Strathmore Cricket Union: the first 90 years a history 1928-2018

5 even the occasional report of fisticuffs when things got out of hand. In any case, there WERE Championships of sorts in the days before the First World War. Formed in time for the 1901 season, the Strathmore Cricket League played for a handsome silver trophy, donated byMrs Farquharson of Houghton, a world-famous leader of the International Reform Movement and generous benefactor to many local organisations. This trophy is still in existence in the Strathmore and Perthshire Cricket Union, having been utilised when the Union’s Second Division was founded and being used as the Runner’s Up trophy following the presentation of the new Championship Cup. Won in its first season by Kirriemuir, the league was comprised of Alyth, Brechin 2nd XI, East End (Forfar), Kirriemuir andMeigle but it does not seem to have survived its second season when it may have been won by Brechin 2nd XI. The next attempt to get a league going was in 1904. The competition was variously referred to as the “Forfar County Union” or the “Forfar and District Competition” but does not seem to have been taken all that seriously in that League tables are not always printed in newspapers, and the winners do not seem to have been given any kind of trophy, or if they were, a big deal was not made of it. But Strathmore, Arbroath, Brechin, Montrose and Dundee Victoria, a leading Dundee club with a long history, are mentioned as playing in this competition, whether official or not. Some reports say that the “League” lasted only two years – 1904 and 1905, and Strathmore gave up in the middle of 1905 because their form was so atrocious! The League then imploded because there were not enough teams willing to play competitive cricket. Clubs also had their long-standing and lucrative friendly fixtures to fulfil and were understandably reluctant to give up on them. Yet cricket flourished. The effects of the 1872 Education Act had now well and truly kicked in and the population was now becoming more and more literate. They therefore bought newspapers and were able to read about the game, not least about English and Australian cricket with the mighty deeds of men like Sydney Barnes and Wilfred Rhodes devoured with relish as they locked horns with Billy Murdoch or Victor Trumper. The late Victorian age and Edwardian era were also great times for “comics” or, as they were snobbishly called, “penny dreadfuls”. These fed the imagination of young boys with tales of derring-do and Empire building, and there was usually a serial about a cricket team, whether a local team, a school team or even the England Test team.