site.
“They were going to take us over and put us on the roof,” Hutton says.
“We don’t want to be a pub with a bowling green, we want to be a club.”
When Richmond high school opened next door in 2018, club member John “Jingles” Inglese saw it as an opportunity. He reached out to the school and quickly got a year seven and eight program up and running, which has now become an integral part of the club’s recruitment strategy.
Three students now bowl with the club permanently. Best says the young blood “puts us to shame”.
Year 10 student Taj Alcott has played with the club for two years since graduating from the program.
“It’s supportive here, everyone treats me like I’m one of them,” he says.
“I come down here twice a week and everyone knows my name, it’s nice.”
Teacher Jess Hayes says bowls has been a revelation for kids “you can’t get off the sideline for a game of basketball”, and children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“We’ve had kids coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds because it’s free, there’s no cost to their families,” she says.
‘This is gold to us’
As the afternoon drifts into the early evening, beer glasses are refilled, music starts to play.
The bowlers drift from the green to the sidelines, reminiscing about past tournaments, jeering one another. Every so often someone will land a ripper shot and a small murmur will pass through the group.
At the club’s bar, in prime position by the loo, a framed poster signed by Mick Molloy reads: “This is where it all began”.
The story goes that Molloy and his mates learned to bowl at the Richmond Union, where they would drink beers and discuss what would one day become the cult film Crackerjack.
You can picture the scene down to the jesting barman, Walter Nation’s portrait looming over them, stragglers rolling in off the green.
A few beers in, Ricky Baker is getting reflective. He looks out to the same green, 153 years of history in it. It’s not just a green, of course. It never was.
“This is gold,” he says, light sinking over the high rises.
“This is gold to us.”
