Farewell to a Warrior

Matt Jobson (A1 and Player Number 303 – pictured left with James Makin) played his last game on the weekend after announcing to the boys his retirement. Jobbo debuted in D2 in 2003/04 as a 15 year old.

Jobbo is pulling stumps, at least for the moment, due to a combination of heavy work commitments, getting married, plus an “everlasting hamstring/hip issue”.

How about this for a list of achievements:

• Captained A2 to a Premiership in 2008/09 to be our youngest ever non-Colts Grade Premiership Captain at just 23 years of age

• Matt is one of our most successful Captains and Players with all-up 11 x Grand Final appearances for 9 wins & 2 Runners-up:

Captain:

• 2 x A2 Premierships

Player:

• 4 x A1 Grade Premierships
• 3 x 1^st Grade T20 Premierships
• Runner-up:
  • 1 x A1 Grade
  • 1 x A2 Grade

• Highest Club T20 wicket taker with 30 wickets @ 14.1

• Youngest player to reach 300 wickets at just 27 years, 11 months and 4 days of age. Matt now has 312 wickets and is the 11^th highest wicket take in our history
• Scored 2,365 runs at 15.3.

Then there is the Parklands Oval connection:

• Jobbo played in the famous ‘Rofie 3’ A1 Grand Final – one of our greatest ever wins
• Took our 38^th hat-trick (5/60) on 15 February 2014
• Played his last game (for now) at the ground.

Thanks for the memories Jobbo and the Welcome mat is always at the front door.

Captain number 23

With James Makin, our record breaking A1 Captain retiring from the Captaincy the baton has been passed to Justin Paterson who will be our 23^rd A Grade captain. This is a wonderful achievement and is the highest playing honour a player can achieve for our great Club. Well done Patto.

Family affair

We have a long history of fathers and sons playing in the same Grade. As expected though, it is a bit like a pyramid with large numbers in C and D grades and with progressively fewer playing together as we move up the Grades.

Last weekend we had Rick Turner (centre) and his 2 sons, Alex (left) and Zac (right), play A2 Grade. When this season started Rick and his son Alex became the first father and son combination to play A2 together. This match they went one better when Zac also joined them to make it a father and 2 sons combination.

This season is the first time in our history that a father and son, let alone 2 sons have played A2 together. We had our first A2 side in 1971/72. So this record has been 46 years in the making. Well done boys.

10 dismissals for the Match

Andrew Morris (B2 Red) wicket-keeper took 19 catches last season. In this game  he got 10 dismissals for the match – 8 catches and 2 run-out assists in the 4-innings game. We don’t have records on this one but 10 in a match would be up there as the best ever.

3 wickets with 1-ball

In the C2 game on the weekend Dave Behlevanas, who took 4/33 put down a relatively easy caught & bowled chance off their top-scoring batsman. With both batsman at the same end, Dave then returned the ball to the keeper but it was about 10 metres wide of the stumps. With the batsman still half-way down the track, our keeper got the ball and had a shot for a run-out and just missed. The batsman was not out and went on to top score with 88 and win the game – so 3 chances with the one ball but no cigar.

Young stars

We are privileged to have such a large group of amazing Juniors who continue the pathway through Seniors. Two players are worth a mention on outstanding seasons:

Dylan Bish

‘Bishy’ (pictured right with Tom Dickinson) plays in the U16 Blues and D1 in the afternoon. How about this for achievements with Finals in U16s andD1 still to come:

• So far, he is the overall Club ‘Champion Player’ with 177.4 points from 27 games
• Scored 764 runs @ 54.57 including making him the highest run scorer in our Club (all Grades):
  • U16 Blues – 232 runs @ 116.0
  • D1 – 398 runs @ 49.75
• Taken 37 wickets @ 13.1:
  • U16s – 13 wickets @ 8.4
  • D1 – 17 wickets @ 15.7

Cameron Tunks

Cameron plays in the U14 Blues and fills in for Seniors (B2 and C1):

• Cameron is 5^th in our Club Champion Player points with 113.4 points from just 13 games. He is only 12 years of age and plays up 2 years in Juniors:
• Overall, he has scored 574 runs @ 63.78:
  • U14 Blues – 541 runs @ 77.3 – the 3^rd highest U14 season aggregate in our history
• Selected for the NSW PSSA side that played in the Nationals
• Scored a ton against Tasmania and is the 1^st player in our history to score a century at this level.

Add to this a list of brilliant emerging young players such as Zac Morris (U16 Blue and B2), Jonathan Moran (U16 White and C2) plus many more wonderful young players we are fortunate to have such a pipeline of players coming through from Juniors.