AMID Mowbray Cricket Club's jubilant 60-year celebrations on Saturday night, past players greet legendary club stalwart Rex Davidson as he sits patiently on a bar stool.
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Patience has been the 88-year-old's virtue since day one, watching the iconic Launceston club grow as its founding chairman.
"A bloke called Terry Cowley lived in Mowbray and I bought a business at Mowbray," Davidson starts the story, "and we wanted to do something about getting our own ground.
"So we went to Brooks High School, put our own turf wicket in, built our own ground out there and that's how Mowbray started."
Or "Mowbree" as the tough end of town around Brooks High would pronounce it.
Davidson and Cowley would both captain Tasmania, well before the state was on the Sheffield Shield map.
Well before there was Ricky Ponting, even Launceston's other great, David Boon, there was Rex Davidson.
He played for Tasmania 13 times between 1949 and 1956 as a middle-order batsman, but often as a wicket-keeper.
"It was a lot of fun when we played against the internationals," Davidson said.
Back then the island was a stopping point for international tour games - Davidson mixing it against England, South Africa and West Indies, he recalls as well as against other Australian teams.
Not just state teams, but those representing the mainland.
"Those days they used to come over here in the break after Christmas and they would play a game in Hobart and a game in Launceston," Davidson said.
"One game we played in Hobart against Australia and when they came to Launceston they put five of the Australian bats in our side.
"You know, Keith Miller, Neil Harvey and Ian Craig just to boost us a little bit.
"I was lucky to captain that side and Keith Miller was my vice-captain."
Davidson scored four half centuries, including a career-high 71 in his limited first-class performances - back then when they were three-day games - in addition to pulling in 12 catches and four stumpings.
The highlight was crossing Bass Strait and walking out onto the MCG.
The cheeky Mowbray lad, who started at West Launceston in 1946 and finished at Mowbray in 1965, has a record on the famous turf that even Ponting could not match.
"We used to play against Victoria as well and they used to come every other year and we'd play on the MCG," Davidson said.
"Actually, I'm still not out at the MCG - the King died and they called the game off."