Lower Eltham Cricket Club History

The Club first played under the name Mountain View Cricket Club in 1970/71 in the Eltham District Cricket Association having been formed from a group of players who were members of the Alphington Methodist Church Cricket Club who decided they should no longer play under the name of the church as they go older.

The name Mountain View came about as the first meeting of the club was held at a member’s house in Mountain View Road Montmorency.

Our first ground used was a very small ground in Eltham North.

We changed our name to Lower Eltham C.C when we secured the use of no 2 oval at Eltham Lower Park and became a member of the Diamond Valley Cricket Association at the commencement of the 1975/76 season. The securing of this ground must be considered to be the most important event in our history as we struggled for a number of years due mainly to the lack of a home ground.

We could be best described as a social cricket team, sometimes unable to field a full team of 11 and it was common for players to bring friends and relatives to make up the numbers.

Most of the players were newly married and young mums would bring their new babies to the ground and feed them after each game, consequently a strong social bond developed very quickly.

Our club founder was Keith Coghlan, after whom the club champion board is named.

This enabled planning to begin, and from 1975 our club grew from one senior C grade side and thirteen members to in season 1981/82 to five open age senior sides and five junior teams. In total, 10 sides and one hundred and fifty members. We must extend our thanks to those thirteen members who worked so hard for the club and without their foresight, our club would not be one of the largest cricket clubs falling within the boundaries in the Shire of Eltham.

To play cricket in the DVCA, you had to be a resident of the Shire of Eltham and when we started, our second side made up from Reservoir YCW footballers, we had to look for vacant blocks of land to use as their address.

We were very fortunate to have a number of talented willing administrators who worked hard and saw the future for the club.

The club is administrated by an executive committee, Coach and various sub-committees all are required to abide by the club constitution.

The club achieved its first premiership success in 1978/79 in B Grade and also the under 16s.

In 1979/80 saw our advancement to A grade and fielding of a side in every grade of the DVCA and being one of the instigators of a new under 12 juniors grade which commenced in 1979/80.

The 1980/81 season found the club finding the pressure of going from C grade to A grade in a few years. 1982/83 and 1983/84 were lean years as far as success goes, although we had no shortage of players. Our juniors gained senior experience in those two years as a lot of time was spent in developing those players for our future.

The commencement of the 1985/86 season saw the Diamond Valley Cricket Association trying to relegate our A grade side to B grade, but through a lot of work by the committee and support from a number of DVCA clubs, this was averted. All we hoped is the DVCA could see the work we had been doing in developing our juniors for the future, as well as that we will be a successful club in the future.

A partnership was established between the Lower Eltham CC and Research Football Club.

This was registered on 7th August 1987 and its members were the LECC and Research Football Club. This was established to negotiate with the Shire of Eltham for the building of a social room for both clubs use.

The Social Club opened in 1988 at a cost of $170,000. The funding was made up of LECC $17,775 and Research FC $62,775m, the balance Shire of Eltham.

LECC members loaned the club $10,000 which was repaid in 2 years as was Research FC loan contributors. The contribution was in multiples of $250 up to $1000.

The founders Club Honour Board in the social club lists the names of those for both the football and cricket club who loaned the club the funds required for the construction of the rooms, without them there would be no social rooms.

Our new social club helped our advancement as a club as the facilities attracted new members and we had a number of very successful social functions. Prior to that, we used the change rooms. Our new rooms were considered to be the best in the DVCA at that time.

In the early 90s, two members of our club donated and installed the kitchen to enable us to better cater for our functions.

Research Football Club went into recess in the early 90s due to suspension for the Diamond Valley Football League.