Dorset Cricket Society
Résumé of events 2024-25
Year |
Month |
Day |
Speaker |
|
Topic |
2024 |
Oct |
10th |
Chris Finch |
|
Chris Finch reflected on the 2024 season, on a day when England posted a total of over 800 runs and then took six wickets on the easiest of tracks. Chris started by reminding us that of the 32 players to have scored a triple century in Tests, there are three players who have achieved that twice, Brian Lara, Don Bradman and Chris Gayle. Chris started with his highlights of the season. He thought it was a pretty good season on the field, but a really worrying one off the field. He mentioned Sam Northeast's 335 at Lords, to top Graham Gooch’s highest score at the ground, Jimmy Anderson’s 7-35 for Lancashire and his Test farewell. He also highlighted the game between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire where 17 wickets fell on the first day, but went to the final ball of the match where Glamorgan chasing 593 to win fell agonisingly short with the scores tied as their last batsman was caught. Chris thought that the player of the year was Liam Dawson, nearly a thousand runs and fifty wickets and his team of the year was Surrey, who won the Championship for the third year running. They do have large financial clout but this year they had to use 26 players, in part due to the number of their players who were called up to play for England. His choice for worst team of the season was Lancashire who managed to get relegated at the same time that Yorkshire went in the opposite direction. They lost three matches in a row by an innings, the only bright spark being Rocky Flintoff, at 16, batting number 4, indicated the weakness of their batting. Chris lamented the passing of Mike Proctor who played for Gloucester from 1968-81 as Test cricket with South Africa was not an option. Another close to his heart was Derek Underwood, of Kent of course, 297 Test wickets which could have been more if he hadn’t gone on the rebel tours to South Africa. He played for Kent from 1963 until 1987 and was MCC President in 2008. Chris recalled a lunch at Tunbridge Wells when he was sat next to Derek and a introductory comment from Chris produced a long, but modest account of where Derek had taken wickets, even though, at that stage, he was starting to suffer from dementia. Sadly towards the end of his life his dementia caused him to become very aggressive, so totally different from his earlier life. Chris’s final memory was of Graham Thorpe who had suffered from acute depression for many years. 16 Test hundreds at an average of 44 in a fairly dysfunctional England team. He also had to face a large number of very useful bowlers. Chris commented that the high profile cases of mental illness in cricketers in recent years had predominantly been batsman and he posed the question as to whether this reflected the difference in pressures on batsman and bowlers in the modern game. A batsman is only one mistake away from failure while a bowler normally gets a second chance, or more. Chris finished by expressing his concern about the probability of foreign interests buying up clubs and franchises and questioned their desire to provide the opportunities for young players to develop for England. In all a very comprehensive overview of cricket in England (and Wales) in 2024. Many thanks Chris for the time researching all of this, both on and off the field. |
|
17th |
Nancy Harman |
|
Nancy Harman who has played for Southern Vipers was our guest on Thursday. She is a middle order batter and leg-spin bowler. Her first experience of cricket was a pre-school club at primary school run by Chance To Shine, softball cricket initially. She was then encouraged to join the local club at U-13 level. She was Sussex based at that time and played for some of the county age-group sides. She is now going to be part of the Hampshire women’s team, as the ECB are re-organising women’s cricket along county lines again. Changes are happening so quickly, especially with Hampshire being sold to Indian backers. The new format means that there will be 8 teams in the league, with everyone playing each other home and away. There will be a 20-20 league and a 50 over league, so a total of 28 league fixtures followed by semi-finals and finals. Finance is moving away from the ECB and towards the counties. Nancy talked about the differences between the women’s game and the men’s. In women’s cricket there are only 4 fielders outside the 30-yard circle and so batting tends to revolve around skill rather than power. She talked about coming onto the ground at Lords as a substitute fielder and finding it difficult to hear the captain’s instructions with all the crowd noise. Nancy is a leg-break bowler, she described her love/hate relationship with the art, after 15 years she still has days when the ball doesn’t do what she wants and the batters make hay. Other times she loves the ability to turn the ball past the bat. Women’s cricket coverage depends on what is currently happening the men’s game, but generally the media coverage has greatly improved, what with streaming and double-header matches. She talked about the downside of social media with players receiving abuse, though her profile wasn't high enough to attract much attention.The new teams with have a minimum of 15 full-time professionals, with some counties spending extra to increase their numbers. Nancy is full time, though she is also working on a university degree. This is a massive change from them having four or five jobs and fitting training into a busy schedule.Nancy compared The 100 with T20 and felt that they were very much the same. The skill sets for both were pretty similar. Initially the novelty of one bowler bowling 10 balls was different, but that happens far less frequently, as the physicality of bowling such a continuous spell tended to make them more expensive as the bowler tired. There then followed a long Q&A session. Amongst the answers we found that in the winter many of the players go to Australia, but Nancy is doing a Master degree as well as winter training. A typical week of winter training would be about 90 minutes bowling, 2-3 hours of batting and a couple of hours of fielding, with most of the training being in the gym or running. Even during training there are limits to the amount of time spent bowling, to avoid injuries. There is the Women’s Big Bash in Australia and a Women’s IPL, but generally there aren’t so many opportunities overseas. Some cricket kit manufacturers are heavily involved in producing kit specifically for women, whereas others show little interest. Cricket spikes generally have a minimum size of a seven, so the ladies are forced into using boys’ versions of cricket shoes. However these haven’t been designed to be worn by adults and so tend to be less comfortable and robust, particularly when worn for a 100 over game. All told it was a very interesting afternoon, as Nancy became only the fourth lady to address the Society. Many thanks Nancy and to Derek for chairing the meeting. | |
|
24th |
Pat Murphy |
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50 members and guests turned up to hear Pat Murphy, legendary sports broadcaster and journalist tell us about his career (and his latest book!). In total he has written or ghosted over 40 books. Not everybody knows him that well, as he related about a Yorkshire farmer who introduced him by saying “I don’t know who this bloke is, as I don’t listen to the radio, here he is, Pat Murphy. Pat has been with the BBC for 50 years next month, he worked with the likes of John Arlott, Chris Martin-Jenkins, Cliff Morgan. He already knew John from writing Basil D’Olivera’s book, John wrote the forward to the book. He worked for Radio 2 in the Midlands and Arlott helped him greatly, even though he lived in Alderney. Arlott consumed his usual allocation of wine and put Pat into a Q&A about Alderney. When Pat wrote about the 20 players who had scored a double-century in a Test (at that time), John knew 18 of them. He gave Pat a massive amount of useful advice, including to imagine that he was describing the scene to a blind listener. When Pat wrote his book “BBC Sports Report” it spanned a time scale which encompassed Clement Attlee to Liz Truss, the NHS was born the same year as Sports Report. Arlott was the first football commentator on the programme, commentating on Southampton. He revealed that the famous signature tune was only decided on a few minutes before the show went on air. For 6 months in the early 70’s the management dropped the theme tune, before the likes of Des Lynam demanded its return. He talked about the problems of Press Officers, who keep reporters at arm length and the difficulties of getting players on air in the shorter timescale of today’s programme. He explained that some of the modern managers from abroad are a problem, because their foreign accents don’t come over well on radio. At Leicester recently Caleb Okali was put forward for interview, unfortunately he spoke very little English and Pat wasn’t fluent in Italian! Jobsworths are always a problem, Ian Bothan had arranged tickets for Sebastian Coe to be collected on the gate. Seb turned up at the WG Grace Gates, but there were no tickets for him there. The jobsworth suggested that they might be at the North gates and if really was who he said he was, then it wouldn’t take him long to run around there! However, although the modern game might bring its difficulties, nothing surpasses being at Hillsborough in 1989 and seeing too many bodies being taken away. Pat was producing the outside broadcast on that day. On tours abroad he loved New Zealand once they got there - the Aussie pilot suggested that they turned their clocks back 30 years, whereas India after Covid was a nightmare with security checks every 25 yards.Pat was asked about mistakes that he had made, he replied that he once said that one cricketer had seven craps for England. Tony Gubba claimed a player had scored 23 goals - exactly double last season’s tally, John Hartson claimed the Welsh football team didn’t get the Adelaides they deserved. He thought that of the 4 amazing all-rounders that co-existed in the 1980’s, Botham, Wasim, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee, Imran was the best, considering his overall achievements. A lengthy Q&A session followed with questions about whether New Road is viable as a county ground and how he got a controversial book past AC Smith, the MCC censor at the time. He had a run-in with Alec Ferguson who didn’t like another BBC commentator. For his books he used a statistician as he was more interested in the overall picture, rather than someone’s average. Many thanks Pat and to Mike who had arranged the visit and Derek who hosted the meeting. | |
|
31st |
Graham Jones |
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30 members gathered to be entertained by the latest edition of Humour In Sport. A wide variety of sports were covered including cricket, football, gymnastics, motor racing and snooker to name but a few. Stars performing on our behalf ranged from Freddie Flintoff, Michael McIntyre, Geoff Miller to Max Boyce, Ian Botham and Phil Bennett. The video sketch on the naked cricket match seems to be particularly well received! As ever, the afternoon sought to bring a bit of humour into a grey November day. | |
|
Nov |
7th |
Garry Richardson |
|
A good crowd assembled Thursday to hear a very polished performance
from Garry Richardson, who has recently retired from the BBC after exactly 50 years
working for them. As a youngster he had trials with a couple of football teams, but
fairly early on realised that he didn’t have the necessary attributes to be a professional
sportsman. On leaving school he became an apprentice electrician at his father’s
firm, a job that he didn’t find appealing. He used to make tapes in his bedroom,
pretending to present radio shows, so when a show advertised the possibility of finding
out more about broadcasting, he made sure that he was at the front of the queue.
In the hour before the broadcast was to go live, the dj offered members of the public
the chance to do a bit of presenting to the audience at the show. Garry seized the
opportunity and linked a couple of records and read a weather forecast. The producer
of the show spoke to him afterwards and offered to show Garry around the BBC if he
was ever in London. Three days later he wrote to the producer and the following Friday
he was shown around the BBC. He was advised that if he was really interested
in doing the BBC he should take any job that was on offer. Initially there were no
jobs in the local area, but after a while a vacancy occurred with the local radio
station and Garry was started on his career. He related the problems caused by being
live on air, once Frank Bruno, who was about to fight Mike Tyson, confused invincible
and invisible and wondered how he could hit Tyson if he couldn’t see him! Garry also
entertained us with several examples of mimicry, with the likes of Murray Walker
coming back to life. In 1982 Garry covered his first Wimbledon where Fred Perry was
very helpful to him. He had his best moment of his career at Wimbledon when he got
the chance to interview Bill Clinton during a long rain break. It was Ladies finals
day and Garry was assisting Sue Barker when he spotted President Bill Clinton arriving
and an idea started to formulate. He quickly dashed off a letter to the Wimbledon
management seeking an interview with Bill Clinton and was surprised 15 minutes later
to get a reply in the affirmative. He wished he had spent the intervening time thinking
of questions! On his way in he managed to quiz Clinton’s security man about sports
he enjoyed and people he knew. Bill Clinton greeted him by name and for the
next 15 minutes Bill was brilliant as he was asked about playing golf and tennis
with some of the stars. At the end of the interview Garry was surprised that Clinton
didn’t just leave, but stayed and started asking Garry questions about his life. Garry
was fortunate enough to cover 6 Olympic Games, with the likes of David Coleman, who
once had to omit the name of a little Madagascan, whose name was just too much of
a mouthful. He also once did a lap of honour around the Silverstone Grand Prix in
1987 alongside Nigel Mansell, who was on the back of a police motorcycle. Garry jumped
in an open top car and followed him around the track. Garry told us that his saddest interview was with Mohammed Ali. This was done over the phone and lasted about 15 minutes, but unfortunately Ali was starting to suffer from Parkinsons and only about two minutes of the tape was useable. Some of his favourite anecdotes were about Morecambe and Wise, who were asked that if they hadn’t been very good what would they have been? Eric quickly came back - we would be Mike & Bernie Winters! He also had a lot to say about Ken Dodd, how he worked as a door to door salesman and tried out his jokes on housewives who opened the door. He said that he had the greatest job in the world, making people happy. There then followed a great Q&A session to complete a wonderful afternoon’s entertainment. Many thanks to Garry and to Mike Vimpany for facilitating the event. |
|
14th |
David Graveney |
|
David Graveney played county cricket for Gloucestershire, Somerset and Durham in a career spanning 22 years, in which he took 981 1st class wickets. He also won the B&H trophy in 1977 with Gloucestershire. In later life he was a Test selector for 12 years including time spent as Chairman and has also worked for the Professional Cricketers’ Association. He and Julian Shackleton both went to Millfield School where his love of cricket grew. He wasn’t particularly outstanding at school, but his father was a county player and his uncle was Tom Graveney. David was a left arm spinner, while both his relatives were batsman. His first game for Gloucestershire came when David Allen, who was having his benefit match was dropped in his favour. The fact that the chief selector was his father caused a few eyebrows to be raised. In 1977 Gloucestershire triumphed in the B&H final, but more notably had beaten Hampshire in the semi-final when Mike Proctor has taken a hat-trick and should have had four in four balls. Mike sadly passed away earlier this year. In his first county match Basil D’Oliveira ran down the wicket to his 2nd ball to be stumped, David never did manage to find out whether it was deliberate. In a strange turn-around when David was sacked as Captain of Gloucestershire the chief selector was ….. David Allen! and David had taken 14 wickets in his previous match. David became the first player ever to move from Gloucester to Somerset, before he was invited to captain Durham, where he had three years playing with the likes of Ian Botham. The team was made up of seven players who were really too old to play and a few youngsters. David had been involved for a short while with the Professional Cricketers’ Association, he was John Arlott’s marker at PCA meetings and had to find the bottle opener for the lunchtime wine.David explained his reasons for going to South Africa on a rebel tour, which he felt had caused progress to be made in the country, plus of course there were the financial reasons to give his family security. David then had a position within the PCA which allowed him the time to travel around the country, watching cricket and became a selector for the England Test team. He took over from Ray Illingworth as Chairman and served for 12 years. During this time England became the lowest ranked Test team in the world. He found that it was a tremendous honour to be involved with the England team. Even now he is involved with the England U-19 team. He described how his dad and Colin Ingleby-McKenzie set up a county match while Colin was staying with the Graveney household, something which wouldn’t happen these days. David entertained us with memories of former Hampshire players such as Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge and persuading the groundsman at Cheltenham to add a little sand to the wicket a-la Great Escape, by dropping out of holes in his trouser pockets. It made no difference! There followed a long Q&A session in which told David told tales of agreement with Malcolm Marshall regarding short-pitched bowling and I.V. Richards who took 34 off an over. An interesting afternoon learning about the upper-echelons of the game. Many thanks to David plus Julian and Mike for facilitating David’s appearance. | |
|
21st |
Peter Mason |
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Peter Mason, author of many books and journalist at The Guardian, came to tell us all about his book on Clyde Walcott, one of the famous “3W’s”, Worell, Walcott and Weeks of the West Indian team of the late 1950’s and 60’s. Clyde was born into a black middle-class family in Barbados in 1928. His family rented a large house, their backyard included a large area where cricket could be played and so Clyde grew up with that influence. In fact the 3W’s were all born within 1 square mile of each other within 18 months of each other, though it took many years for them to all meet. He was one of the great batsmen, with a Test average of over 56 when he retired, which would have been more if he hadn’t kept wicket as well, in the early part of his career. How did he get there? He was so good that he played in the Barbados League from the age of 12. In 1942 he played for Barbados against Trinidad, keeping wicket, by 1948 he was playing for West Indies. He was invited to play for an invitation XI in New York for a period of three months playing exhibition matches. Having done this twice his government job was given to someone else and he came to England playing in the Lancashire League for Enfield, near Accrington. He played from 1951-54. At 6’ 2” and fifteen stone he was a powerful batsman though his bulk did impinge on his wicketkeeping at times. His first Test was against England at Bridgetown and the West Indies won the series 2-0. An away tour to India followed, where he became established as a main batsman. 1950 was a landmark year for Walcott, 168 in the 2nd innings at Lords and the West Indies won the series in England for the first time. West Indies went to Australia in 1952-53, unfortunately racial undertones started to undermine the team. The captain was a fairly average cricketer, a white man called John Goddard, he was inexperienced, while the 3W’s ran things on the pitch. The 3W’s felt that he got too much credit for the win in England, there were 3 or 4 white players in the team, all the selectors were white, as was the Barbados board. Some of this was mirrored in England where an amateur captain was selected for England, it wasn’t until 1954 that Len Hutton, a professional, became captain. This gradually affected the relationship between the 3W’s, as there was a certain amount of jostling for who might be the first black captain of the West Indies. In 1957 Walcott was appointed vice-captain for the tour of England, but the West Indies lost three nil. In the final Test he captained but the West Indies were dismissed for under 100 in each innings, He then scored 5 centuries in 6 Tests against Australia at home before a final series against Pakistan before he retired in 1958. In 1954 he was appointed by the sugar producers association in (British) Guyana as a cricket organiser, as most of the workers were of Indian origin. He built a structure for cricket in the area as well as playing for Guyana, also finding new talent, for example he found Rohan Kanhai, Joe Solomon, Basil Butcher amongst others. He became social welfare organiser, improving schooling, housing etc and did that until 1970, when he returned to Barbados, where he became senior personnel officer with the Barbados Shipping Company and rose to head of the Barbados Employers Association. His sympathetic employer allowed him the time to become involved with cricket administration, which lead to him being the manager when the West Indies won the 1st World Cup in 1975. He became involved with the ICC, widening its geographical influence and making it more commercialised. He became Chairman and increased the influence of countries outside of England and Australia, including quarterly tele-conferencing to improve the speed of change. He stepped down in 2000 and he retired back to Barbados where he lived until his death in 2006. There followed a Q&A session which included discussion of a rebel tour to South Africa by West Indian cricketers and inter-island rivalry amongst many other topics. Many thanks to Peter and to Derek for hosting the meeting. | |
|
28th |
Fraser Stewart |
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Fraser Stewart believes he is very lucky, because he has a dream job as head of Cricket at Lords. On Thursday he told us of his cricketing journey to this achievement. He started his career at Compton House cricket club near Yeovil, playing for the U-16’s when he was 8 or 9. He went to school in Somerset and went to Taunton to watch the likes of Botham, Richards and Garner. He played junior cricket for Somerset which included opening with Marcus Trescothick. At 16 he moved on to play for Sherborne and played there for 6 years until he finished university, in his time he played 4 or 5 games for the county side. He also played for the Dorset Rangers and for his university in Manchester, before he moved to London and played in the Middlesex League. At school, just before his A-Levels, he played against MCC and was invited to play the qualifying games to become a playing member of MCC. Fast forward a few years and just before he was 30 he was appointed to a dream job at Lords, manager of the cricket office, which runs over 500 matches a year against schools and adult teams, as well as overseas tours. Another aspect of his job is to be manager of the laws of cricket, assisted by a committee including high-profile names such as Simon Taufel. He apologised if there was any Law of which we disapproved. He appears on Sky or TMS when there are controversies about the Laws. He told us about the match last year where there was a controversial non-catch followed by the Bairstow dismissal. Fraser indicated that the behaviour of some MCC members in the Long Room meant that they couldn’t comment more, along the lines of ’Spirit of Cricket’. He was heavily involved in the introduction of DRS, which required a lot of research and some tweaks to playing conditions to cover the fine details which DRS requires. Fraser has recently returned from visiting bat manufacturers in India, with a view to seeing whether composite bats could be acceptable, that is a bat where the outer portions are made from the best English willow, while the centre may be a poorer quality willow, thus producing a laminate style bat. They are adamant though that they don’t want bats to become more powerful. The indoor centre at Lords has eight lanes and is used greatly for coaching youngsters Fraser is general manager of London Spirit, both the men’s and women’s teams. He suggested that one reason that The Hundred was instigated was that T20 was predominantly a boozy lads' night, while The Hundred has been targeted at a family and female audience. He feels that The Hundred has had a massive influence on women’s cricket. He also emphasised that modern youngsters are tuned into 5 minute bitesize highlights of games rather than an hour-long package. Fraser explained that his club has over a hundred youngsters attending on a Friday night with the All Stars and Dynamos coaching programmes. A lively Q&A session then ensued, Fraser revealed that the players are actually paid the amount that they are auctioned for, though their wages in The Hundred are structured with 80% for playing and 20% for appearances to support the game. Fraser feels that countries such as India need to take a smaller slice of the financial cake, so that the smaller countries can thrive and also that India must let their players partake in overseas competitions to give them experience, which will also make the television rights more valuable. Batsmen are more concerned with their strike rate than their average. Much of the decision making around selection is driven by data. He gave an example where they have software that could simulate matches based on two different players occupying the same slot in the team. The software can simulate 20000 matches and work out which of the two players gives the greatest chance of success, which may be as marginal as 2 or 3%. America is seen as a major prospect for expansion in the future, in view of the number of ex-pat Asians living there. Fraser was asked about possible changes to the Laws, but apart from the size of bats and the possibility of laminated bats there wasn’t much in the pipeline. It was suggested that leg-byes should be done away, but it was felt that it would make for a more negative game. In all we had a fascinating afternoon learning lots about the ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of cricket. Many thanks to Julian for organising the event and to Mike and Fraser for another great afternoon. | |
|
Dec |
5th |
Richard Logan |
|
We had another good turn-out for the visit of Richard Logan, a former
Hampshire pace bowler, who is now Director of National Counties Cricket Association.
He had twelve seasons in professional cricket, followed by four seasons playing Minor
Counties cricket. The NCA is the pinnacle of recreational cricket in this country,
a stepping stone for those going into the professional game. He was selected for
England U15’s, U17’s and U19’s and won the World Cup with the U19’s. In those days
he was an opening batsman, but after missing out on selection at U14 level he decided
to add another string to his bow by developing his bowling. He started his professional
career at Northants, but after a falling out with the coach he moved to Notts. He
had four seasons at Trent Bridge alongside the likes of Kevin Pieterson, before moving
to Hants in 2005. He had a mixed time at Hampshire as he had a stress fracture of
his back in the second season and Hants released him at the end of the season. 2005
was quite unreal playing with KP and Shane Warne prior to the Test series. He then
enjoyed several seasons paying Minor Counties cricket, mainly for Berkshire.Richard
has been involved with the National Counties Cricket Association for five years which
organises 3 day, 50 over and T20 matches. Richard feels that they have to repeatedly
prove themselves to the ECB, at least finances are arranged for the next four years.
It will be interesting to see where money from the sale of The 100 franchises goes.
As an example Dorset get about £36000, but need over £50000 to complete
a season. Richard would like to see counties like Dorset showcase their matches around
the county rather than have them all located at the same venue. There are exciting
things in the future, streaming of matches is becoming more common and this could
raise the profile, literally around the world. A new innovation this year was the
NCCA Challengers team, which is the NCCA equivalent of the England Test team, they
play against the likes of MCC, Leicester and Hants. It was hoped that this team might
be invited into a major competition, but so far this has not materialised. They also
have a women’s version of this team. First class county coaches are invited to matches
or training to spot talent who might make their way into First class cricket. In
the Q&A session which followed questions were asked about Richard’s favourite
end at the Rose Bowl, he preferred to bowl into the wind, rather than one particular
end. He related how he once spent an afternoon talking to Curtley Ambrose in the
dressing room, when Richard was 15 or 16. Richard has KP as a close friend and explained
that Kevin is quite insular, he has a close circle of friends but keeps others at
a distance. Another interesting afternoon looking at aspects of cricket both within the professional and amateur game. Many thanks to Richard and to Mike for organising the afternoon. |
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12th |
Annie Chave |
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19th |
Members |
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2025 |
Jan |
9th |
Members |
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16th |
Christine Drew |
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23rd |
Tim Lerwill |
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30th |
Peter Hardy |
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Feb |
6th |
Tony Diprose |
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13th |
Simon Mann |
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20th |
Chris Wood |
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27th |
Dave Allen |
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March |
6th |
Stephen Chalke |
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13th |
Members |
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20th |
David Frith |
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27th |
Derek Hopkins |
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