Almanac Cricket – Reminiscences from the Angaston CC: Our 1978-79 Colts premiership

 

Nearly four decades ago the Angaston Senior Colts won the Barossa and Light Cricket Association Under 16 premiership.

 

Among the thousands of books and helps of memorabilia in my office I came across a photo of this junior Premiership team of the 1978-79 season.

 

(Sadly – on the night the photo was organized to be taken two members of the team were unavailable – when you look back on the image some 40 years later this is frustrating)

 

On reflection it’s pretty easy to understand why this team was so dominant and went on to win the flag comfortably, beating Kapunda in the Grand Final by eight wickets on Grand Final day.

 

Captain of the side was Christopher Brook and accomplished quick bowling was already playing senior cricket.

 

He was one of just two top age players along with Derick Jones in the side, with our team coached by Simon Horne.

 

Chris is the father of current Adelaide Lightning, up and coming basketball talent Chelsea Brook.

 

I was lucky enough to be Chris’s vice-captain and played alongside of my younger brother Robert in this team.

 

He was known through the local sporting community as “Beatle” and is comfortably the best sporting talent in the family.

 

In the back row, second from the left (next to my brother) as a natural sporting talent Andrew Planthabor and character, who is sadly no longer with us.

 

Next to him are siblings William and Stephen Hurn.

 

By this stage William already played in A grade premiership under Paul Gross while Steven was a natural sporting talent like his father, Brian and grandfather, Morgan before him.

 

As i s common knowledge, William and his wife Sandi are the parents of current West Coast Eagles AFL captain Shannon.

 

Paul Obst, who forgot his cream pants on the night, one of the most naturally gifted young sportsmen I had the pleasure of playing alongside of in both our tradition winter and summer passions.

 

He has those special qualities of time and space in all his sporting endeavours – whether it was footy, cricket or basketball.

 

He was the team off spinner and a strong middle order batsman – who was believed to a distant relation to Ashley Mallett.

 

(That the reason he bowled offies!)

 

A couple of years earlier in the final minor round game of the 1976-1977 Paul and I, made our Barossa and Light A grade cricket debuts together, both having just turned 14.

 

That match was famous for the road trip to Robertstown and that SA country cricket legend John ‘JL’ Mosey making a hundred on the first Saturday and taking all 10 Angaston wickets (in an innings) the following week.

 

Lyndon Pritchard was one of the characters in the group while Ron Giles came across to Angaston from Truro.

 

Amazingly there were six of us – who you would call today bottom age players – William Hurn, Andrew Planthabor, Paul Obst, Shane Parks, Linton Pritchard and myself, while my brother Robert and Stephen Hurn still had two years of cricket at this level left.

 

Our 12^th man Brenton Brooke was just 11 years of age at the time.

 

With so many playing again the following year the questions quickly ask why we didn’t win the flag the following season.

 

The management of the Angaston Cricket Club in their wisdom decided to divide the Angaston Under 16s into two teams within the club because of the depths of playing personnel that we had.

 

While both teams, one team captained by William Hurn the other skippered by yours truly were both competitive and played finals, crosstown rivals Nurioopta collected the flag that summer.                – Peter Argent

 

Check out Peter Argent’s Our Sporting Life SA page:      https://www.facebook.com/oursportinglifeSA