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September 6, 1873, is a significant date in history for the Melbourne Cricket Club.
It is the foundation date of the Club’s heritage collections, with the donation of 13 bound volumes of the Australasian newspaper establishing a Library for Members’ enjoyment. Since then the collection has expanded with a presence in each of the Club’s four Members’ Pavilions.After decades of care under honorary librarians it was professionalised in the late 1980s and has grown into the modern reference library that today’s MCC Members know and love. The Club’s heritage collections have expanded to include the MCC Museum and MCC Archives alongside the MCC Library.
To celebrate 150 years of the collection, the MCC will be highlighting 150 treasured items from the collection over the next 12 months.
Items 21-34
Collingwood Football Club 1892-1948
Congratulations to Collingwood for winning the 2023 AFL Premiership. In celebration we post our copy of Percy Taylor's history of the Club from 1948.
Story of “The Magpies” most famous club in Australian football history.
Melbourne: National Press, c. 1949. Octavo, pictorial cloth pp. 239, 12 photographic plates. Limited edition, this is copy number 910.
ABC Football Guide, The Melbourne Sports Depot
Small booklet produced by the Melbourne Sports Depot.
Catalogue of equipment and clothing for Australian Rules Football with the year's VFL fixture and laws of the game.
In his Reading Australian Rules Football webpage, Tim Hogan describes it as:
An annual guide first published in 1886 and similar in content to the earlier, The Footballer: An Annual Record of Football in Victoria, circa 1875-1880. The ABC guide contained fixtures for senior and junior level football, club notes, which later expanded to very short club histories, season reviews, analyses of team performances and the obligatory reproduction of the laws of the game.
The Guide was published initially by Gordon & Gotch and then from 1895, by the Melbourne Sports Depot.
It ceased publication in 1934.
RARE 826 MSD
[MCC Library Records #9404, #54759, #54756, #60118]
Grand Final Poster
The Grand Final posters for Melbourne and Hawthorn's three-peats in 1957 and 2015.
The Herald and Weekly Times have been publishing an official Grand Final poster of the VFL/AFL premiers since 1954. For over 56 years (excepting 1990, 2020 and 2021), as the final siren blared across the Melbourne Cricket Ground to conclude the Grand Final, thousands of supporters would line up to buy a copy of the league’s premiership poster featuring the winning side.
The late William Ellis Green, or WEG, cartoonist at the Herald and Weekly Times designed them from 1954, until his death in 2008. Since then, they have been illustrated by Mark Knight, editorial cartoonist for the Herald Sun .
Initially they were supplement to the Grand Final evening edition of The Herald. However, the posters have been a major fundraising item for the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Good Friday Appeal since they were first sold separately in 1966.
The 1957 Premiership poster, showing a Demon with three fingers raised for the hat-trick of premierships is from the collection of legendary sportsman, and former Governor of Victoria, Hon. John Landy AC CVO.
[MCC Library Record #199130682]
Our Premiership Song: Fitzroy Football Club, Premiers 1913
1 card; 17 x 27cm [Melbourne]: C.J. Sharp, Print, [c. 1913].
A song about Fitzroy Football Club's 1913 premiership win. The song has six verses, each separated by a chorus.
Printed with blue ink on a pale green card with a gold border printed over a textured border in the card.
Handwritten note below title reads, "By Norm Byron."
Note that the tune is that used today by the North Melbourne Football Club.
For a biographical article on Norm, click here.
828.9 BYR
[MCC Library Record #199133721]
Plugger Comix
Writer/Artist: John Spud, Editor: Penelope Bunger (1994)
While many of you will fondly remember Slattery & Knight’s Star Track strip in the AFL’s Football Record during the 1990s, many Melbourne comic collectors have been familiar with John Spud’s Plugger and St Kilda cartoons on the white board at Minotaur Comics in Melbourne CBD. For decades, Spud, a loyal St Kilda supporter, offered his views on the Australian Game and his beloved Saints in multi-coloured texta as an addition to the listings of comics due in for the week.
Starting in March 1994, Spud produced a tribute to the Saints then idol Tony Lockett, with his production of Australian Rules football’s very own Plugger Comix. Running from No.1 in March 1994 through to No.23 when Lockett joined the Swans later that year, Plugger Comix and its 1995 successor All-Saints Comix, chronicles a year in the life of the St Kilda Football Club. It offers a fascinating insight into world of football fans, players and all the machinations of a football club during an AFL season.
Irreverent at times and uncannily prophetic and perceptive at others, this material of a different genre is not only a good read, but will prove to be a valuation addition for future users of the Library’s Aussie Rules collection.
John also produced a weekly sporting cartoon for the back page of the Sunday Age sporting supplement in the 1990s, which he donated to the MCC Library collection.
For more details on John and his work, click here.
RARE 0829.1 PLU
[MCC Library Record #9282]
Victoria's greatest races: with full descriptions of the Melbourne Cup 1921, Caulfield Cup 1922-3, Melbourne Cup 1922-3
Compiled and edited by H. Michell ([1923]).
Detailed descriptions by various authors, with accompanying photographs of the 1922-3 Caulfield Cups and 1921-3 Melbourne Cups. Articles cover all aspects of the races - horses, jockeys, owners, trainers, results, betting, racing clubs, courses, races and administrators.
RARE HR 923.1A VRC MELB 1921-23
[MCC Library Records #17004]
Cec Mullin collection, including History of Australian Rules Football 1858-1958
Clarence Cecil Mullen (born in Richmond 1895) was a boy who gained an interest in football and “helped to bag grass and sell papers” at Melbourne, East Melbourne and Richmond cricket grounds. Mullen's love of sports history developed further after he was employed by the Argus and a number of local Richmond papers.
Mullen’s passion for history and sport led him to become a football historian. Unlike other pioneers (such as R.H. Campbell and Percy Taylor), he dealt with the game’s deep history, its origins and early development.
However, working on this subject in mid 20th Century, he had few colleagues to assist him. With limited access to primary resources and critique, Mullen made some basic historical errors. Modern scholarship shows his work contains many anomalies, such as phantom matches, exaggerations and omissions. Despite their inaccuracies, or perhaps because of them, Mullen’s Australasian Footballers' Almanac (1950), Mullen's Footballers’ Australian Almanac (1951), and his History of Australian Rules Football: 1858-1958, are fundamental to study of football historiography.
In addition to Mullen’s published material, the MCC Library has many of his unpublished works, including his History of Essendon Football Club: 1873-1907, notes on histories of various football clubs, Victoria’s Contribution to Cricket (Vols. I & II), and notes on women’s cricket in Victoria. The Library also has some correspondence and ephemera.
Mullen’s writings popularised and preserved many myths & folklore. Football scholarship has outgrown his pioneering attempts at constructing history of the code, and although much of his work has been superseded a critique is still necessary. Some myths he created, such as the so-called “Champion of the Colony” first published in Mullen’s Australasian Footballers’ Almanac (1950), are still cited in current reference texts.
Mullen’s work may be unreliable but its legacy endures. His scholarly mistakes should not detract from his generous community work. He gave tirelessly without expecting recognition for his efforts with youth sport and music.
Cec Mullen died in 1983.
RARE 813 MUL
5570
Centenary 1000
[Melbourne]: [Victorian Centenary Celebrations Council], [1934]
Official programme for the Centenary Thousand bike race in 1934. The race began in St Kilda Rd, near Government House, and finished at Como Park, South Yarra.
Handicap winner was Ted Stubenrauch, Vic, with 611 points
The Championship winner was Harry Cruise, Vic in 53h 50' 32"
RARE CYC 923 VIC
28646
At the wickets: New South Wales versus Victoria
By Harry W. Hedley (Mid-on of "The Leader").
Melbourne: Centennial Printing & Publishing Co., 1888
Hedley's book is a record of the forty matches played between Victoria and New South Wales from 1856 to 1888.
A copy has been digitized by the State Library of Victoria.
RARE 923.7 AUS IC 1856-1888
[MCC Library Record #349]
The Phar Lap Collection
Fitzroy: Equus Marketing, 1996.
The Phar Lap Collection is the first publication to contain the complete photographic record for each of Phar Lap’s 37 career victories.
Based upon a photo album discovered in the attic of a Californian house belonging to the horse’s owner Mr. David Davis, these photographs were long thought by Australian racing officials and historians to be lost during the depression and WWII. Like many official racing photographs of the period, most of these prints were taken from fragile glass plates. A few are still in existence, most notably the Victoria Derby plate, which was broken into three pieces.
The opening chapters of commentary on Phar Lap's career compare the achievements of the horse on significant dates, with achievements of two other heroes of that era – Don Bradman and Charles Kingsford-Smith.
WS Cox Plate day
RARE HR 915.2 PHARL.
[MCC Library Record #8236]
America's national game: historic facts concerning the beginning, evolution and development of baseball
By Albert G. Spalding; Cartoons by Homer C. Davenport. xix, New York: American Sports Publishing, 1911.
Albert G. Spalding's addiction to what he saw as a peculiarly American sport began early on the sandlot in Rockford, Illinois. One of the first professional baseball players and later a manager and club owner, he branched out to become a leading manufacturer of sporting goods.
America's National Game, published a few years before his death in 1915, lays out the beginnings of baseball and its advancement, while dispensing Spalding's vivid reminiscences and firm opinions. The essential nature of the game, he thought, was warfare. The opponents took many forms: among them the evil syndicates trying to control the sport, and more inwardly and importantly, the temptations familiar to every young man.
RARE BAS 913.2 US SPA
[MCC Library Record # 61312]
The Pioneers: The first Springbok tour to Australia & New Zealand 1921
By Hans Saestad.
Congratulations to South Africa on their victory in the 2023 Rugby World Cup final.
Published in 2011 this book fills a large gap in the history of Springbok, Australian and New Zealand rugby by covering the first ever meetings between South Africa and the other two southern hemisphere giants.
The narrative of the book covers this ground breaking tour which was the first contact between the Springboks and All Blacks/Wallabies, from the early pre-tour trials to the Australian and New Zealand legs of the tour.
Each match is covered with a report and statistics and the players lives following the tour are charted. South Africa played Victoria on the MCG in the opening match of the tour on June 18, 1921 winning 51-0.
The large format hardback was self published, and limited to 100 numbered copies each signed by the author.
ISBN: 9780620515597
RARE RUG 923.4 SAF 1921
[MCC Library Record #199131708]
Death's doings
Includes allegorical verse on death and cricket.
Contains "The game of life; or, Death among the cricketers", a poem by S. Maunder, with an etching "The cricketer" by R.D.; and a prose piece "Death & the cricketer" by Barnard Batwell.
London: J. Andrews, 1826
1st Edition: Patrick J. Mullins' collection.
2nd Edition: Antony Baer collection
RARE 929 DAG
[MCC Library Records #1280]
A dictionarie of the French and English tongues
We are highlighting the oldest book in the Melbourne Cricket Club Library, Randle Cotgrave’s ”Dictionarie of the French & English tongues”, published in London in 1611, the same year as the King James Bible and the premiere of Shakespeare’s last solo play, The Tempest.
The Dictionarie is a scarce book, but not especially rare. It is a key work to collectors of cricket items as it contains the first printed references and definition of the game of cricket.The book was donated to the MCC Library by Anthony Baer in 1968.
Entries: French "crosse" - "a cricket staffe"; "crosser" - "to play at cricket". Some of the earliest known printed references to the game of cricket. Inclusion of the French words "crosse" and "crosser", and their definition confirms that cricket was a well-known game in England by the early 17th century.
For more information see "Glorious innings : treasures from the Melbourne Cricket Club collection" by Richard Bouwman, and the superb Defining Cricket by Christopher Saunders.
Printed paper with a vellum cover and binding
From the Baer Collection.
Provenance: Marquess of Lansdowne, unknown, JW Goldman, Anthony Baer
RARE 913.01 DIC
[MCC Library Records #1780]