The sports meeting which ran at Maryland crossroads on the southern outskirts of Belfast in the 1920s and early 1930s left at least one legacy, the cycling club which bears the name of the area 75 years later is still going strong.
Maryland Wheelers is a cycling club with a proud tradition. Over the years many great cyclists have worn the club's colours. Champions of their generation, Albert Ewart, WJ Stewart, Maurice Donaldson, Tommy Givan and in more recent times, David McCall, Scott Hamilton and Denis Easton to name but a few.
In more recent times the club has had its periods of bust and boom. Following a downturn of fortunes in the late 1960s and early 1970s the club went through a period of renaissance from about 1974 onwards mainly thanks to the hard work of club officials in promoting a healthy club league and later a schoolboy section. Two of the prime movers behind this were Joe O'Neill, now residing in Canada and current Vice President Mervyn McComb.
Initially the schoolboy section was very popular with up to thirty boys turning up for the Saturday runs. Over the next few years this settled into a core of about six or seven who retained a long term interest in the sport.
In the early 1980s Joe O'Neill emigrated to Canada and around the same time the club suffered a downturn in membership to such an extent that the club was only saved from extinction largely by the efforts of Mervyn McComb and others with enough passion for the name to ensure that this did not become the case. All was not lost however, even during this difficult period Alex McKinnon won several Ulster and Irish Championship medals.
The current renaissance can be traced back to the early 1990s when our Phil Holland came into the sport. Phil could be described as the catalyst that galvanised others into action. At around this time Billy Knowles and Billy Bothwell were finding new enthusiasm for the sport and the combination proved to be a winner.
The future of the club is looking bright and in recent years we have seen regular average club membership of 40 individuals of all age groups and standards including some ladies.