Round the Wicket

Eleven o’clock on the day of the event is a bit late to be telling you, but there’s a Children’s Fun Day at the park today. It starts at 2 pm; races, face-painting, Beat-The-Goalie, bouncy castle, events for mums and dads, and a disco at night.

A hoolie for all!

Not the sort of games we’ve become used to in the last few years, though, where we’ve had a fair sprinkling of triumphs. None of the problems of the opening months seemed to go away, while a few fresh ones came along. The long and the short of it is that despite some fairly decent batting performances in the latter months, we lacked the penetration in attack to get our opponents out for less runs than we could muster.

Our Centenary Year, which started with so many off-the-field successes and such high hopes, ended in our relegation from SNCL Division I to Division II, while the second team, struggling for players throughout the year, has also been relegated to East League Division II. We can’t even say that there was anything marginal about either outcome.

One can usually find plenty of happier events to reflect on, but we didn’t have all that many of them this year. However, our Centenary Festival game against Sussex Ladies was definitely one of them, and yesterday’s ‘Sixes’ was another. The plan was to give the tournament a bit of a twist, with visiting clubs sending four players to be boosted by one Freuchie player and one social member. Cupar won the tournament. The only snag is that Cupar is on an end-of-season tour and could not send a team. The “Cupar” side therefore consisted exclusively of Freuchie players, Andy Sutherland clouting a couple of enormous sixes into the neighbouring football practice ground. How, and to whom, do we now award the trophy? A day of good fun all round.

A wry rider to that: We have just been docked points by SNCL’s Competitions Committee for fielding an ineligible player in a first XI game. Sounds like this was cheating, but the player in question has been one of our second team players for a matter of years – including 2008 – never in the last few years selected for the Firsts. Hardly a matter of wheeling in a hit man in a desperate attempt to scrape up some points. However it turns out that through carelessness on my part (no surprise to those who know me), I have never registered this player with SNCL. My wife now wants to know if these guys who won the Sixes Trophy are eligible to play for Cupar?

And our Junior Coaches deserve so much praise for their efforts throughout the year. So many kids up the park on a Friday evening, so many potentially good cricketers. The task for the rest of us is to keep the club playing at a high standard to make sure these youngsters will enjoy a worthwhile level of cricket competition when they reach the senior teams in a few years time.

And if the weather wasn’t great for cricket, spare a thought for the Freuchie folks who were flooded out a couple of weeks ago, not least our own John Thomson of Roundtrip Solutions Ltd, whose house and car have been pretty comprehensively wrecked. Check it out on ‘Freuchie Mill’ on YouTube.

But the Centenary Dinner Dance is coming! It’s on Saturday 13th September at the Lomond Hills Hotel in Freuchie. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, call Danny Ramage on 01337 857 292. Emcee for the night will be Bob McFarlane of Rossie Priory – ‘FAFF, to his many friends, and the principal speaker England’s scorer Bill Frindall (The Bearded Wonder). We’re looking forward to a great night. Come and join us!

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