Forest Lake’s only cricket club, the Brisbane Super Kings, is gearing up for its 10th season in style with a new clubhouse to call home.
The clubhouse was the missing piece the Kings had been longing for since they first moved to Heathwood Park, now named Matthew Conwell oval, in 2019.
With 32 senior teams and 138 juniors, including 35 girls, they are now one of the largest community clubs in Brisbane’s south west.
Kings head coach Krushanth Thanabalasingam said the new clubhouse means everything to them.
“Having a clubhouse means a lot to us, and especially for the juniors it’s really helpful for them to feel at home, otherwise they come and sit at the edge of the grass,” he said.
“Now they can put their gear somewhere secure and enjoy cricket properly.
They have also put a lot of energy into building cricket pathways for girls, which the clubhouse will help with.
“There’s a lot of potential for girls to be stars, and we want them to represent Brisbane and Australia,” he said.
“Beforehand, we only had a public toilet, so when girls wanted to go and bat, they would have to change – and after the game they would have to shower – so they struggled a lot.”
It has been a remarkable 10 years for the club, which started as a group of mates who loved a weekend hit.
Founding member and club advisor Sathish Rajendran feels incredibly grateful to have gotten this far.
“I didn’t expect us to grow this big, and now we are one of the top community clubs in Brisbane,” he said. “The support we’ve had along the way has been incredible, everyone from the parents, coaches, sponsors, to the three levels of government.”
The club has an important role to play in bridging the shortage of places to play cricket in the city’s south west.
“You look at the map of clubs in the Metro South West area, and the closest clubs are Wolston Park and Macgregor,” he said.
“They were just waiting for someone to start something around here because of how much the population has grown.”
Mr Rajendran was one of the core group of senior players who started the first Kings team in the local Warehouse and T-20 competitions a decade ago.
They earned a reputation as some of the biggest cricket tragics going around, so much so it caught the eye of Queensland Cricket.
“They invited us to a meeting and said ‘you guys are doing really good, why can’t you spend time growing your juniors?’,” he said.
“That’s what inspired us to become an official club.”
With ten years down and some amazing memories to show for it, their next dream eclipses anything that has come so far.
“We want to have one of our players get that Baggy Green and play for Australia,” Mr Thanabalasingam said.
