Happy New Year to all followers and players of Havelock North Cricket Club and I hope you all had a wonderful festive period.
A massive congratulations must go to the HNCC Premier team that took out the first title of the season in the 55 over competition on Saturday in a nail biting victory. With such an inexperienced team at this level a huge amount of credit must go to Brad Clark as coach and the senior players, who have helped support the younger players. A clean sweep of victories in this competition is incredibly impressive.
It has been a tough season with Graeme Tryon the club captain being out of action for so long as one of several injured players. We have also got an impressive list of our talented players who have represented Hawke’s Bay and Central Districts cricket teams at various levels being unavailable to play regularly. I thank those players who have trained hard and played regularly and I commend them for that.
This is the first season in my memory that we have had 4 men’s teams and a women’s team playing every week. This week was the first time that a HNCC team has had to default due to lack of numbers and I think it is important to bring it to everyone’s attention. It is totally understandable that players have family holidays, special events to attend, work commitments, injuries or illnesses. There may also be an argument that the 2nd Division should restart a week later after the Christmas break we may put that to HB cricket. I also want to bring to your attention that our affiliation fees last year for entering the competitions were over $9000, so having an extra team this year the bill is likely to be bigger. We can’t pay this fee without us all paying our subscriptions and the generous contributions from all our sponsors.
I therefore give warm thanks to those players who play at every opportunity and to Alex Cotter and Peter Young who are the captains of the lower teams who tirelessly look to fill places in their teams. I therefore ask all players to commit fully to playing, communicate regularly and directly with your captain even before being asked, and encourage you all to work hard to help increase the club’s playing numbers so that we can enter teams into every grade next year.
I thank you for your continuing support, wish you all well for the remainder of the season and hope to have the chance to chat to you at the club in the near future.
Andy Reeves
HNCC Chairman