In the grand scheme of things another club dinner may not seem all that enterprising, but when you look at how the Cliftonville members have faced adversity in the past forty years and bounced back, it says much for their spirit and camaraderie that they can set aside the bad times and look forward with such optimism.
Cliftonville Cricket Club was established in 1870 and is a founder member of the Northern Cricket Union. The club played a leading part in the early development of the union. Not only did Cliftonville perform with distinction on the field, but the club supplied a plethora of representative players and some leading administrators who are up there with the icons in NCU cricket. The Cliftonville ground was also extensively used for representative matches, particularly for senior cup semi-final and final matches. Big crowds attended the matches in the early years, and the venue was widely acknowledged as second only to Ormeau in status.
Perhaps their best-known administrator in the early 1900s was the legendary Dr. AB Mitchell (alias W Denne) who seemed to have great difficulty in trying to fit in his work responsibilities at the Royal Victoria Hospital around his cricket passion, hence the alias. Dr. Mitchell was a tremendous stalwart at the club and he attracted many fine players and took the lead in fund-raising and running the club. He recruited the gifted HE Wood from Armagh, who not only performed with distinction on the field, but was also an efficient honorary treasurer for the NCU from 1915 to 1922. Dr. Mitchell served as NCU president from 1903 to 1908 and it seemed his service would never be surpassed at Cliftonville, but then along came the inimitable Jimmy Picken.
JC “Jimmy” Picken gave club and union unprecedented service in a wide variety of roles for over fifty years, and his columns in the Ireland Saturday Night in the early 1920s are wonderful archives that have recorded much of the early history of cricket in Ulster. He was elected president in 1962 and awarded the MBE for services to cricket.
On the field Cliftonville have won the senior cup twice and the NCU senior league title six times. However, in 1972 republican thugs ransacked the clubhouse and destroyed their ground forcing them into a virtual nomadic existence. They later settled at Mallusk and Greenisland. It says volumes for their perseverance and courage that they did not fold, and amazingly they bounced back in the nineties to dominate NCU cricket and win the senior league on three consecutive occasions. They also won their way through to the Irish Senior Cup final in 2001, no mean achievement given the NCU’s poor returns for 15 years. Indeed they were the last NCU club to reach the final.
However, although ground problems were never off the radar, the loss of their talisman Kyle McCallen was a huge blow to their playing resources. In fairness to Kyle, he stayed with the club through many tough years and his decision to move to Waringstown was largely due to a change of residence, marriage and a new chapter in his life.
Cricket is not just about trophies and the Cliftonville members are to be applauded for looking outside the box and launching their Hall of Fame with a nostalgic dinner at the Europa Hotel on 16 April. It will be a great occasion for former members to roll back the clock and mix with the current members who have done so much to keep the club alive. It will also be fitting to commemorate the club icons, who performed beyond the call of duty in different eras. The nominations are sure to stir a lot of interest and the awardees will have a fitting place in the club archives.
The club lays claim to be one of the greatest in Irish cricket and looking back down the years they fully deserve the billing.
Tickets are £35 each and can be obtained by sending cheques, made payable to Cliftonville Cricket Club, to either Jim Munn, 20 Grangeleigh Avenue, Ballymena, BT42 2AP (Tel. 02825 649386) or Crawford McCully, 51 Schomberg Avenue, Belfast BT4 2JR (Tel. 02890 760593). The invitation is also extended to wives and partners.
