A fantastic first U9s festival was enjoyed by a fantastic 8 Hawkesbury players (and their families) at Rockhampton earlier today (apologies for the venue muck up! Glad you all found the correct ground). The weather was not what it could have been, but very soon, all eyes were fixed on the players coming together as a team as the day went on. We took to the field for the opening fixture agains Frampton resplendent in HCC maroon caps, with some very good bowling and nimble fielding keeping the Frampton score down to a very manageable target. Following a quick innings break, Hawkesbury played some lovely shots, peppering the boundaries a number of times, passing the target score with half the game still to play - we finished the match winning by about 50 runs!

Following a quick hot dog break for some of the players, next up we faced a very strong Tetbury side, fully in club kit - they looked serious…. They were! We batted first, facing some very accurate bowling making it hard to score many runs. The team dug in and everyone had a good go at trying to get the Tetbury bowling away - but we kept finding fielders rather than space which was unlucky. Tetbury then came in to bat with a target they had in grasp, again, some good bowling and fielding from Hawkesbury during this match, but the strength in depth of the Tetbury team was a little too much for us today and they reached their target and won the game.

So, with 1 W and 1 L in the bag, we approached the 3rd game determined to add to the W count, as I wandered out to umpire, there were whispers amongst the players that “we were better than this lot”, so after being put into bat - we set about finding the gaps, scoring our runs and peppering the boundaries once more. After setting a very good total, we took the ball in hand with the aim to keep the bowling as straight as possible, looking to defend our runs - things went well with some fantastic catching in the field by George and Rose, some very tight bowling from Charlotte and Oliver, with Isaac on for a hat-trick in his over! Come the end of the game, after totting up the runs, we came out winners by about 6 or 7 runs - a very close and exciting game and great to see Hawkesbury finish the tournament with so many smiles on faces.

Congrats once more to Rose for wining the champagne moment today for her wonderful fielding, both taking catches, some good stops and also for reading the game so well, backing up and heading to the stumps to collect the ball from other fielders - great to see. Also lovely to see Isaac suggesting Rose had the last couple of sweets for the team once we have shared them out - a very nice gesture buddy - well done.

Overall - I (and the other coaches there today) were very impressed with the team today, A new experience for many and hopefully a very positive one which will encourage them to want to keep working at the various elements of the game to get better and better. They were all incredibly polite, well behaved and all acting in the spirit of the game - A pleasure to have out representing the club with me - Well done all. A few work ons for next week at training will be to be more positive with your running and calling to run, if the ball doesn’t go directly to a fielder - have a run, likelihood is you will make it to the other end before the ball does! Then in the field - working out which end is best to throw the ball to if the opposition are going for a run so we can try and get those run outs going and the wickets falling! Remember every wicket we take, we take 5 runs off the oppositions runs score.

Keep working hard at practice on Friday nights and more of the same on July 11th at Tetbury!

Big thanks to Karen for scoring the games for us today and warming up the team while I was in the coaches briefing session - hugely appreciated by all of us today.

Please excuse the approximate scoring - I managed to leave the scoresheets at the ground this morning so working from my (bad) memory!

Jon