In The Beginning...

Inverness

 ... Although not notable for on-field success the 1956 season, the 25th year of Rugby League in the district, did see the formation of the Manly-Warringah League Club on its present-day site at 563 Pittwater Road, Brookvale. St George had been the trailblazer in clubland and had been trading out of their first licensed premise since 1953.

About the time of the advent of Australian television, which would have a profound effect on the game's future direction, a general meeting of Manly on November 22, 1956, decided that of the seven directors, five would be elected from the football club committee and the remaining two from the ordinary club members. A provisional board of directors was elected by the meeting, comprising chairman Arnold Stehr, Jack Munro, Allan Langford, Len Hogan, Gordon Willoughby (district club nominees) with Jack Martin appointed secretary of the Leagues Club. The junior league had made an abortive attempt to start building a social club in 1952, only to be thwarted by a lack of money, but four years later the district club swung behind the concept.

"So they formed a committee of six to investigate the ways and means of forming a Leagues club," recalled Martin. "The atmosphere was right as the State Government had just given approval for clubs to install poker machines. During 1956, we started to look around the district for available properties and we came across the sandstone building called 'Inverness' on Pittwater Road, that was up for sale at £12,500."

"We were criticised at the time for choosing the Brookvale area, it was a down-at-heel place with factories and market gardens, and even though people were enthusiastic it wasn't easy to get those first 250 members. We needed at least four guineas each from them, which was a fair amount of money, and we asked them if they could pay more than that."

"We went to them with a promise, we had nothing, we didn't even have a building and we told them that if it didn't get off the ground we would return their money less the expenses we incurred. There were quite a lot of people sitting back waiting for you to fall over. The committee thought the 'Inverness' site was ideal, but we then had to come up with the money and we went to the NSW Leagues Club, probably the leading Leagues club at the time, seeking the money."

"Representatives of the NSW Leagues Club came out to look at the property on a Saturday morning and they later loaned the district football club the money with an extra requested £2,000. The idea was for the district football club to own the property and lease it to the Leagues Club. We set up the articles of association so the football club would always own the Leagues Club. That was done deliberately, because it was started by the footballers and the football supporters."

Martin said the initial plan, when the doors opened for business on April 9, 1957, was to go along quietly and repay the debts. "But the club took off like a bomb to such an extent that within the first 12 months we had paid back the NSW Leagues Club and to all of the supporters who had given us three-year loans at six per cent. We paid back their interest and capital and we were clear of debt within 12 months."

The club was immensely popular with the local football fraternity. The venerable stone building, which once had been a private hospital, was thronged by several hundred supporters, especially on weekends, and space was at a premium. "In the first six months we developed what had been an old stable out the back of the premise, a big place that would hold a couple of hundred people primarily for dances, entertainment, indoor sports and films," Martin said.

Roy Bull recalled there was a billiard table in the attic of 'Inverness': "It was only a narrow room, and if you had the ball on the cushion they used to have the cues cut down so you could make your shot."

It was decided to stay on the site and buy out the surrounding properties and call in an architect to devise an overall plan that could be done in stages. "Up to the completion of the first stage of development in 1961 we had to carry on in the old stone building," Martin said. "We built around the stone building and when the other stages was completed we pulled it down" ...