Local cricket: MPCA legend Brian McCue on premierships, longevity and friendships
It was once said of Mornington Peninsula cricket legend Brian McCue that he could hold a one-man sportsman’s night and still be talking at 2am. At 70, his storytelling prowess is as good as ever.
South East
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When Brian McCue retired from cricket at age 55, it ended one of the great careers on the Mornington Peninsula.
His unique style of bowling — he was a spinner with a fast bowler’s run up — and fierce competitive nature earned him mountains of wickets and helped win many grand finals at various clubs including Mt Eliza, Heatherhill and Long Island.
Good enough to once take 8-81 against Bairnsdale in the provincial section of Melbourne Country Week, he said the key to his success was to get above the batsman’s eyes, make the ball drop and swirl in the breeze and wait for a mistake.
Off the field, Cuey was also a champion — a larger-than-life character and a great story teller.
Nothing’s changed.
Affable Cuey celebrated his 70th birthday on the weekend, with many of his old teammates and opponents sending him video messages, reliving the glory days.
We caught up with Cuey for a chat…
Leader: Happy Birthday, Cuey! So, how’s it feel to be 70?
Cuey: I’ve got the secret formula to longevity because a lot of people doubted I’d get to 50 let alone 70. Mate, it goes like this: cigarettes are completely harmless, increase your alcohol intake and a diet of pizza and bakery is just at the top. And how I survived five decades on the road has got everyone mystified because people only ever drive with me once. It’s not that I’m a fast driver, I’m just a very bad driver, the attention deficit disorder has me focusing on everything. I often wonder, ‘why is everyone blowing their horn at me?’.
Leader: You hold the MPCA record for playing in the most premierships – how many?
Cuey: I think it’s highly unlikely anyone will beat the premierships I played in — 10 first XI premierships, six Country Week, four knock-out and one Provincial — it comes to 21. The only one we know who is reasonably close is John Lyle of Mt Eliza who has played in 14, including 8 1st XI flags. My record is over three clubs. I shared myself around a bit. It’s handy that I played in Mt Eliza’s (golden) era.
Leader: You enjoyed the big games and you performed.
Cuey: It was terrific. Most of those (grand finals) were played at Graydens Rd. God, it would be racing in March. There was something about Graydens Rd…we all grew up with it. The Mt Eliza era, to win six in eight years, was a phenomenal effort and then it became harder. I went to Heatherhill and we had some great sides. We broke the ice and won their maiden flag in ‘86-87. As much as I’ve had a lot of success, the ones that gall me are the ones that got away. And then Long Island — I thought my cricket was over, I was going to call it a day — and I went down to Sub District and within four years we were back playing Provincial again. We won Sub District, District and then straight into a Provincial grand final and won a Provincial grand final which was my swansong.
Leader: In the 1986-87 grand final you bowled 56 overs unchanged for Heatherhill. How did the body hold up?
Cuey: We had a game plan — we were a bit brittle with the bat. We got to the grand final and we hadn’t counted on losing the toss which meant that we had to bowl first against a super batting line-up in Balnarring, led by Phil Graf. It was a different game plan — opening the bowling with a spinner; it changed the way a lot of top order bats batted. We only got two wickets on the first day. They had a terrific opening bat called Gavin Symes, particularly against fast bowlers, he could deflect all day and he’d rattle up the runs but against me it meant he had to make shots and it was just maiden after maiden. The plan was to let Gavin stay in. You wouldn’t believe it, in the second last over of the day he’s had a swipe at me — he hadn’t done it all day — and someone at mid-on took a brilliant catch. I didn’t even get excited. We didn’t want to get him out because they had big hitters like Mark Martin who came out and made a hundred the next day. But we still kept them to 300. We passed them six down. It was an amazing win. But having to bowl 56 overs I was at the chiropractor on Sunday morning and I was 37 years of age. I didn’t walk for a week.
Leader: The great John Hille rated you as one of the best bowlers he’d played with or against in the MPCA. That’s a big wrap from a champion.
You were a unique bowler – an off spinner who charged in off a long run.
Cuey: I gave it a crack. Flexi pave killed us. You just had to bowl for dots. It was a bowling nightmare and a batting paradise.
There was a young kid from Mt Eliza, Glen Fuhrmann. A terrific opening bat but he used to milk the quicks off his legs, through mid wicket and mid on. He was another we decided to leave in one day. I opened the bowling and we were getting through the overs quickly. We had Steve Bower playing with us at Heatherhill and he was at the other end bowling off three paces. We were defending a good score of 260. The team game plan was to leave Glen in and the grass was long and he didn’t have any off side shots. I’ve got about eight or 10 consecutive maidens to him, he just cannot hit me. Then he nicked one to first slip and Scott Rogers — a terrific character, he was slightly deaf, and he might not have heard us in the game plan — took a terrific left handed catch and he couldn’t understand why no one was running up to him. And (umpire) Neil Williams said, ‘I can’t give that out Cuey because you’ve run in front of me’. I’ve just turned around and said, ‘Neil, that’s a wonderful decision, that will teach me. After all these years I’ve got to learn not to run in front of the umpire’. But David Hammill, Furhmann’s, best friend, has got his hand up at square leg. I said, ‘Neil, he can’t give him out, only you can’. The game was held up for 10 minutes while we were debating and then they sent Glen off to the Mt Eliza blokes. Glen goes, ‘you know what, Cuey’s the only sportsman out there’.
Leader: Cricket’s a game, it tests you and teaches you so much. It’s been good for you hasn’t it?
Cuey: I was a dunce at school so I didn’t have any self-esteem. Sport gave me the self esteem to be able to develop into a leader that could start his own business and lead people using the same principles you did as captain-coach. It led to being a leader and then that led to me thinking, ‘well if I can do this in the sporting structures, why can’t I do it in business?’ If it hadn’t been for sport I would never have worked for myself. I employed a lot of people over 25 years and all they needed was an opportunity. Sport was great for me. It’s the lifelong friendship that you make. Cricket has been fantastic. Every opportunity I have had in life came through cricket.
Leader: All those hot summer days on the cricket field, you don’t regret it?
Cuey: Every second Thursday night — selection night — was an event. Getting to work on a Friday was always a struggle. Thank god I was in the public service in the 70s. And then at 5.30pm on a Saturday afternoon, it didn’t matter where you were playing, within half an hour you knew were going to be having a beer with terrific people, whether it be the opposition or your own teammates. And they were the only two days I would drink because it would take me the rest of the week to recover.
Leader: Someone once said you’re about the only bloke who could hold a one-man sportsman’s night and still be talking at 2am.
Cuey: Yeah, I’ve been known... When we used to read the teams out there’d be 400 blokes come to listen. There’d be seven sides and 77 players and we’d have a story on every single one of them, good or bad. We would take the mickey out of them but even if you were the last player picked we would try and build their self-esteem. We would have a story on them. I occasionally waffled on a little bit.
Leader: Who had a big influence on you as a young cricketer?
Cuey: There was a bloke called Wally Wedgwood Snr. I was out of control, I wasn’t living up to my potential as a batsman. At training I could always crank the ball on malthoid. And he took me under his wing — and he played for Victoria, he was left arm orthodox and just the most wonderful man and most patient. And he would have chalk marks all over the pitch and I’m trying to understand it. He taught me so much. He said, ‘One day you’ll know’. It happened at Karingal one day when I was just in the zone where everything I was trying to do was happening. I thought, ‘that’s what Wally was talking about’. A nice wind into the face, the ball dipping and it’s spinning like I want it to...
I used to pride myself on bowling 30 consecutive overs without bowling a full toss or a half pitcher. You had to be in there the whole time.
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