Pictured here resplendent in their creams are members of the Carlton Footballers’ Cricket Club of 1932/33. Amongst them is Frank Gill, who would later represent Carlton in its drought-breaking 1938 Grand Final victory over Collingwood.

Gill, a Carlton Best and Fairest winner in ’39, is one of three football club champions featured in the Club XI, together with Edward “Ansell” Clarke (1938) and Creswell Crisp (1934).

“Mickey” Crisp, pictured with his arms folded alongside the suited President Councillor Robert Reynolds, earned the first Robert Reynolds Trophy ever cast for Carlton’s Best and Fairest footballer.

The Carlton Footballers’ Cricket Club was founded in 1929 and duly fielded a team in the then North Suburban Cricket Association. The club was funded by members of the Football Club committee who saw the social advantages to the players of partaking in the summer game.

The first listing for the Carlton Footballers’ Cricket Club appears in the Annual Report of 1930 and reads as follows;

So that our players could keep in touch with one another during the summer season, a Footballers’ Cricket club was formed, which your Committee encouraged by its financial assistance, realising that it would have a very desirable effect. Judging by results to date, the grade of the junior competition in which they are playing is below their class, as they have had no difficulty in winning every match, and every indication points to their being the leaders of the competition at the end of the season.

To Frank Gill (as Captain), J. Green and P. Gillett (Joint Secretaries) and G. Millsom (Treasurer) thanks are due for arranging the details of this social and pleasant fixture.

This photograph was kindly loaned to the club by Genevra Green, daughter of Jack Green. Green, an 85-game player at Carlton, was preparing to embark on the last of his five football seasons at Princes Park in that 1933 year.

Carlton players also featured are Les Allen (who’d played his 29th and final senior game for the footballer club in ’31), the West Australian Ron “Socks” Cooper (157 games, 1932-’42), Eric Little (25 games, 1931-’34) and the cricket team’s captain Tommy Downs.

Downs, a rover recruited to the club from inner city North Fitzroy, won them and wore them through the Depression years at Princes Park. His 56 senior appearances for Carlton in five seasons (1927-29, 1931 and ’33) took in the period in which he was suspended for 60 matches after being wrongly found guilty of kicking Richmond captain Maurie Hunter in the 12th round match of 1931 at Punt Road.

Downs and the club were united in their belief that the little bloke was innocent of the charge, as were the Carlton members. When a meeting of members was called to protest the decision, more than 2000 diehards crammed into the Brunswick Town Hall.

Downs’ case was taken up by Mr. Robert Menzies QC (later Sir Robert, Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister and a lifelong Carlton supporter. But with no avenue of appeal in place at that time, player and club paid a substantial price for what was later discovered to be an umpiring mistake – as Hunter had been accidentally kicked by one of Downs’ teammates.

Downs was represented on last Tuesday night’s Ghosts of Princes Park tour by his grandaughter Anne Downs and great grandson Tommy Downs junior, whose love for Carlton endures.

What became of the Carlton Footballers’ Cricket Club is largely unknown. The team finished the 1933/’34 season runners-up under the captaincy of Jack Cashman, but withdrew from the 1934/’35 finals series when cricket fixtures extended into the ’35 football season.

Ultimately, cricket made way for the winter code as the footballers continued to push for Premiership honors - and in 1938 Gill got there by playing his part in the football club’s first Grand Final victory in 23 seasons.