Our History
Merrion Cricket Club was founded in 1906 by a few members of the old Land Commission and has been at its present location in Anglesea Road since 1908. Merrion became a Senior Club in 1926.
A Rich History
Merrion has been at its current ground in Anglesea Road since 1908. Initially playing with distinction in the junior ranks of the sport in Leinster, it became a Senior Club in 1926 and despite wars and floods has provided a home for cricket every year thereafter.
Merrion went through lean times between the 1960s and 1980s but thanks to a strong commitment to youth cricket its fortunes revived. Today Merrion is one of the most successful cricket clubs in Ireland and have been recent winners of the Irish Senior Cup [2016], the Leinster Premier League [2018] and the Womens Senior league [2016]. The club has a large youth section [around 200 boys and girls] and has a strong family ethos with many generations of the same family playing for the club. In recent years it has been to the fore in welcoming and integrating players and families of ‘new-Irish’ living in Dublin, especially from the Indian sub-continent.
Merrion is an important part of the local community. Over the years it has shared its facilities with athletics and soccer clubs in the area. It continues to do so and its facilities are used year round both for sport and local community events. The ground has also been used for international and inter-provincial cricket tournaments.
Following the last major flooding of the Dodder in 2011 the pavilion was so badly damaged that it was decided that a new building was required. The result you can see today and its award winning design has drawn visiting architects from Europe and further afield.
We have broken down the history of the club into different periods based on the records that we have. The history of the early years is dependant largely on reports in the The Irish Times, Sunday Independent and Irish Field. Although much of the junior cricket played in those days went unreported in detail, most of the fixtures were documented, providing the nucleus of each season’s span.
To appreciate the full story you need to read Merrion : A History of the Cricket Club 1892 – 2010, written by Alan Little and the late Danny Parkinson and published in 2011. A copy is available for reading in the club.
Links to the Past
The origins of Merrion Cricket Club can be traced back to a cricket club that operated out of the Land Commission from 1892 to 1900. The team was created from junior clerical staff – 2nd division and 3rd class clerks – and played mainly friendly cricket against the 2nds and 3rds of stronger clubs, but also winning the Leinster Junior Cup in 1897, 1899, 1900.
Their home ground was on the back pitch of the old rugby union ground at Lansdowne Road, which had originally been created as a multi-sports venue – the Irish Champion Athletic Club – incorporating athletics, croquet, archery, tennis, soccer, rugby and cricket. A steady upward graph through the 1890s would describe their progress, which ended in 1900 with close games against Phoenix and Civil Service, the strongest teams of their day.
When Merrion came to be formed in 1906, many of the original members of the club had previously played with the land Commission.