Firstly, as always, we would like to thank the Terenure College Rugby Football Club for a great game of cricket on a gorgeous Friday evening at Terenure College, in commemoration of the late great George Cree and for the inaugural George Cree Plate.   The format of the game was 6 ball overs. 

Walnuts batted first - and with an early onslaught from the Rugby Club, especially Des and Tim, the runs were hard to come by, and wickets were falling with ease.   There were some notable exceptions, Damian's extremely lucky 17, and Liam's lovely 17, were overshadowed by the fantastic 24 by Josh who is averaging 19.38 per inning this season.   The mandatory 6 getting his total.   Unfortunately these were the only 3 to get into double figures (Patrick Devlin Jr finished on 8 not out).   The Walnuts did however post a resonable total of 93 - though there were doubts if this would be enough.

Our strength this year however has been our fielding, and the positional play by the respective captains - and Friday night was no different, with Brian running the show from behind the stumps.   Whenever there was trouble, Josh was called up - and delivered as always, with another MOM performance (2 for 2 of 2,  sometimes the stats don't lie).   Some fantastic bowling not reflected by the stats above was from Adam and Sean, both of whom bore the brunt of Tim Schmidt's excellence with the bat, however both were rewarded with a wicket.   The other wickets were taken by Damian (2), Fitzy and Cyril.   A special mention to Paddy Clifford who made me personally laugh out loud, as he booed the bowler for bowling him out.   "Booooo, Boooooo, Nobody likes that, boooo, Boooo " - which typified the occasion better than I can put into words here.

Walnuts eventually won by 6 runs and the Inaugural George Cree Plate was presented to Brian by George's son, Andrew, after what was a heart warming celebration of George's life, both on the rugby field and the cricket pitch.   A huge thank you to the Cree family for allowing us to commemorate George in this way, and for the refreshments after the game.  

The record for the season is now 6-4, with one game left.  Roll on Phoenix in the Park on Friday for the final game.    

To George.

TCRFC @ Terenure College August 27th 2021