In the 1920s, we begin at the crease with a name that resonates far beyond the College grounds, across the cricket-playing world: Stan McCabe. A slight figure stepping out to bat against boys three years his senior, armed not with brute force but with something rarer: timing, precision and nerve.
These qualities would move his skipper Donald Bradman to comment on McCabe’s first Test at Trent Bridge, Nottingham in June 1938, where he scored 232 with a strike rate of 83.75: “Such cricket I shall never see again nor shall I ever feel competent adequately to describe this elegant display”.
But first, he belonged at Joeys.
There’s a particular kind of wonder that attaches itself to the story of a small-town boy finding his footing on the world stage. McCabe arrived at St Joseph’s College from Grenfell, deep in the central west of New South Wales, the birthplace of Henry Lawson. Within a month of arriving, he was promoted to the First XI at just 14 – and promptly made a duck! It didn’t matter. Those who watched him could already see something exceptional in the way he met the ball.
His progress was relentless. A maiden century against Sydney Boys High School in 1925, two more the following year. Selection for the Combined Great Public Schools carnival. First in class, in each of his three years. Five As and two Bs in his Intermediate Certificate. He also played fullback in the College’s championship-winning rugby union team. McCabe was, in the complete sense – in character, sport and academics – a Joe-Boy.
What followed his years at Joeys was one of the great careers in Australian Test cricket history. He made his debut against England in 1930 and, over 39 Tests, he scored 2,748 runs at an average of 48.21. English captain Sir Leonard Hutton rated him the equal of Bradman. The celebrated British commentator EW Swanton wrote that McCabe “came as near as any player to one’s conception of the perfect cricketer”.
Yet what endures just as vividly as the runs is the character of the man. In 1930, barely 19 and the youngest member of the Australian touring squad, McCabe wrote a letter to the College Headmaster while on tour. He’d been travelling for weeks, from Hobart to Perth, Sri Lanka to Italy, Paris to England. Despite marvelling at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and bumping into Old Boy Brother Fitzgerald on the streets of the city, he was candid: he yearned to be home in “good old Australia”.
His simplicity is what the Marist tradition calls a mark of character. It defined him throughout his life. He never questioned an umpire. He never carried a grudge. He was humble and down to earth. Famous Australian cricketing journalist Ray Robinson (1905–1982) perhaps said it best when McCabe died in 1968: “In McCabe the cricketer, you saw McCabe the man – urbane, sociable, unpretentious, straightforward.”
Today, the award for the most outstanding senior cricketer at the College is given in his name. Former First XI premiership winning coach Richard Casamento (1998) said McCabe is a Joeys hero. Boys are expected to show the same traits as him – to be fearless, to trust their strengths and to play with enjoyment. This is exactly what the Sport Lovers Lunch is built to honour. Joe-Boys who carried the values of this place onto the biggest stages in the world and never let go of them. When Joe-Boy cricketers and Old Boys alike hear McCabe’s name spoken, they understand it is not just history being remembered. It is a standard being upheld.
In his shoes.
Stan McCabe (Old Boy 1926) – Australian Test Cricketer, 39 Tests (1930–1938)
