The Madeline Street property was instead made available to the Catholic-driven and now-defunct Hotham Football Club, the forerunner to North Melbourne - and as the Carlton players were forced to ply their crafts on alternate grounds at Royal Park and East Melbourne, members of the rank and file were banding together with the club’s imprimatur in the interests of securing a permanent place.
On June 9 of that year, the Melbourne City Council granted Carlton use of eleven acres on the southern side of Princes Park. There were conditions that limited the club’s revenue potential, with no fences to be erected and no fees charged for admission . . . regardless, this was a victory for people power.
In the lead-up to the council ruling, more than 2800 Carlton sympathisers lent their signatures to a formal petition lodged by the club with the Melbourne City Council requesting that the area be allocated for future matches.
That petition can now be revealed for the first time in 133 years, having been located in the archives of North Melbourne’s Public Records Office by the great-great grandson of the man who led the people’s push, the aptly-named Carlton secretary and former player Thomas Peter Power.
It was Cameron Power who recently sourced the signatures and the petition. The petition, addressed “To the right Worshipful the Mayor Aldermen and Councillors of the City of Melbourne”, reflects a genuine passion inherent in the good people of Carlton for both their club and their game.
“We the undersigned ratepayers and other residents in the various Wards and Suburbs of the City of Melbourne, being admirers of the popular and manly sport of Football and concurring in the action of the Carlton Football Club in applying for the southern portion of the Princes Park as a playground desire respectfully to give such application our heartiest support,” the petition reads.
“ . . . we hasten to entreat the Corporation to grant the Club’s request, that the coming winter may see us in the full enjoyment of what we have hitherto so gladly participated in.”
The petition to the Melbourne City Council
Included with the petition was a formal letter to the council, dated April 23, 1878 and penned by Tom Power himself, which reads in part:-
“The members of the Carlton Football Club respectively beg to apply for the Southern portion of the Princes Park as a playground. The popularity and prestige of the Club is widely known, and the patronage bestowed upon its endeavours to promote the favourite game of football renders it necessary to provide accommodation commensurate with its yearly importance”.
“It is . . . the Club’s intention . . . simply to provide for its members and football players generally a suitable and proper playground and afford thousands of admirers, a gratification and pleasure the absence of which has been a long time felt.”
Cameron Power made the extraordinary find in November with remarkably little to go on.
“All I knew was that Thomas Power was secretary at the time Carlton was moving from Madeline Street to Princes Oval, and I remember thinking maybe the council might have something,” Power said.
“I contacted the City of Melbourne and they wrote back to me with a folio reference relating to parks and reserves for the period 1878-79. The PRO came up with a whole box of various documents and my father and I ploughed through them all to find Tom’s papers and the petition.
“It’s just wonderful to discover that my great-great grandfather galvanised the whole Carlton community to find a permanent home. He led the push.”
