CHAIRMAN’S REPORTThe season promised so much and delivered plenty in another very busy 12 months for the association. We headed into the season with the prospect of having a paid administrator for the first time in about 11 years. Adrian Morgan joined our ranks as a part time admin in December and has been a real asset. Adrian joined us as part of a Pilot Project with funding from NZC following the Astle/Hill review for a maximum of 20 hours per week. He has been nothing short of a huge success. The Crosby Morris was held at Molyneux Park in October with the final round played in Queenstown. The Wakatipu side came out on top. There was a change in boundaries to create a more even playing field with the new configurations called Maniovalley, South Otago, Wakatipu and Upper Clutha. The Hawke Cup boys saved their best for last with a good win over Mid Canterbury at home with one highlight of the season being the documentary done by Sky Television on the Otago Country lads. This provided a real insight into the grassroots of the sport. In that game Bailey Andrews-Kennedy took 6-20 in the second innings to set up the win followed by a good chase with Liam Cotton, Barry White and Rueben Pyle chasing down the runs. The team has a great vibe going and results will follow. Fraser Wilson has introduced a development program of two fixtures against Southland teams that will help introduce up and coming players to the standard required to go to the next step. Congratulations to the Queenstown Club for taking out the ‘Club of the Year Award’ at the NZC Awards. This was excellent recognition of all the work they have done promoting not only the senior club but the work they do in the youth field. It was also a pat on the back for the work Club Manager Emma Campbell undertakes not only managing but running the programs and coaching. Daniel Gibbons and Emma Campbell receiving the NZC Club of the Year Award on behalf of the Queenstown Cricket Club. How fortunate we are to get to use the magnificent facilities at both Molyneux Park and the Queenstown Events Centre. We also get to use great grounds at Clyde, Oturehua, Cromwell and the likes of Millbrook. The Molyneux Park back grounds hosted the Otago Volts pre-season with a four-day game against Canterbury the highlight following a week of training on the No 2 block which rates in the top couple of training blocks in NZ. It was brilliant to see first class cricket return to Molyneux Park and a great game ensued. Northern Districts took the honours but it was a close run thing. Congratulations to Gary Smith, Guy McCone and team at Asplundh for the playing surface, training strips and outfield provided. Great achievement first up. The last wicket falls in the Plunket Shield match between Northern Districts and Otago at Molyneux Park, Alexandra. Photo courtesy image central. Northern Districts 456 and 135-9 dec (Jacob Duffy 5-49, Michael Rippon 4-30) beat Otago 248 and 318 (Brad Wilson 111, Anaru Kitchen 69 not out, Shawn Hicks 63; Ish Sodhi 5-124, Anton Devcich 3-40) by 25 runs. The game went late into the fourth day and finished while all around there was flooding and road closures. The Stewart McKnight game at Oturehua on the Sunday was washed out with Otago Country having posted a formidable total. The Queenstown Events Centre in hosted nine games in the U19 World Cup with eight being televised. Brilliantly fine conditions for the first eight days and then the heavens opened on day nine. Such a shame as Andrew Douglas and his crew laid on superb surfaces for the boys to showcase their skills. Our rep sides all performed with distinction and carried themselves well while representing our association. There was a great clip on Sky TV of the SIPST (Boys) team on the bank at Nelson during the BLACKCAPS ODI and they presented themselves very well during the brief interview. Congratulations to this side who received the Eastern Southland Fielding medal. On the representative front, huge congratulations to Kate Heffernan who produced some outstanding performances representing Otago Country at the School Girls Tournament and went on to play for the White Ferns. It takes a huge amount of work from a large number of people to get the eleven representative teams to trials, then selected, trained and then to all their games and I thank all those that contribute to make this happen. Your work is greatly appreciated. Richard Golden died on the 9th January 2018 aged 79. Richard was a Life Member of Otago Country Cricket Association and was a long serving player and administrator for the Alexandra Club and Vincent Sub Association. Richard also represented Maniototo and had a stint in North Otago. He was a long serving secretary of the Vincent Association and was on the ‘Shell Committee’ that ran the 1st Class games at Molyneux Park. Senior Reserve players in the Vincent Competition play for the Richard Golden Cup. When Richard gave up playing he donned the white jacket and joined the Central Otago Umpires Association and was an active member and secretary for several years. ‘Goldie’ was a special part of our association and is sadly missed. In recent years our association has signed Service Level Agreements/Partnership Agreements with Otago Cricket and NZC that included a tagged funding component which required us to complete certain functions before the tagged funding was released. We retained a level of ‘operational’ funding that came to us as of course. Moving into the current season that has all changed whereupon we now have set KPI’s to achieve before we receive any funding and a ‘risk and reward’ component should we achieve our set targets in a timely manner. A quite new challenge but one we are committed to. It should be said that OCA alongside NZC do fund our development people and part of our administrators’ payment. Graeme Buttar receives plaque from OCCA Chairman, Malcolm Jones, acknowledging his service to junior cricket in the district. As we moved to the end of the season we lost two very well respected members of our board to retirement. Graeme Buttar and Fraser Wilson have both decided that their spare time should move in a different direction. Graeme was our Junior Cricket guru for 13 years while Fraser led that next level up and operated our Hawke Cup program for the last 4-5 years. They will both continue to contribute to the association in the future, but I would really like to thank them for the contribution they have made to our Board and association.
Playing numbers across the association were up slightly with an increase in senior numbers the reason. South Otago maintained six senior sides and have shown continued excitement in their formats and support for the Crosby Morris competition. The Vincent Club competition had five senior sides and nine senior reserve teams while total playing numbers in the association registered at 2,078 which was up 35 from the previous season. KiwiSport again assisted us to provide our Skills Challenge Program in schools and our development staff delivered to 4,716 participants. Our association received funding and/or support from the following groups during the season and we thank them greatly. Breen Construction, New Zealand Racing Board, New Zealand Cricket, Otago Cricket, Sport Otago, White Water Plumbing, Kookaburra, Bendigo Sports and Charity Foundation, GeoSolve, Cancer Society Otago Branch, Central Otago District Council, Mark Wilson Marketing Specialist, Promo-X. I would like to congratulate and thank all our great volunteers. You are the life-blood of our organisation and without you we wouldn’t exist. The mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, girlfriends, partners and supporters that allow our players to enjoy our great game THANK YOU. Cheers, Malcolm Jones (Jonesy) Chairman 25 September 2018
0 Comments
Welcome to version eighteen of our newsletters. I hope they help keep all stakeholders in the Otago Country network up to date with the happenings within our organisation.
Sorry team but a bit of a typo in the last newsletter proclaiming the proposed jubilee in 2021 would be our 75th where in fact it will be our 65th, so the first paragraph should have read like this; On the 15-17th January 2021 our association will celebrate 65 years as well as 25 years since we took the Fuji Xerox Cup (Hawke Cup equivalent) off Taranaki and 10 years since we won the Hawke Cup against North Otago. There has been a committee set up to organise the Jubilee/Reunion and I’m sure it will be a weekend to remember so keep your calendars free. Click on the links below to remind yourselves of the games, versus Taranaki https://archive.nzc.nz/Events/Fuji_Xerox_Cup_1995-96.html versus North Otago https://archive.nzc.nz/Events/Hawke_Cup_2010-11.html We are planning to name a male team and a female team of the 65 years and there will be a competition run in conjunction. More info in due course about that as well as venue/program etc for the jubilee. Please pass this newsletter on to anyone you think will be interested in attending the jubilee. Over the last few months or so the board has been working through our new Partnership Investment Agreement with NZC and Otago Cricket. This consists of a new funding model quite different to what we have had before whereupon we have a set of strategic targets (KPI’s) we are to reach to achieve our maximum funding. The board are committed to achieving our targets in a timely manner. This has been signed and we are on our way to achieving the targets set. Adrian Morgan has been in his role of Administration Manager for Otago Country now for around nine months. Adrian’s position is part time and part of a Pilot Project role agreed to by NZC, Otago Cricket and ourselves following a review conducted last year. Among other things achieved is the development and finalising our Strategic Plan which was adopted at our July board meeting as planned. Copies of these policies can be found on our website http://www.otagocountrycricket.co.nz/policies--plans.html He also presented our Vehicle Policy, 2018/19 Business Plan and Budget which were all adopted at our August 1st Board Meeting, they are currently with NZC for approval. Adrian is currently working on a full season calendar in conjunction with Willie and Emma which will appear on our website soon. He continues to do an excellent job and it’s great to have him on board. If you need to contact Adrian he can be reached on 0277333895 or email Adrian@otagocountrycricket.co.nz Late last month I took a call from Fraser Wilson who indicated he will be stepping down as a board member at our AGM on 26th September. Fraser has just simply run out of time to fit everything into his busy life so the Otago Country board membership has gone. He will still be involved with all his Hawke Cup/Crosby Morris/Senior Development/U17 roles as well as his Queenstown CC commitments. Fraser has also indicated he may return in the future. I would like to thank him for the time he has given over the past while and we will have not heard the last of him. Again late last month I confirmed that Lauren Shaw from the Maniototo will join us on the board following our AGM. One of the KPI’s from NZC/OCA we agreed upon was to have two female board members by the end of November. Lauren will join Liz Perkins on the board. Lauren and her husband Geoff run a farming business on the Maniototo, Lauren is the secretary of the Maniototo Club (formerly the Maniototo sub association), heavily involved with junior cricket, treasurer of the Maniototo Golf Club and has the distinction of having played senior women's cricket for Otago. Lauren has the skills to help us into the future of cricket in our area. The association is the proud owner of seven cattle beasts as a fundraising venture. We would like to thank Ryan Dowling for doing all the ground work to make this happen and Geoff and Sam Blakely for taking good care of them. There is also some work going on in the background hoping to get a social six-a-side competition up and running in Alexandra before and after Christmas. Plenty more to come on this soon. Now that the International schedule has been released and the lower South Island has been ignored which is a huge disappointment to fans in the Central region and especially the Queenstown Lakes Council after a large investment last year to improve drainage at the Events Centre. The Domestic schedule has handed a Plunket Shield game in early December and a Burger King Super Smash double header with both the Sparks and Volts playing at Molyneux Park on the 30th December. The Volts will be in Alexandra for two weeks early season (October) for a) a four day camp, b) a four day pre-season game as per last season. Another pat on the back for Molyneux Park. Plenty of activity happening at the moment with quotes being sourced a funding applications being filed. Accommodation bookings being made, calendars being finalised. Great news earlier in the month when we received a grant from KiwiSport to assist with the running of our Junior/Youth and Girls programs. Their on-going support over the last five or so years has been tremendous and much appreciated by our organisation. On the subject of continued support I take this opportunity to thank Kookaburra and especially Blair Franklin for their support of Otago Country. We have recently received our ‘contra package’ from them including warm-up clothing for the Hawke Cup and junior girls teams, spring back stumps-balls and wicket keeping gloves for our new six-a-side comp in Alex as well as training gear including balls for all our teams. We have also received our monetary package from Kookaburra as well. Again much appreciated and we recommend you support them as often as you are able. Brilliant news on the sponsorship front as FMG has come on board as a sponsor of the Hawke Cup side. This is great news and I would like to thank FMG and the work that Jarred Andrew has done behind the scene to get this over the line. The Hawke Cup boys have flown into fundraising initiatives and word has it there’s a lamb tailing project on the way. The Crosby Morris draw is out for the start of the season and is; October 6 Maniovalley v South Otago (Molyneux Park No3) Upper Clutha v Wakatipu (Molyneux Park No4) October 13 Maniovalley v Upper Clutha (Molyneux Park No3) South Otago v Wakatipu (Molyneux Park No4) October 28 Maniovalley v Wakatipu (Dunstan High School No1) Upper Clutha v South Otago (Dunstan High School No2) Congratulations to Cam Jackson, Reece Collin, Angus Herron selected in the Otago U19 squad and both Kate and Georgia Heffernan who have been selected in the Otago Tier 1 program. Nice work to you all. Also great to hear that Lawrence has a team back in the South Otago Competition. Brilliant news again out of South Otago. Our two Cricket Development Officers are into their summer mode at the moment and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them both for their contribution to our association. They play the most valuable role in the development of our game in our region. They are the face of our association and work with the most impressionable people, our youngsters. They are the experts in their role, use them. Willie Miller is back based in Alexandra and can be contacted on 0212790979 or email Willie @ otagocricket.co.nz. Emma Campbell can be reached on 0211242266 or email emma@coachingsolutions.co.nz If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact either of them, or myself. Keep up to date with any news of the association by checking out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Otago-Country-Cricket-Association-133940846657978/ If you have anything you need to convey to the organisation feel free to contact any of the above. We are open for business. Cheers, Malcolm Jones (Jonesy) Chairman |
Otago Country CricketTune in for all the latest news. Archives
September 2022
Categories |