March 2025
Seddon Premier League: Final
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TAMAHERE BULLS UPSET THE LONGKEEPERS TO EARN THE ‘TEA URN’
The Tamahere Bulls upset previously unbeaten Franklin Longkeepers to win the inaugural Seddon Premier League.
Going into the Grand Finale the Franklin Longkeepers were hot favorites as they cruised through the round robin stages of the competition unbeaten to top the points table.
However, 20/20 cricket can do funny things and the Tamahere Bulls, led by the inspirational captaincy of Quinton De Bruin, produced their best performance of the competition, to last.
Longkeepers Captain, Brent Arnel, won the toss and elected to put runs onto the board first.
The match was played at the wonderful venue of Stark Oval, Tamahere. It was a beautiful sunny day for cricket and there was a good following of spectators for the big game.
It was a lower scoring game that what we came to expect at Woodlands Estate. The Tamahere Bulls restricted the Longkeepers to 159 all out in 18.4 overs. Sam Vercoe topped scored with 72 off 40 balls while Fraser Kilgour scored 23 of 12 and Ethan Gray 26 off 25. Jonathan Single was outstanding with the ball in hand and returned superb figures of 4 for 12 off his 4 overs. An inspired performance from the crowd favourite.
The Tamahere Bulls were confident that they could chase down a relatively modest Longkeepers total. However, their innings never really got going and it stuttered for the majority of the first 12 overs with only Mitch Green contributing favorably to the total by scoring a well compiled 23 off 27 balls.
However, enter Josh Wright. With 90 runs needed of 48 balls, Wright produced the best performance of his career scoring 68 off 29, to basically single handedly win the Tea Urn for the Bulls.
It was a stunning final between two very evenly matched teams.
Congratulations to the TAMAHERE BULLS for a victorious performance when it mattered. Congratulations to the FRANKLIN LONGKEEPERS for being the most consistent team throughout the SPL. They were brilliantly managed off the field by Esther Williams, Jason Williams and Darrell Abbott and their young team can be very proud about how they performed throughout the competition.
A big thank you to the following people for making the, not only Finals Day, but the entire competition a huge success:
- Graeme Mead and Karl Johnson for their wonderful commentary on the live stream
- Logan BrownBrown for his excellent Live Stream operation - Streamitnz
- Wayne and Sharon Dean from Ultimate Sports for capturing the games with their excellent photos
- Ryan Gulbransen for his expert DJ skills over the sound system – amazing!!
- Cameron from BurgerFuel for supplying the lunches
- The umpires that helped us out, particularly Greg Peters who stood in all of the games.
- Justin Williams and Bill Andersson for scoring the games
- Matt Stark for allowing us to use his beautiful and picturesque cricket ground
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