Day two I got here I was already nicknamed Ricky. It’s somewhere you can come in and get support. “But it’s a safe space here, even if you’re not a bowler. “It’s hard to find community in this new age, it’s rare,” Baker says. Nowadays, it has 20 gay members, “a few fence-sitters” and its own pride uniform: a rainbow kit splashed with Richmond’s iconic tiger. Baker says the members make the club – “always have”. The third-oldest club in Australia (or fourth, depending on who you ask), the site has withstood fires, development and gentrification for 153 years. Richmond Union is the only bowling club in Australia to have its own annual Pride Cup, to take place this year on 15 May. Photograph: Jackson Gallagher/The Guardian Tony ‘Ricky’ Baker with skipper Sarah Howard at Richmond Union Bowling Club. As soon as I walked in, I was encouraged to be who I want to be, be who I am.” “But here, for the first time, I had the opportunity to be myself with my sexuality. “As soon as I walked in here, I felt like I was back in the regions where everyone’s looking out for each other,” he says. When he eventually arrived in Melbourne, the first thing he did was seek out a local club.Īs fate had it, Baker found the Richmond Union Bowling Club, an easily missed spot tucked on a side street between a town hall and a swimming pool. Until his late 30s, Baker toured regional Victorian bowls clubs, battling with his identity as a queer man in rural communities. It took four decades and a bowls club for Tony “Ricky” Baker to find his place in the world. Richmond was too moved by the moment to celebrate. Instead, the reception at Dandenong Bowling Club was strangely mute – saved for a few back taps and the shaking of hands. So, when the last bowl to determine promotion to the Premier League ricocheted off the green on Sunday afternoon, sailing Richmond to a 79-73 “fairytale” win, commentators expected its members to flood onto the pitch.
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It had been the equivalent of leap-frogging from country footy to the AFL, seeing a trickled return of star players from the old days eager for a share in the glory. If they were to win, it would be the first time in the club’s 153 year history to have qualified for the Victorian Bowls Premier League, and the second time in two years to have been promoted.