EST. 1959Brothers Cricket
Club Townsville CLUB HISTORY
Brothers Cricket Club has a long history here in Townsville. In 1959, our club was founded by local Cyril 'Nunk' Patterson. Cyril formed the first Brothers Junior Cricket (BJC) team with students from the St John Fishers School located in Currajong. St John Fishers School was a Christian Brothers School, hence the naming of the team as 'Brothers'. The school still stands today and is now known as the Marian Catholic Primary School.
When the students of the BJC team left school, Cyril then formed the Past Brothers Cricket Club (PBCC) that competed in the Townsville Cricket Senior Competition. Both PBCC and BJC operated as separate clubs throughout the 1960s and 1970s with PBCC dropping the 'Past' from their name to become Brothers Cricket Club (BCC) in the 1970s. In the 1980s, BCC and BJC merged to form Brothers Cricket Club, Inc. as it exists to this day.
Throughout the 1970s through to the late 1990s our club was based at Ignatius Park College (a Christian Brothers College) in Cranbrook, and the initial construction of the current Ignatius Park College (IPC) Cricket nets being the work of Brothers Cricket Club members. Today, several of our club's junior teams continue to train and use the nets at IPC. Our Under 11 and Under 13 teams also play their 'home' matches on the astroturf wicket located at the College.
We pay homage to our clubs inception each year through the Perpetual Award, the St John Fishers Shield. This award recognises the Best & Fairest Cricketer of Primary School Age.
In the late 1990s, long serving former club president John McCulloch led the organisation and construction of our clubhouse, turf wicket and practice nets at our current home at Kern Brothers Drive in Kirwan. The clubhouse was opened and training and matches commenced at our new home in the 2000/01 season.
From the mid 1990s through to the mid 2000s, our club enjoyed fantastic success in both juniors and seniors, with 10 consecutive A Grade premierships during that time establishing BCC as a genuine strength in Townsville Cricket.
In 2009 our club celebrated its 50th anniversary and it was around this time that our oval was formally named and became recognised as the 'John McCulloch Oval' by Townsville City Council.
In recent years, our club has been led by current president Kevin Buchanan. Kevin has been a member of our club since childhood and in addition to the day to day running of the club as president, he has led several key projects to take our club forward positively into the future. These projects include upgrades to our practice nets and the extension of our shed to hold equipment for ground preparation. The recent addition of lighting of our practice nets for night time practice is a wonderful achievement of Kevin's and a great benefit to the current and future members of our club.
Brothers continues to hold a strong presence within the Townsville cricket community, regularly competing in finals across most divisions. The 2020/21 season saw Brothers return to the podium winning the coveted A Grade premiership.
Brothers Cricket Club Inc. is still a growing club, with new members always welcome, and is well placed for the future across all age groups.