PJ 60s Home with the State Tournament Division 1 Spoils!

Firstly my congratulations to all of you who stuck at it in Tamworth this last week; it was incredibly frustrating but also incredible that we managed to play two games of the shortened version of cricket and won both matches in Division 1, and ended up Joint Winners of the Trophy for the Red and White teams.

To Paul Adams, I unreservedly thank you for your constant hard work for this Club and to Doug Latto for his work in mustering players and Captaining our Blue team, especially in view of the last minute drop outs and balancing teams, including allowing Mark from the ACT to play on Day 2. And to Peter Remfrey (Board meeting and all) plus Cuthbert using his Captaincy skills to finish off the job on Day 2.

To Mike Fursland, who travelled up by train only to find out that the games had been called off, of course our deepest thanks, and sorry Mike that your journey was in vain.

Overall we can look back at a successful few days, albeit a tough assignment in the conditions, but I will be writing to Tamworth Vets and their organising committee, who did such an unrewarded job over the past few weeks, and stood up to the challenges of ground allocation and cancellation of food etc. Paul and I were at Cricket House to hear the decision about calling off the Tournament and of course Paul was awarded the 1st Division Trophy on behalf of PJs Red and White.

The amount of food and drinks that had been accumulated by these worthy volunteers was plain to see and I was absolutely overwhelmed by the depth of the community that was helping; whilst there may be some that complained about the organisation, I can honestly say that I take my hat off to them for the supreme effort it took. Tamworth have always been great hosts to our Veterans.

The wonderful upshot of all this is that Greg Irvine from the ACT has donated his time and resources to rebuild the Synthetic wicket at Nundle! So good things happen when changes are presented. Well done Tamworth!

Port Jackson have now won the 1st Division trophy on 3 occasions, our first year also at Tamworth after inauguration, the 2nd, the following year at Penrith and now again this season.

The other teams came at us hard but we had the resolve to hang in there even on Day 1 when Joe bowled an incredible last over to beat Hunter by 1 run! It had been a pleasure, earlier that day, to see our White team beat Coffs Harbour comprehensively, especially with their star studded line up of Higgins, Saker and Bruce Mackie, not to mention Graeme Doust.

It was sad to see our Blue team go down to New England in a relatively high scoring game on Tuesday only to have their game abandoned on Day 2 vs Penrith at Moore Creek having put on a reasonable total. Such is cricket this summer of La Nina!

Port Jackson secretary and division 1 captain Paul Adams accepting the trophy on behalf of the club.

Tamworth Vets President Greg Kellett and the New England Captain Craig Stoddart, accept the Doug Crowell trophy from former President Doug Crowell, as joint winners of Division 2

I wish you all a good summer of cricket; we have arranged a great programm for you all in 60s and 65s and we obviously hope that we get some more games in between these storms.

Take care; if we don’t see you beforehand, have a great festive season.