Meeting Martin McCague
Thirty-three years and a chance encounter tying Adelaide and Canterbury together.
In June 1990, I was at the Adelaide Oval watching South Adelaide battle one of the competition powerhouses, North Adelaide, as drizzle steadily fell. We had lost the previous two weeks after a promising start to the season, and we needed to redress our slump in form. North was never easy to play; they were a highly disciplined and skilled side and always difficult to beat. Their coach, Michael Nunan, was well-known as a tough coach. That day, Martin McCague made his debut for North. A bulky and tall forward, he only added to the potential firepower we would have to negate if we were to win. I didn’t know much about Martin other than he had been picked from relative obscurity and parachuted into the North lineup.
The match was a struggle, and despite their best efforts, my beloved South Adelaide was outclassed (101–52) by a more experienced and skilled side, one that knew how to play wet-weather football. Martin didn’t greatly impact the game; tall players tend to struggle in wet conditions. He didn’t kick any goals but did provide plenty of opportunities for North’s smaller forwards to score. He didn’t make the side the following week and never played for North Adelaide again.
I next heard of Martin when he was picked to play for England in an Ashes test match against Australia three years later. I knew he was a cricketer and a footballer, and I was delighted to tell my friends that I was in the crowd when he played his first and only game of Australian Rules Football for North. Seeing him now representing England was strange but quirky. He toured Australia 18 months later and played what ended up being his final test match in Brisbane.
Martin was born in Northern Ireland but grew up in Australia and learned his cricket on fast Australian pitches. Having moved back to England and excelling at Kent, he ended up playing three tests, all against his country of birth. When he returned to Australia with England in 1994, he was branded a traitor by Australia’s media, and his tour was short-lived, his final moment in test cricket being dismissed by Australia’s greatest leg-spinner, Shane Warne, first ball. It had been a wretched match for him, and his England career had slipped away.
Following the end of his career, I never thought much about him again other than knowing I had been there that day he played for North Adelaide. Fast forward 29 years from his final test match and 33 years on from that wet day at the Adelaide Oval, and our paths cross again in the most unlikely of ways.
I never imagined staying in the UK after coming here on a working holiday visa in 2000. I certainly never anticipated setting up Birmingham Unicorns Cricket Club or Out4Cricket in 2023. The opportunity to open cricket up to more people in the LGBTQ community has been an unexpected privilege. Our work with Kent County Cricket Club developed early in the season, and we played a key role in helping them to establish their first-ever Pride match. My co-founder at Out4Cricket, Leo, joined me at Canterbury, where Kent was taking on Hampshire in a T20 match.
During the pre-match events Martin was introduced as the special guest of the club, having played at Kent for over a decade. I couldn’t believe it. This was the same Martin McCague I had watched at the Adelaide Oval 33 years ago, who had been part of the North Adelaide team that outclassed my team on a wet winter day in Adelaide. A quirk of fate had seen us end up in the same room together.
I plucked up the courage to go and say hello — this might be the only chance I ever have. Martin was incredibly friendly and generous with his time. He was surprised to hear I had been at the Adelaide Oval that day, seeing his one foray into the world of semi-professional Aussie Rules Football. There were not many of us there in the rain that winter day.
It was a pleasure to meet him and chat about his time in Adelaide and my focus on LGBTQ+ inclusion in cricket.
