THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND CRICKET CLUB UQCC OLD BOYS CRICKET NEWS Cnr Upland Rd & Sir William Macgregor Dr, St Lucia, Qld Tel. 07 3346 9530 Edition 20 – December 2018 IMPORTANT DATES 2018–19 3 February 2019 – Valleys at Norm McMahon Oval 24 February 2019 – Sandgate Blue – Uni No. 2 IV Tour – Kowloon CC – 14–16 March 2019 Hong Kong Old Boys Long Lunch – 25 January 2019 – Charming Squire UQ SPORT South Bank Welcome Welcome to the 20th edition of the UQCC Old Boys newsletter. In this edition we: 1. welcome two new Life Members to the club 2. have a rundown on another successful UQCC breakfast 3. have comments and feedback from the Old Boys network 4. provide match reports on our recent Old Boys games. We commence with congratulations to the youngest ever UQCC Life Member. Jarrod Turner – Life Member Jarrod Ross TURNER was a right hand-batsman and off-break bowler. He was born on 25 June 1982 (son of Lee-Ann Margaret BENOIT and Peter Robert TURNER). He represented Queensland Under 17 in 1998–99. He made his debut for University in 1999–00, making his First Grade debut in 2001–02. From 2003–07, he played for Northern Suburbs. After this date, he returned to UQCC, becoming the Club Coach during a very successful period for the club. He is a Level 2 cricket coach. He has also served on the club Executive. He was educated at Middle Park State School; Brisbane Boys College; and The University of Queensland, graduating Bachelor of Applied Science (Human Movement Studies). Seasons: 2001, 2002, 2008, 2009,2010, 2011 Jarrod’s reply My UQCC career started in 1996 when I joined the Lord’s Taverners squad as an Under 14 ‘trialling’ for the U16 team with the likes of Craig Philipson, Chris Hartley and Tim Wheller. David Biggs would drive us from BBC to UQCC for training, and we would try and count how many coins he had under his car seats. I think this is where I may have also developed my interest in having a punt. I believe I only played one game that year as a fill in, but it was brilliant to watch the likes of Michael Kasprowicz, Martin Love, Wade Seccombe, Paul Jackson, Geoff Foley and Mark Shackel train in the nets alongside us, and listen to some of the stories of what the grade players got up to on the previous weekend. In the following years, I transitioned from the Lord’s Taverners side into grade cricket. My early memories of grade cricket were that it was tough, but the stories got even better, and instead of hearing them for an hour at training, I could listen to them for six hours straight waiting to bat or out in the middle. I was lucky enough to win a 4th grade premiership early on in the piece. We turned up on the final day needing almost 1000 and only had two wickets in hand. My main role that morning was to make sure the beers were cold for when we watched the other Uni sides battle out 1 their finals. Little did we expect that Rendle O'Connell would bat with the tail and win from nowhere. Instead of going home early and helping my girlfriend with her Year 10 Science exam prep, I ended up drinking way too many beers at the club (and the RE) and ended up being carried to her place and was a bit crook in the garden. Our relationship didn’t last much longer (girlfriend — not the RE). I joined Norths for four years, which were great years, but it was just too far away from the RE, so I returned again in 2008, this time as a player and coach, helping out with women’s cricket. I think I was slightly more active in my role here than I was when I previously helped coach the Lord’s Taverners side — this may have had something to do with what took place on a Saturday night before the games. It was not long after that I joined the committee and was appointed as the Uni Club Coach. It was a great time as a player and coach, as we had a lot of success on and off the field. We won a number of Club Championships and Premierships along the way, and the memories will stay with me forever of us all singing the club song in the changing rooms, in the clubhouse and at the Story Bridge — until we were asked to move on to another location. A few years into being appointed as Club Coach, we took the jump and decided to start the UQ Junior Club. It is brilliant to see that you can now come to the club under the age of 8, play through the grades and run around the field in the Over 40s and 60s. There are too many people to thank individually, but to my early coaches, the committee, players, coaches/managers of the junior teams — thank you so much for your support over the years. UQCC has given me so much over the years, but the most important of all have been the friendships that have been developed over time. The second life member inducted at the latest AGM is a fine upstanding pillar of the community who possesses immaculate character. Hold on … it was me??? Ian Elks – Life Member Ian Albert ELKS was a right-hand batsman and wicket keeper. He was born on 29 August 1963 at St Andrews War Memorial Hospital, Spring Hill (son of Thelma Agnes RIDEOUT and Donald Joseph ELKS). He played grade cricket for University, appearing in the first grade team from 1982–83 to 1991–92, and again in 1995–96 and 1998–99. He captained the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast teams before they entered the Brisbane Grade Competition. He represented Australian Universities vs combined Oxbridge in 1986. He was educated at Coochin Creek State School, Beerwah; The Southport School; Dover College; and The University of Queensland (Kings College), graduating BCom in 1984. He is a chartered accountant and is currently a principal in a stockbroking firm. Seasons: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1998 Ian’s reply When the Club President Geoff Teys called me and said I had been nominated as a life member of UQCC, I was surprised, slightly embarrassed, but very humbled to accept. There are any number of people who have devoted more time to the club than me. One example would be Jarrod Turner. I was very pleased to see Jarrod becoming a life member at the same meeting as me. Despite a few years he spent on the dark side at Norths, the amount of time and effort he has devoted to the club as a player, administrator and coach would be hard for most people to believe. Establishing the UQCC Junior Club, which now has over 30 teams, was a daunting and massive project. He did it with his usual modesty and good humour, although I'm sure it was his ability to woo the juniors mothers which was his secret to success. Congratulations Jarrod — well deserved. I've been very fortunate to be part of this club since 1982. I've made lifelong friendships and had a lot of fun. I know when I finished playing cricket every weekend, I did miss the competition and camaraderie of playing with a team. So as my family got a little older, belly a little larger and golf handicap stalled, I thought it would be good to go back and have a run around again. Playing Old Boys cricket has been great from the perspective of keeping in touch with mates I had played with and against. But I've also had the chance to meet another generation of team mates/tragics. Recent 2 intervarsity tours to Sydney, Melbourne, Barossa, Auckland, Singapore (and in 2019 Hong Kong) have been great experiences and many lifelong memories have been stored away (or to the best of an Old Boy’s ability). After each of our Old Boy games, we prepared written match reports, which were sent around the playing group to let them know how our games progressed. People like Red Herring, Jed Davis and Bomber are very good story tellers and are obviously wasted in their current vocations. Some of their match reports have became literary works of art. I thought perhaps a semi regular newsletter containing these reports, plus some interviews of prominent old boys, plus the Uni Bookwork 20 Questions might be a way of keeping old boys vested and interested in the club. Old Boy newsletters have of course been produced in the past by Lawson, Keith, John and Graham, but the advent of the internet makes the distribution of these newsletters so much easier. It’s been my privilege to sit down and interview some of the prominent Uni Old Boy characters. All the previous Old Boy newsletters I have prepared (with the help of Gail Cartwright) now reside on the UQCC website. Hopefully by reading these newsletters, current players will get a taste of what it was like to play at Uni in former days. In addition, past players will get some news of what their contemporaries are up to, if any have fallen off the perch and an update on the current status of the club. When I've approached past Life Member nominees to pen a piece for the newsletter, I asked them to provide a couple of anecdotes from their experiences at Uni that the readership might find interesting.