They say a picture paints a thousand words yet looking at the photo of the Australian cricket team for the second test of the 1936 Ashes you would never tell there was a deep tension between the captain Don Bradman and the players sitting either side of him, Stan McCabe and Jack Fingleton.
The 1930s was a golden age of Australian cricket. More than any other sport, cricket was the sport that really brought Australia together, yet the national team itself was divided between two groups, an Anglo cohort and an Irish group.
The tension had been simmering from the early 1930s but reached its pinnacle after the second test of the 1936 Ashes.
The roots of the tension began during England's previous Ashes tour to Australia. The English team were determined to defeat the Australians on their visit down under in 1932-3 having lost the Ashes on home turf in 1930.
The English did win the Ashes but the controversial 'Bodyline' methods they employed caused a lot of anger, near rioting and almost a diplomatic incident between the two countries.
The reason for the Bodyline tactics were to prevent the legendary Bradman getting into a stride with his batting. The tactic worked, Bradman wasn’t as effective as he’d normally be in a career that is regarded as one of the greatest.
Fingleton, who had Irish heritage, was drawn into controversy during the Bodyline series. Fingleton, whose father was a trade unionist and politician, was a journalist by trade. He had come into the Australian team to face South Africa in 1931 after good performances for New South Wales.
Having performed well against the Bodyline tactics for New South Wales, Fingleton was included in the Australia team. He performed well in the Second Test but poorly in the Third.
After the third Test, Fingleton was blamed as the source of a newspaper leak that shook the conservative world of cricket. Leaks at the time were not the done thing and it became a serious threat to the whole series.
Fingleton claimed that Bradman was the source of the leak, which began the start of a long feud between the two.
Fingleton was dropped for the two remaining Tests but would later be recalled to the Australian team, playing his best cricket in a period when Bradman was unavailable to play, in particular on tour in South Africa in 1936.
This Ashes series marked the emergence of a number of players with Irish heritage. Aside from Fingleton there was Bill O’Reilly, Stan McCabe and Leo O’Brien. All four had an Irish grandfather, three of whom were policemen. All four cricketers received an education through Catholic schools in Australia which at the time was dominated by Irish orders or by Irish priests working for other orders.
The personalities of this group were in contrast to the reserved, distant Bradman who preferred his own company to that of his team-mates.
The finest player in the Irish group was O’Reilly. Such was his career that he was included in the first group in the Australian cricket Hall of Fame. His grandfather was a Cavan born policeman who moved to Sydney in 1865 and was later assigned to a post in the Riverina, an area of south west New South Wales that was starting to be settled by Europeans for agricultural use.
It was a dangerous time for policemen in a newly developing territory with many acting outside the law, including the notorious Victoria based Ned Kelly who sometimes operated in the Riverina area.
O’Reilly’s father was a teacher and they moved frequently in his childhood. The younger O'Reilly grew up playing informal games of cricket before progressing to town teams in communities that were often Irish majority but also crazy about the sport.
Bill became a boarder at St. Patrick’s College, Goulburn and it was here that his athletic prowess really came to the fore, competing in athletics, rugby league, tennis, and cricket. Dismayed with Sydney Teaching College, O’Reilly abandoned his training for first-hand teaching experience. He got a job in a government school in Erskineville, a poor inner city area of Sydney with many Irish and British immigrants.
By now, O’Reilly’s cricketing career was beginning to progress. While at college he began to get noticed and he also had his first encounter with Bradman who was playing for Bowral and O’Reilly playing for his home team, Wingello.
O’Reilly was also playing club cricket in Sydney which saw him catch the attention of New South Wales selectors. Just as his cricket career was taking off, he was transferred to a teaching post in the New South Wales outback where he was unable to play top-level cricket. He returned to Sydney two years later in 1930 and once re-established found himself called up to the Australian national team in 1932.
The prominence of O’Reilly in the 1930s was unfortunate for other talented Aussie bowlers including Leslie O’Brien Fleetwood-Smith, who partially shared O’Reilly’s Irish heritage. 'Chuck', as Fleetwood-Smith was known, would only play ten times for Australia and while his bowling was much admired, his batting and fielding were weak. Chuck was an eccentric player whose handsome Clark Gable looks caught the attention of many women.
Like O’Reilly, the grandfathers of Stan McCabe and Leo O’Brien were both policemen. O’Brien’s father Luke would also join the force rising to the rank of Superintendent in Melbourne. Leo was educated in Catholic schools run by Irish priests where he also developed his cricket skills. He would play five times for Australia in total, playing his first international Test game in the Second Test of the Bodyline Ashes.
It was during that infamous series that McCabe made a name for himself, standing tall against the onslaught of balls in the first Test. Such was the controversy around the English tactics that Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons had to de-escalate a diplomatic incident by the third Test.
Tasmanian-born Lyons had Irish connections on both sides. His father was born in Tasmania to parents who immigrated from Galway and his mother was born in Kildare.
McCabe, from Grenfell, New South Wales, was the son of a barber. His sporting ability saw him win a scholarship to St. Joseph’s College, Hunter's Hill in Sydney where he excelled on the sports field and academically.
He trained as an accountant and settled in Sydney where he progressed from club to state and was playing international cricket at just 19 years old. McCabe gained a reputation for excelling when the going was tough. On the South African tour in 1936, he became vice captain and remained so for the 1936-7 Ashes.
All five of these players - O’Reilly, Fleetwood-Smith, O’Brien, McCabe, and Fingleton - emerged to prominence while Edmund 'Chappie' Dwyer was a national team selector from 1930 to 1952.
Dwyer, whose Irish born father was a book-seller, never played international cricket himself but was appreciated as a selector and manager and greatly assisted several players, particularly McCabe. Of that group, O’Reilly, McCabe and Fingleton were the key players. While Bradman respected their skills as cricketers, he grew more and more suspicious of the Irish group.
Over time the simmering tension began to bubble and boil between the Irish Catholic group and the Anglo-Protestant group in Aussie cricket personified by Bradman. This tension reflected a wider notion that there was some sort of Irish Catholic disloyalty to Australia.
This notion was quite prevalent during the Great War when the voices of a few were made to count for the many and the feeling lingered into the 1930s. There is a certain irony in this as many Australian-Irish would have sought to play cricket in an attempt to show themselves as good Australians.
For the 1936-7 Ashes, Bradman returned to international cricket and was now captaining the team. He felt there were certain players on the team trying to undermine him and install vice-captain McCabe as captain.
After Australia lost the first test, tensions began to escalate. The team photograph for the second Test is very interesting considering the strained relationship that Bradman had with the men - McCabe and Fingleton - sitting either side of him.
After the loss of the second test, the tension ratcheted up further. Four players, all Irish Catholics – McCabe, O’Reilly, O’Brien and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith - were picked out with Fingleton excluded because of his journalist background.
The group was summoned by the Australian Cricket Board of Control and accused of undermining Bradman, being lazy and generally not playing their part.
Fingleton was accused of being the ring leader attempting to install McCabe as captain. Bradman played innocent and denied any knowledge of the meeting.
The legendary batsman denied that he was anti-Catholic but his relationships with O’Reilly and Fingleton were damaged beyond repair. The rumours of dissent in the camp became sensational news in the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
Yet, the team somehow managed to put the controversy behind them. McCabe stepped up in the first innings of the third Test. Bradman scored 270 in the second innings of the third Test, regarded as the finest ever batting display. He was supported by Fingleton.
The bowling of Fleetwood-Smith played a pivotal role in the fourth Test. McCabe struck a century in the fifth Test. O’Reilly performed admirably throughout as well. Against the odds, Australia would go on to win the remaining three Tests in the series claiming an unlikely victory.
While Australia claimed the Ashes the lasting tensions effectively ended the international careers of O’Brien and 'Chuck' Fleetwood-Smith. O’Brien worked many years in a tax office but sadly 'Chuck’s' later years saw him battle alcohol. He was arrested for vagrancy and theft in 1969 while living homeless. The public shock at his decline helped him reconcile with his family but the years of hard living took their toll and he died at age 62.
McCabe played internationally for a few more years. He received compliments from Bradman in 1938 when he put on his finest display against England in what would be his final tour. Despite the rivalry, Bradman regarded McCabe as one of the greatest batsmen he had seen.
McCabe, who once ran a sports shop in conjunction with O’Reilly, met an unfortunate end, falling off a cliff at age 58 while deposing of a dead possum. The evidence indicating that it was an awful accident.
Fingleton enjoyed a career as a cricket journalist often sparring with his foe Bradman while also writing a number of books on the sport. Aside from cricket he was also a political journalist who wrote on the Canberra-based federal government. O’Reilly too went into journalism and was also known to criticise Bradman.
While Bradman may have been in conflict with him, he did admire him as a cricketer proclaiming that he was one of the greatest bowlers of all time. O'Reilly was the last of the Irish group to retire in 1946. Bradman would later say that the 1948 Invincible Team that toured England undefeated was the happiest time of his career inferring that he was happy because the Irish interference was no longer present.
The Australian cricket team became a microcosm of wider Australian society in the 1930s. A distrust of Irish Catholics seeped into the team and yet the very fact that five of the players had Irish heritage indicated how much the Irish were willing to integrate and play a part in Australian society.
These Irish heritage players were proud to represent Australia and wear the famous Baggie Green hat. Players such as O’Reilly and McCabe are among the best to have ever played for Australia and are still remembered fondly.
Samuel Kingston is a sports historian from Clonakilty, Co Cork. His ebook, The Irish World of Sport, is out now.
