Recreation in Liverpool: Organised Sports
Glenfield Cricket Club was formed in about 1891 and a combined cricket team from the
Liverpool sawmills played the Cabramatta sawmen in 1900. (Keating, 1996, p.118) The
Badgerys Creek Cricket team was formed in 1896 and is still in existence, celebrating its
centenary at a dinner at the Hubertus Country Club in May 1996. A photograph of an
early Badgerys Creek Cricket team showed that Badgerys Creek could have fielded two
teams although the two twelfth men would have been rather young. (Donald, 1996,
p.135)
By 1901 the Liverpool Admirals Football Club was going but apparently not too strongly:
they went down six goals to nil in the July match against Homebush Juniors and in the
next year by a similar score to the Paddington Federals. In June 1902 Liverpool Council
staff challenged Smithfield and Fairfield Councils to the rigours of an inter-council quoits
match at the Collingwood Hotel. (Keating, 1996, p.119).
Sport has not been documented very well in the Liverpool region so most of the
information comes from On the Frontier or the Community Information Directory
prepared by Liverpool City Library, with other items added in.
By the late 1930s organised sport was becoming a major part of the local social
network. By then the old Liverpool Wanderers Rugby League team, which had formed
in 1912 and played on the riverbank near the old Wool Wash and then at Woodward
Park had folded. However, the game was revived in 1939 with the formation of the
Liverpool Regals teams, who were admitted to A Grade the next year. Cricket, hockey
and especially foot-racing were still strong in the area with the Foresters, the
Oddfellows and the St. Patrick's Day sports meetings drawing big crowds to Paine's
Paddock (in Hoxton Park Road), the Showground and the old Coursing Ground
respectively.
It was in cycling that the town really excelled, having some of the speediest wheelmen
in the country. The Walcott family were well-known road racers in the early decades of
the century and, in 1924 the local boy Wally Coppins won in Ireland and France and
represented Australia at the Paris Olympics. (Keating, 1996, p.171)
Liverpool Tennis Club was reconstituted in 1920 and was instrumental in the formation
of the Southern Districts Tennis Association in 1922.
By 1911 the Liverpool Golf Club ran a course off Illawarra (now Heathcote) Road at
Moorebank and in 1931 R.A. Lovejoy and F.A. Crowe opened a new course at
Collingwood using Eber Bunker's early colonial home as a clubhouse. Hunting and
fishing were less organised, but there were various local rifle clubs and the fishing club
stocked Clinches Pond with Prussian carp and, somewhat optimistically, released 32,000
brown trout above the dam in the George's River.
A lifesaving Club operated on the river and on Eight Hour Days the tiny Casula railway
station was packed with picnickers heading for the swimming holes on the river at de
Meyrick's property. Apart from golf, tennis and horse riding there was far less organised
recreation for the women of the town. Leisure activities were often affected by the
need to tend children, husbands and houses, so home-based activities and family
outings like picnics were more likely for them. (Keating, 1996, p.171-2)
Other sporting activities have developed over the years as Liverpool has grown. With
the advent of the Little Athletics organisation there were active groups at Liverpool and
at Green Valley and an Amateur athletic club in Liverpool. The Liverpool Women's
Amateur Athletic Club began in June 1959. Both Little Athletics groups are still active
today.
Basketball is a fairly recent sport in the Liverpool area with the West Sydney Razorbacks
joining the NBL. The local women's team is the West Sydney Diamonds and there is also
a strong Wheelchair Basketball team. There are also teams for youngsters interested in
the game. Basketball appears to have been a sport in Liverpool from at least the 1950s.
For a number of years Motor racing was held at the Warwick Farm race course and
there was the Liverpool City Speedway at Wilson Road (now the site of the Valley Plaza
shopping Centre and the Community Centre) operated from May 1967 to 1985.
Liverpool still has golf courses at Tree Valley (at Prestons), the Liverpool club (which
moved from Collingwood to Lansvale), the New Brighton Club (at Hammondville) and a
nine-hole course along Orange Grove Road, although this has recently been sold and
may be used for other purposes. The Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) also have a golf
course at Moorebank.
The Liverpool/Moorebank hockey team has been running since about 1930. - the club
had been running for at least thirty years when it was mentioned in the Leader in 1961.
There are a number of other sporting organisations mentioned in early copies of The
Leader (and we have only odd numbers in the 1940s-1950s). In 1946 The Liverpool
Bowling Club was mentioned and by 1955 (our next paper) there were table tennis and
women's bowls as well as a Liverpool Photographic Society and a Police Citizens' Boys
club all of which appear to have been going for some time. In 1962 there were local
baseball teams and today there are active baseball teams at the Chipping Norton Sports
Club.
The Liverpool Memorial Swimming Pool was opened on 7th November 1959, providing
public swimming facilities in Liverpool for the first time. For the first fifteen days there
were 15,000 people attending the pool. It remained a popular place for many years,
Beverley Donald remembers visiting the baths in the early 1970s on a public holiday
when there was ‘standing room only' - swimming was impossible.
A swimming club had operated in the Georges River (presumably at Hind Park Baths)
well before the construction of the pool. The Swimming Club commenced before the
opening of the pool and was ready to start activities immediately. The pool was a
popular place for recreation and a meeting place for children and young adults. ‘Young
people made friendships at the pool, met boyfriends and girlfriends, and sometimes
future partners. (Maxine Tyrrell, personal Communication at meeting 4 June 1997 in
Walker, Meredith, Lehaney, Michael and McDonald, Patricia, Liverpool Memorial Olympic
Pool: Heritage assessment and policy, 1997. Liverpool City Council, 1997, p.34.)
The pool was closed on 17th March 1994 and the new pool complex at the E.G. Whitlam
Centre was commenced in 1993 and opened on 17 December 1995. (Most information
for this section on the pool came from Walker, 1997). There are also swimming pools at
the Michael Wenden Centre at Miller and at Holsworthy.
Two significant swimmers to come from the Liverpool Pool were Michael Wenden, who
represented Australia at two Olympic and three Commonwealth games, winning 11
gold, four silver and two bronze medals, and Cindy-Lu Fitzpatrick, a deaf swimmer who
represented Australia at World Championships and Commonwealth Games.
Trotting has been a popular sport in the area with several people out in Badgerys Creek.
One Badgerys Creek resident became interested in trotting in the 1950s and one of his
horses Silver Brim won ten races in a row at Newcastle and was a very fine horse.
Unfortunately, just after he started competing at Harold Park, he shied at something
while he was at training and was injured and never raced successfully again.
(Donald, 1996, p.135)
There is a Rifle Club at Luddenham which started off as the Hubertus Rifle Club and was
a German Club until about ten years ago. It started in 1969 with meetings at the Golden
Fleece Hotel and then the Cross Roads Hotel. Their first shooting was at Cooper's Farm
at Denham Court, and then they used the Liverpool Council and Green Valley Hall. In
1972 they moved to a chicken shed on the corner of Elizabeth Drive and Badgerys Creek
Road, which was referred to as ‘the old Chook Shed'. At this site they had a twentyeight-stand range out the back. The ‘chook shed' had to go for the proposed Badgerys
Creek Airport and now they have the very modern Hubertus Country Club at
Luddenham.
Liverpool District Football Club (1924) Source – Mar Mary Murray