Today the Gundaroo Cricket Club is very active and is known as the Goats and has both Senior and Junior teams.

PLAYERS WANTED

Still playing socially 160 years on…

An amazing history

Gundaroo played its first cricket game on August 30 1859 against Ginninderra at the Gundaroo park after being challenged. At that time, well before the ACT existed, it took four hours for the Gunninderra team, with wives and friends, to comes across by bullock drays on dirt tracks to get to the venue.

Gundaroo lost terribly to Ginninderra, but it was still a fun day. The Gundaroo postmaster, as reported in the Yass Tribune at the time, lamented that their team were unmanned as they originally thought it was going to be played the following week and were caught off guard.  Also some of their key players were away off harvesting.

130 years later in 1989, the Sutton and District Cricket Association managed by Jed Johnson who was Captain of Sutton Cricket Club at the time, reported in the Queanbeyan Age that the same two teams met again in the final of that year.  Jed was scorer for the match and aware of the Yass Tribune article and taking notes in the pitched tent, while talking to the Captain of Gundaroo, Ron Miller. Ron also happened to be the current Gundaroo Postmaster.  Gundaroo were losing terribly.

Then Ron, totally unaware of the history, remarked to Jed that their main wicket keeper, Peter Dyce, couldn’t make it as he was hay carting…and then followed that up by saying- “and you know we thought this was next week so quite a few of the key team players were not able to come”.   Jed was flummoxed.

At the end of the game during the presentation of the cup, this this story was relayed to all that gathered.

Blimey.  History does repeat itself!