“The thought of the cricket club folding completely after 150-odd years was pretty devastating.”
Whittlesea Eagles Cricket Club secretary Blair Meaney was faced with the possibility of the now 160-year-old club closing its doors for good in 2023.
The club situated in Melbourne’s northern suburbs is one of many local clubs across the country battling to survive, as grassroots cricket faces declining participation and volunteer shortages.
The AF Walker Recreation Reserve is Whittlesea’s home ground. Officially listed in 1866, the reserve became the permanent home of the Eagles and hosted cricket matches for generations. This year, the cricket club celebrates its 160th anniversary.
But in recent years, the Eagles have struggled to stay afloat due to diminishing participation and a lack of administration. Meaney is a former president of the club, and the club’s current secretary.
“[There was] too many players getting big money offers from other clubs, and no one was interested in jumping on the committee to help out,” Meaney tells upstart. “And the guys wanted to spend their summers doing other things, not cricket.”
The club was running smoothly in the early 2010s, with multiple senior and junior teams, including a veteran and women’s team, but those numbers declined across the following decade. The issue came to a head in the 2023-24 season, when Whittlesea didn’t have enough players to field any senior teams.
“I spent a lot of time talking to numerous players about coming to play for Whittlesea,” he says. “We worked our arses off trying to do everything we could to keep the club going.”
Nicholas Papadopoulos played both senior and junior cricket for Whittlesea. He joined the club in the summer of 2017, but his stay wasn’t long. Initially he enjoyed playing at Whittlesea, but he felt his opportunities during his junior cricket spell were limited.
“I only bowled a couple overs during each game, and I never had a bat,” he tells upstart.
After feeling left out in his junior team, he later joined the senior side, regularly playing alongside his dad in the men’s second XI. But he says his experience still left him uncertain about his future at the club.
“I’m paying all this money just to play twos, when I should be experiencing all this from playing in the juniors.”
Papadopoulos left the club five years ago and says parts of the club culture frustrated him, including being teased by his junior teammates.
“They would tease me for not being able to play cricket and not being good at it, even though I hardly played.”
Whittlesea isn’t the only club to experience these challenges. Some clubs have managed to find ways to ensure their future.
Clayton Hawkins is the former president of the Wynyard Cricket Club in Tasmania. During his time at the club, Wynyard struggled with low senior player numbers and volunteer shortages. One solution was merging with nearby Myalla Cricket Club.
While Wynyard had a strong junior participation base, they lacked enough seniors and volunteers. Myalla were the opposite, with strength in their senior core, making the merger idea attractive to both sides.
“We were struggling to make money because we weren’t competitive on the field,” Hawkins tells upstart. “Also, when you’ve got lots of kids, kids cost money to put on.”
The decision to merge was made in 2020, forming the Wynyard and Districts Cricket Club. This created a strong participation base across juniors, seniors and volunteers.
“The club is the second largest in the northern half of Tasmania by participation,” Hawkins says.
Migrant communities are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining local cricket clubs Hawkins says.
“We are seeing more people from the subcontinent lifting our sides, and I can only see that growing. I look at Melbourne, the amount of people from subcontinent backgrounds playing in competitions is huge, and I think it’s for the good.”
That shift has also been felt at Whittlesea, where many members of the local Sri Lankan diaspora have joined the club as players and administrators. The influx has sparked a sense of revival during the club’s time of need.
This culminated in a successful 2025-26 season for the club, as its first XI, with many of these new members, won the premiership at AF Walker Reserve.
“Grand final day was something you had to see to believe,” Meaney says. “The joy and excitement on all their faces when they won was unbelievable.”
It also became a family affair and united the Whittlesea community.
“To see the way they got around each other and involved their families was something that I have never seen before in cricket,” he says.
Similarly, the Eagles are investing more in junior cricket and currently have seven junior teams, including two premiership-winning sides.
“We’ve done a lot of advertising through schools and social media, looking for kids to join the club,” Meaney says. “The main goal of all this work is to bring the junior kids through to hopefully one day play senior cricket at Whittlesea.”
As the club heads into its 160th year, Meaney knows that nurturing and celebrating their history has never been so important.
“At the moment, the future looks bright, though I know this could easily change at any point.”
Article: Thomas Stewart is a third-year Bachelor of Media and Communications (Sports Media) student at La Trobe University. You can follow him on X at @ThomasStew26182.
Cover photo: Members of the Whittlesea Cricket Club in front of AF Walker Recreation Reserve clubrooms. Photo by Blair Meaney.
