Your say on renaming Erskineville Oval grandstand

In 1940 Erskineville Oval and grandstand was built in the south-eastern corner of a parcel of crown land that was dedicated as a public park in 1885.

The parkland is located on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people. The landscape was once open bushland roamed by native animals and the surrounding area became known as the ‘Kangaroo Grounds’. Erskineville Oval and surrounding open space was close to the swamps and wetlands of Sheas Creek, now Alexandra Canal. A large lagoon was once near today’s oval.

Recent research has revealed that that the sporting history of this area began in November 1863, when the Newtown Cricket Club opened its cricket ground on leased land immediately west of today’s Erskineville Oval. Newtown’s cricket club was very successful and mainly consisted of prominent citizens of the new Municipality of Newtown.

Among its early players, an Aboriginal bowler known as ‘Twopenny’ joined the team in 1869. He was one of 13 Aboriginal cricketers who played and toured with Charles Lawrence’s cricket team in 1868, the first Australian cricket team to tour England. Twopenny was the first Aboriginal player to represent NSW in 1870. He is regarded as Australia’s first Aboriginal first-class player and was one of the few who continued a cricket career after the England tour.

The history of the Newtown Cricket Club ended when the state government resumed the old cricket ground and dedicated Macdonaldtown Park in July 1885. The municipality and suburb changed its name to Erskineville in 1893, and the park was renamed Erskineville Park at the same time. The park covered 2 similarly sized areas in the municipalities of Erskineville and Alexandria. The Erskineville portion continued to be used for sports including football, cricket, lacrosse and baseball. The site of the old cricket ground became the home ground of the highly successful Newtown AFL Club and the Newtown Rugby League Club, today known as the Newtown Jets, which often played in front of several thousands of people.

In the late 1930s the NSW Government embarked on the Erskineville rehousing scheme. The original oval and its pavilions were demolished, and work began on building today’s Erskineville Oval and grandstand. The new oval was built in a relatively undeveloped part of Erskineville Park. Alexandria Council had used it as a rubbish tip, raising the level of the ground, and filling in the old lagoon when Ashmore Street was extended in the 1880s. The first football match at the new Erskineville Oval was played on 13 July 1940, when Newtown won against the Eastern Suburbs. The grandstand was still under construction at that time but was finished later the same year.

In 1955 the management of Erskineville Oval was transferred to the Council of the City of Sydney which has since leased it from the Crown. Erskineville Oval has remained a popular facility for a wide variety of sports and has been used by neighbouring schools. It underwent a major upgrade in 2006 to provide temporary training facilities for the South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby League Club while their grounds at Redfern Oval were redeveloped.

John ‘Johnny’ Lewis was born in 1944 at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney, although his family lived at Wallangarra, Queensland. The Lewis family moved from Queensland to Erskineville when Johnny was 3 and he grew up in one of the housing commission flats on Swanson Street, near Erskineville Oval.

Lewis played Aussie Rules football and tennis during his teens but turned to boxing when he was 13 and started coaching 4 years later. An ankle injury when he was 19 hampered his own athletic career.

Lewis initially trained and coached at the Newtown Police Boys Club, later renamed Police-Citizens Boys Club or PCYC, moving to gyms on Botany Street and Erskineville Road during the 1960s and 1970s. He then went back to the Newtown Police Boys Club where he met Jeff Fenech in 1981. Lewis worked as a sign-writer at the time.

After successfully training several Australian champions previously, Lewis coached Fenech to 3 official world boxing titles and was the first Australian boxing coach to achieve this. In the late 1980s he began coaching Jeff Harding who won the light heavyweight boxing championship. He also trained Kostya Tszyu, who, like Fenech and Lewis, was inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Other notable prize-fighters trained by Lewis included Joe Bugner, Paul Briggs, Gairy St Clair and Billy Dibb, and to date he has trained 6 world champions.

Lewis maintained a close connection with rugby league, particularly the Newtown Jets and he toured as a trainer with the Australian national team, the Kangaroos, in 1989. Lewis was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1989 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2017. In 2006 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his service to boxing as a trainer and coach, and to Australian rugby league.

After the sale of the Newtown Police-Citizens Boys Club on Erskineville Road in 2002, Lewis continued to teach boxing in various locations around Sydney, including the PCYCs at Woolloomooloo, South Sydney and Marrickville, the HK Ward gym at the University of Sydney, and Erskineville Oval. Most recently he briefly trained Olympic bronze-medallist Harry Garside.

Select references

Paul Kent, Johnny Lewis: the biography, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010

Matthew Sullivan, Harry Garside’s boxing career up in air after legendary trainer quits over reality TV move, Fox Sports, 6 February 2023, https://www.foxsports.com.au/boxing/harry-garsides-boxing-career-up-in-air-after-legendary-trainer-quits-over-reality-tv-move/news-story/bd5f4010e26ca9b92c5305777ce6db97

Andrew Webster, Australian trainer Johnny Lewis inducted into Boxing Hall of Fame, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 2017, https://www.smh.com.au/sport/boxing/australian-trainer-johnny-lewis-inducted-into-boxing-hall-of-fame-20170612-gwpcrh.html

Sport Australia Hall of Fame, ‘Johnny Lewis OAM’, https://sahof.org.au/hall-of-fame-member/johnny-lewis

International Boxing Hall of Fame, ‘Johnny Lewis’, http://www.ibhof.com/pages/about/inductees/nonparticipant/lewis.html

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