The Rock Wallaby: A Western Suburbs District Cricket Club Story
Western Suburbs District Cricket Club Sydney | March 30, 2025
The following article is an extract from our 2006 publication “Cricket in Black and White: 110 Not Out: The history of the Western Suburbs District Cricket Club”, superbly compiled by Max Bonnell:
On 27 February 1895, Ted Rogers started a cricket club. At a public meeting in the chambers of Burwood Council, Rogers established the Burwood Cricket Club, appointing himself as its secretary and treasurer. His appointment was confirmed at the Club's first Annual General Meeting, on 12 August 1895, when the club also appointed the Mayor of Burwood as a figurehead President, adopted a constitution, and approved Rogers' choice of club colours: bands of dark blue, light blue, navy blueorange and fawn. In case his work as Secretary and Treasurer left him with time on his hands, Rogers was also appointed as a delegate to the New South Wales Cricket Association and as a member of the club's selection panel.
From this distance, Ted Rogers' vision for the management of the new club might seem excessively egocentric. But without his drive and enthusiasm, the club would never have been created. Rogers, a 26 year-old solicitor employed by the Department of Justice, had no particular credentials as a cricketer - it isn't even clear where he had played the game before he founded the Burwood club. He was a left- arm, medium-paced bowler, who approached the crease with a curious, bouncy run that earned him the nickname "The Rock Wallaby". His ability may have been limited, but what he certainly had was immense energy and enthusiasm for the game.
Rogers had only modest ambitions for his new club. Burwood was a small electorate, encompassing the suburbs of Burwood, Concord and Five Dock, which had existed as a municipality for barely twenty years. More recently, the name "Western Suburbs" has been associated with working-class areas of Sydney; but Burwood in 1895 was a prosperous, solidly middle-class district. Ted Rogers was the son of a judge; his two cricketing brothers were a solicitor and a doctor. The earliest members of the Burwood Cricket Club were professional men, office clerks, accountants and stockbrokers.
Pictured above: Ted Rogers
Until 1893, there had been no organised cricket competition in Sydney, only a loose collection of clubs arranging fixtures between each other. In 1893-94, the NSWCA introduced the Electoral Competition, contested by district clubs and Sydney University. For the first time in Sydney, players were required to appear for the districts, or electorates, in which they lived. The original electoral clubs were Paddington, Glebe, Manly, East Sydney, Redfern, University, Central Cumberland and, representing all of western Sydney between Glebe and Parramatta, Canterbury.
Ted Rogers expected that the Burwood electorate, with its modest population, could field a team in the New South Wales Cricket Association's Second Grade competition. But events soon overtook his plans. The Canterbury club was an unhappy failure. It was entrusted with a vast territory from which to draw its players, from Hurstville and Bexley in southern Sydney to Marrickville in the east and Strathfield in the west. But its teams were weak, it was able to play on its home ground only once in two seasons, and its administration was chaotic. After winning only once in two seasons of Electoral cricket, Canterbury forfeited its last match of the 1894- 95 season. Even as Ted Rogers was putting together a club in Burwood, Canterbury was falling apart.
In the winter of 1895, Rogers placed newspaper advertisements inviting players to join the new club, and provided it with a home, the Burwood Recreation Ground, on a five-year lease. The Recreation Ground stood on 14 acres, owned by one Joseph Wyatt, at the top of Burwood Road. A group of trustees, including Ted Rogers, agreed to pay £20 per annum for the use of the ground, with an option to renew at £40 per annum for another five years. This was rather a mixed blessing; although the Recreation Ground had a cricket pitch, it was made of asphalt. There were other asphalt strips across the outfield, and a deep ditch ran across a corner of the field, which was only sparsely turfed. But Rogers recruited a curator, Nat Thomson (a veteran Sydney cricketer who had played in the first of all Test matches in 1877), and an army of volunteers to assist him. Together they ripped up the asphalt, filled in the gully, levelled the ground, and ploughed and seeded it. By the beginning of the 1895-96 season, the Burwood Recreation Ground was still sloping and indifferently grassed, but it was adequate for Electoral cricket.
And for First Grade cricket, too. On 26 August 1895, the New South Wales Cricket Association, noting that the Canterbury club had dissolved, invited Burwood to field teams in both First Grade and Second Grade in the coming season. The collapse of Canterbury left the western suburbs of Sydney unrepresented in First Grade, a problem for which the new club in Burwood offered an immediate solution. The Association presented Burwood with most of the territory that Canterbury had occupied and, only five weeks before the new season opened, challenged the club to find a First Grade team from its residents.
In the circumstances, Ted Rogers did well to assemble a side of reasonably experienced cricketers. The first Burwood captain, David Jones, was a left handed batsman who had played well for University, and the all-rounder George Williams had represented East Sydney. Naturally, the side included a sprinkling of Canterbury players, including Wycliffe Fairfax, a powerful, positive batsman. Harry Moses, a former Test batsman who had turned out for Canterbury, was expected to join Burwood, but although he was named in the side for the first game, he never actually appeared for the club. The first Burwood side took the field at Wentworth Park on 28 September 1895, playing Glebe before a boisterous crowd that reportedly numbered "several thousand".
For a few hours, First Grade cricket seemed like an easy game. There were seven New South Wales representatives in the Glebe team, but Ted Rogers, Bill McLeod and George Williams bowled cleverly, Burwood fielded brilliantly, and Glebe crumbled for only 88. As Rogers left the field, with the figures of four for 22 to his name, all those hours of work clearing the Burwood Recreation Ground must have seemed worthwhile. But the nine overs that remained in the first day's play was all the time Glebe needed to ruin Burwood's hopes; Test off-spinner, Tom McKibbin, and Andrew Newell, a Sheffield Shield medium-pacer, grabbed six wickets for only 18 runs. There was little improvement on the second day; Wycliffe Fairfax, a stockbroker from Petersham, played defiantly for 18, but Burwood was routed for just 44. In this season, First Grade matches were played over three days and the laws of cricket permitted no declarations, so Glebe emphasised its superiority by batting through the rest of the game, scoring 8 for 494.
The second Glebe innings set a pattern for the rest of the season, in which Burwood's bowlers were ritually slaughtered. At the Sydney Cricket Ground, Wycliffe Fairfax played a masterful innings against Paddington's powerful attack, scoring 98 out of Burwood's 161 and missing a century when his last partner left him stranded. Fairfax, according to the New South Wales wicket-keeper Jimmy Searle, was a "mighty hitter" who complained, after his retirement, that "the caretakers of the ground should be kept more busy nailing up the picket fence on a Monday morning as in his time." On this occasion, though, most of the damage to the pickets was caused by the Paddington batsmen, who put Fairfax's effort into perspective by occupying the crease for more than two days while amassing five for 726. Five batsmen in succession made centuries, including Australian captain MA Noble, the great Victor Trumper and Test wicket-keeper Jim Kelly, while Rogers (with two for 155) and McLeod (two for 176) learned hard lessons about the difference between suburban batsmen and internationals.
Even when Burwood's batsmen performed well, the bowling proved inadequate. Walter Brown (92) and John Farry (56) guided Burwood to 351 against Central Cumberland at Parramatta, but then State batsmen Frank Iredale (140) and Barclay Farquhar (223) carried the home side to 3 for 485. Waverley was reduced to six for 196 but reached 423, and East Sydney marked the first game on Burwood's home ground by batting into the third day, passing 400, and bundling out Burwood for only 20. The Referee praised "the splendid way they have stuck together notwithstanding repeated drubbings", but after their first six games there was little else that could be said in Burwood's favour.
When University met Burwood in March 1896, New South Wales captain Tom Garrett looked likely to continue Burwood's misery, racing confidently to 49 on the first afternoon of the game before Ted Rogers took the ball. Immediately, Rogers had Garrett caught, and at once the University innings fell apart. Having been 4 for 94, University was dismissed for only 100, with Rogers claiming the startling figures of five for 5 from 29 deliveries. Burwood scraped its way to a modest lead, and then enjoyed its first real luck of the season, as injuries deprived University of three players on the last day. Batting three short, the Students could set Burwood only 97 to win. There were anxious moments when the first five wickets fell for only 44 runs, but Brown and John Farry added 41 priceless runs and Burwood's first victory was sealed with four wickets in hand.
It wasn't the last celebration of the season. Second Grade earned its first (and only) points when it edged out South Sydney, 112 to 95, and in the week after the University match, Burwood trounced South Sydney. South Sydney turned up for its last match of the season with only seven players: Bob Barbour (3-6) and Bill McLeod (3-13) bundled them out for 26, before George Rogers (66) and William Robison (62) seized the opportunity to score easy runs. "South Sydney's path is becoming stony", The Referee observed, "and Burwood's strewn with roses."
If Burwood's first season ended encouragingly, the second opened with a sensation. Paddington, at full strength, accounted for Burwood's first eight wickets for only 122 runs, before Ted Rogers and John Farry helped to squeeze 76 runs from the last two wickets. A target of 198 appeared easily within Paddington's reach, but Burwood fielded ferociously, and tall medium-pacer Bob Barbour bowled an inspired spell. Victor Trumper had made only 6 when "Wyck" Fairfax caught him from Barbour's bowling, and after MA Noble was brilliantly run out by wicket-keeper Bissett for 34, Barbour (4-29) swept aside the rest. Burwood won by 76 runs on the first innings, and with matches now reduced to two days' duration, there was no time for Paddington to reassert its dominance. The two-day format adopted by the competition in 1896 - with most matches played on consecutive Saturdays and decided on the first innings - has endured, with occasional tweaks, ever since.
Unhappily, Burwood failed to live up to the promise of its first match, and ended the season with the same record as in 1895-96: two wins against six defeats. Still, the club's improvement was obvious: the bowlers no longer conceded totals of 400, and the batting was more effective, although it still relied heavily on Wycliffe Fairfax, who was chosen in the final trial match before the New South Wales team was selected. Again, Fairfax came close to posting Burwood's first century, and again he fell agonisingly short. Chasing 213 against East Sydney, Burwood collapsed to 4 for 23 before Fairfax and RC Brewster added 102 for the fifth wicket. Fairfax played a calm, chanceless, elegant innings, defying a strong attack led by the legendary "Terror", CTB Turner. One of his drives lifted the ball right out of the ground, and it needed to be retrieved from a sewer. But when he had reached 99, the ball was given to John Gould, who occasionally bowled his leg- spinners for New South Wales.
Gould's third delivery was tossed high, turned sharply and beat Fairfax, who had advanced well out of his crease to drive. The bails were removed by East Sydney's colourful wicket-keeper, Syd Deane, who had not only represented New South Wales at both cricket and rugby, but had also begun a career as a professional singer that was to take him to Broadway and work in Hollywood films (and whose younger brother, Laurie, later played for Burwood). To compound his disappointment at being stumped for 99, Fairfax then watched the Burwood tail fall 14 runs short of their goal. The match against North Sydney was just as close and just as frustrating, as North Sydney's last pair won the match with a partnership of 41. At last Burwood's luck turned against Leichhardt: chasing only 195, Leichhardt reached 1 for 70, but Ossie Preston bowled nervelessly to take 4-48, Ted Rogers struck a crucial blow by having Leichhardt's best batsman, Austin Diamond caught behind for 42, and Burwood won by 29 runs.
The attack depended too heavily upon the hard-working medium- pacers, Preston and Barbour, and Burwood lacked the kind of top- class players who could consistently match talents with the representative cricketers that filled most of the other Electorate teams. So it was a significant coup when Jack Ferris and Harry Donnan joined the club for the 1897-98 season. Neither man is well- remembered today, but in Sydney in 1897, they were genuine cricketing celebrities. Ferris, a left- arm spinner, played only nine Tests but claimed 61 wickets in those games at an average of less than 13. With "Terror" Turner, he had carried the Australian attack in England in 1888 and 1890, and when living for a time in Gloucestershire, he toured South Africa with an English team, taking 13 cheap wickets in the only Test of the tour. Unfortunately, his skill with the ball all but disappeared before he turned thirty, and while he remained a very capable batsman, he no longer posed many threats as a bowler. Harry Donnan, on the other hand, had failed in his five Test matches, but at every other level of the game, he gathered runs with relentless efficiency. In 1896- 97, he had set a new record for Sydney cricket by amassing 308 for South Sydney against North Sydney. But at the end of that season, he decided to appear for Burwood, as did another representative player, the elegant Central Cumberland batsman, Syd Walford. Strangely, Donnan qualified by residence for Burwood because he lived in West Kogarah: thirty years later, the same address was four clubs distant from Western Suburbs.
The newcomers certainly boosted Burwood's batting, which was generally reliable and sometimes rather better than that. Although he suffered the indignity of being run out for a duck on his first appearance, against Central Cumberland, Donnan did all that was expected of him, finishing the season with an average of more than seventy. For some reason, Donnan arrived at the ground late when Burwood chased Leichhardt's total of 173, and he didn't make it to the crease until five wickets had fallen for 43 runs. From then on, he dominated the bowling, scoring 103 of the 131 runs added while he was at the crease.
Pictured above: Harry Donnan, scorer of the first six First Grade centuries for Burwood
His innings was almost ended by a mix-up between the wickets with Bob Barbour, but Barbour sacrificed his own wicket to keep Donnan at the crease. With the same stroke that scored the winning runs, Donnan also registered Burwood's first century in First Grade. He did even better against North Sydney, when Burwood chased an imposing total of 329. It rained before the second day of the game, and Burwood began its innings on a pitch with "one end playing fast, with an occasional bumping one, and the other end kicking repeatedly with an occasional low one." Donnan opened the innings with the wonderfully named young all- rounder, John Elicius Benedict Bernard Placid Quirk Carrington Dwyer, who played under the name of EB Dwyer, and they played with surprising aggression to post an opening stand of 122 in just over an hour.
Wycliffe Fairfax and George Barbour offered Donnan useful support, but the lower order collapsed terribly and Burwood's position was dire when Donnan was joined by George Garnsey, a Sydney Grammar schoolboy who had just turned 17 and was playing his first innings in First Grade. Garnsey's record at Grammar was phenomenal, and his talents as a correct batsman and accurate leg- spinner were nurtured carefully by his coach, George Barbour, a Classics master at Grammar, who had played Rugby for New South Wales and played several seasons of First Grade cricket for University before joining his brother Bob at Burwood. A dogged batsman who fell just short of first-class standard, Barbour insisted that Burwood provide Garnsey with an opportunity in First Grade despite his tender age. Recalling his first appearance for Burwood, in the match against North Sydney at the Burwood Recreation Ground, Garnsey wrote that I was bowled for a duck, but the performance was better than it looked, for Burwood, with eight wickets down, were some eighty runs behind. Harry Donnan was on the way to his second century, but the question was whether anyone could stay the course to enable him to win the match.
George Barbour, our skipper, was at the gate as I walked out. "What am I to do sir?" His answer was terse and characteristic: "Stay there." As no Sydney Grammar boy ever dreamed of disobeying him, it was up to me and my stay at the wickets lasted for about 40 minutes, which I imagine was almost a slow scoring record for grade cricket. Meanwhile Harry was belting the bowling to the four winds of Heaven and when Bert Hopkins skittled my wicket with one of his swervers, only a few runs were necessary...
In fact, the scores were level when Garnsey was dismissed, and Ossie Preston hit the winning single with just enough time left in the match for Donnan to reach Burwood's first double century, an unbeaten 200 made in just under four hours. Burwood's other representative cricketer, Jack Ferris, also batted well enough during the season to be chosen to open the innings for New South Wales, and he hit a bold 63 in a century opening stand with Donnan against Glebe. But his bowling had deteriorated terribly. He was seldom even tidy, and in the whole season he captured only nine costly wickets. It fell to Bob Barbour and Preston to carry the attack. They were tireless and enthusiastic, but sorely wanted support although they enjoyed some memorable days, especially when they shared 17 wickets while routing East Sydney for 88 and 159.
Jack Ferris as a member of the Australian team in 1890; by the time he joined Burwood, his renowned skill with the ball has disappeared.
Harry Donnan achieved a rather more dubious record in the match against Paddington, when he became the first batsman to be dismissed "handled the ball" in Sydney Grade cricket. By one account,
The dismissal of Donnan was peculiar. He covered his wicket with his body to a slow leg break, the ball struck his body above the pads, and dropped into the flap of one of them. Kelly emerged from his position behind the stumps to get the ball, but Donnan turned away from him, at the same time endeavouring to dislodge the ball by flipping it. The ball fell, and touched Kelly's hand (by this time through Donnan's legs); one of the fieldsmen appealed, and the batsman was given out "handled the ball". After he had left the wicket, the fieldsmen congregated, and it was suggested that Donnan be invited to continue his innings, but a majority were against it, inasmuch as they considered that he had touched the ball, and was legitimately out. What struck me as the most peculiar thing about it was Donnan's endeavour to avoid Kelly, it being very plain that the ball had not touched his bat.
Under the game's current Laws, of course, the ball would have been declared dead as soon as it lodged in Donnan's pad. Donnan was furious, especially as he maintained that he had not touched the ball at all. His partner at the crease at the time was EB Dwyer, who was so upset by the incident that at the end of the over, he left the crease and was recorded as "retired, out", so that Burwood conceded two unearned wickets in extraordinary circumstances. Dwyer played only one more season for Burwood, and some matches for Glebe, before he migrated to England to play county cricket for Sussex.
Four victories, against three losses and two draws, represented steady progress for Burwood. The club was especially encouraged by the promise of its younger players and the unexpected success of Second Grade, which (with ten victories in thirteen matches) won Burwood's first premiership. Arthur Dight hit 161 against Leichhardt, William Robison stroked 103 against Manly, and Andy McCredie and Ted Rogers were consistently penetrative with the ball. It was George Rogers, Ted's brother, who claimed the club's first hat-trick while taking 7-24 against Randwick, but just a few weeks later Ted repeated his brother's feat against St George.
In the early days of Electoral cricket, residential qualifications were enforced strictly. When the New South Wales Cricket Association tightened up the qualifications for the University club, the Test veteran Tom Garrett was forced to leave the club he had represented for 25 years. Garrett applied to the Association for dispensation to play for Central Cumberland, where he had many friends, but his request was rejected and his Strathfield address compelled him to turn out for Burwood. With a nice irony, his first significant contribution to his new club was to take 5-27 to clinch victory over Central Cumberland.
Garrett, a member of Australia's first ever Test team in 1877, was 40 years old when he first appeared for Burwood, but he remained a vigorous batsman, artful medium- pacer and shrewd tactician. Burwood valued his experience and leadership so highly that, on one occasion, Garrett was selected in a two-day match even though he was available to play only on the second day. Occasionally, Garrett was joined in the Burwood team by another old University cricketer, his good friend Roland Pope. Pope, who had played one Test in 1884- 85, was an astonishing character: an eye surgeon, he played cricket, tennis, rugby and golf to a high standard, spoke French and Latin, played the pipe organ, and gathered a vast personal library and a highly valuable collection of Australian paintings. Besides all that, the two wickets he captured for Burwood in 1902 seem to have been the last ones taken in Sydney First Grade cricket by an underarm bowler. His connections with the district were impeccable, since his father, John, had been the first Mayor of Ashfield.
And yet Burwood's progress stalled. First Grade finished last in 1899-1900, and again in the following season. The club's best players were only intermittently available, and too often the bowling was toothless, though Bob Barbour worked as hard as ever and Garnsey, when he was able to play, showed immense promise. So blunt was the attack that the club's 32 year old Secretary, Ted Rogers, was recalled to First Grade, where he surprised everyone by taking 6- 26 against Paddington. Harry Donnan, who sent down his medium-pacers with an old- fashioned, round-arm action, captured the prized wicket of Trumper for 26 before the lively Rogers removed MA Noble for 79 and swept through the tail to dismiss Paddington, the season's premiers, for 157. But their efforts were put into perspective by Trumper and Noble, who humbled Burwood for 57. It was typical of Burwood's fortunes that, on a rare occasion when the bowlers excelled themselves, the batting was dismal.
In 1899-1900, the Cricket Association introduced a third grade of competition by splitting Second Grade into an "A" division and a "B" division. Fielding a third team meant that Burwood needed to find a second ground, and in any case the Burwood Ground had never been entirely popular with the players: as George Barbour remembered it, the "ground was small, the surface gravelly, and sloping towards the eastern side." And so Ted Rogers negotiated a lease of St Luke's Park with Concord Council. Rogers wanted the cricket club to have the highest possible degree of control over the ground, so the deal he struck was that, instead of paying a normal rent for the ground, the club would take responsibility for the maintenance of the ground and the employment of the curator.
Rogers won control of the new ground, but the price he paid nearly ruined the club. The cost of maintaining and improving the ground was never less than £40, and often much more, while the wages of the curator rose to £78 - although the club's income from subscriptions was less than £70. It was even costly to move to the new ground, since the pavilion from the Burwood Recreation Ground was dismantled and rebuilt at St Luke's. The New South Wales Cricket Association sometimes made grants to the club to assist in the development of the ground, and the Metropolitan Rugby Union, the winter tenant, helped as well, but for several seasons the club operated at a heavy loss and carried a worrying level of debt. In some seasons, the club met its obligations only because it was supported by loans from Ted Rogers, not all of which were repaid.
At the end of its fifth season, 1901- 02, Burwood was in a sorry condition: last in the First Grade competition, deep in debt, and sometimes embarrassing in the lower grades: only three players turned up for a Third Grade match against North Sydney. Not even Ted Rogers at his most optimistic could have guessed at the heights that the Burwood club was about to reach.
