It was a beautiful Canterbury blue sky day at The Willows on Sunday.

The Willows selected a typically strong but diverse team. It was nice to welcome back two former Canterbury Representative players with Iain Roberston and Brandon Hiini back in Willows colours with 8 other St Bede’s old boys in the home team! The Willows decided to bat first, openers Mark Reid and DJ Lyons got the Willows off to a excellent start with DJ Lyons scoring as always an aggressive 40. St Bedes bowled very well and had The Willows on the edge at 94 for 5 before Josh Coll entered the frame batting 7 scored a brilliant 83. Josh mixed his innings up with elegance and power. Josh and the lower order batter very well and we scrambled to 252, which I believed was enough.

Jack Haines and Cameron Harvey bowled well up front for the Willows to put the pressure on the SBC top order, SBC batted well but were under run rate pressure early. Enter Brandon Hiini, the experienced allrounder asked plenty of questions and was rewarded with 3/14 off 5 overs. At the other end young Joey Pawson was also asking similar questions, Joey ended up taking 3/36 off 8. It was also very enjoyable watching Iain Roberston and Stan Wooliscroft show some young batsman good quality spin bowling.

As always it was a great pleasure and an honour to skipper a quality bunch of Willowers. We all had a great time in the field. Thanks to all the Willows members who make these games happen. Thank you to all the SBC lads, Garfield, Paul and Andy and family and friends. I hope you all enjoyed your day, you did St Bedes proud.

I am sure one of the highlights for the SBC lads was watching Connon McKey smoke his cousin Joey Pawson for a massive six. I think Joey had the last laugh however picking up the win, as for Max Haines, what were you thinking, there was never a run there.....your brother Jack was very very disappointed he didn’t get a chance to knock you over.

We look forward to playing SBC again next year, I think The Willows will be in for a bigger challenge to retain the Clayton Cosgrove Trophy.