Ben Williams, coach of the Te Puke cricket side faces a sudden death preliminary final with his Rotterdam club in the Netherlands.

Ben's Rotterdam club, VOC, will play top Amsterdam club VRA at his Rotterdam ground for the right to make the final of the national league. 2000 people can fit in the Rotterdam club ground and it will be at capacity for the match. Former stars of VRA are Darren Murray, Shane Thomson and Craig Cumming. Rotterdam have had Nathan Astle, Tama Canning and Tim McIntosh. There is a lot of history and rivalry between the clubs so it will be fiercely contested. Amsterdam versus Rotterdam is like a Bay versus Waikato match.
Chris Pringle, who is now living and working in the Mount, played for The Hague in Holland. Without him, The Hague has not featured as strongly at the top of the table.
In the major semi Ben's VOC side lost to Excelsior and so Excelsior went straight through to the final and has the week off to repair and recover.
When I played in the Netherland, Excelsior had a huge tie up with West Indian players so they were always strong on the small Dutch grounds. Countless times you would have them in trouble only to see the ball disappear into the dykes five or 10 times and the game was over. The other thing about Dutch grounds was that some were on hockey and football fields (like us with rugby) so the square boundaries were tiny. Anyone who could play across the line made hay.
So good luck to Ben for the sudden death match.
On the local front Dipak Patel is bringing his Howick side down for pre-season matches and will play BOP at Te Puke. Howick are a huge eastern club in Auckland with 1000 juniors and their own indoor training academy. Rex Smith will bring his Cornwall side to play BOP the following weekend. Cornwall also has a huge junior club of over 1000 and the premier side has the best record in Auckland cricket. They play BOP at Te Puke the weekend after Howick.
James Pamment, the coach of BOP, will use the matches as opportunities for players wanting to make the Bay side for the crunch matches to come before Xmas. The Bay is leading the points in Northern Districts in their push for a Hawke Cup challenge, and the points are taken over the full year so the challenger will be decided in the early part of this season. Hence the Bay has been having an intense build up. The physio, Roger, was with Wasps Rugby Club in London for 10 years and on Sunday put the Bay cricket squad through something similar to a Wasps pre season fitness session. The main event was that every 30 seconds guys had to sprint a one, two or three and this went on for ages. Needless to say some guys regretted their off season Sat night on The Strand. Graeme Aldridge will captain the Bay for these matches.