I have not been blogging recently, too busy filling in my World Cup wall chart and sticking pins into my Fabio Coppello doll. Having watched England nervously stutter into the last 16 I am comforted that it could be worse, we could be French.

Having recently enjoyed visits to Little Marlow and Englefield I do get some perspective on where we are as a club. What a good do at the Club for the England vs USA World Cup opener, beer festival and loads of new faces and colts. The game however was so dull that the kids went outside at half time and it was like a scaled down scene from ‘the 300’ with 3,000 under 11’s taking on half a dozen under 17’s at football. Rita tried my patience by handing out mini vuvuzelers but mercifully these soon became discarded in favour of another sausage. Other clubs are struggling for players and some have tried to address the problem by importing players who will never really be affiliated to their clubs. We have chosen a different, but more difficult path of growing our own. This is a more long term strategy, but one that should lay a solid foundation. Well done Dave and the coaches, Club Mark (who?) will be presented on Sunday morning, be there.

My only gripe, and there always has to be one with me, is the cancer that is the reluctance, and in some cases refusal to play for one Hurley team or the other. I think we all could do with thinking more about the club than ourselves. Isn’t it self evident that you only become a better player by playing against better opposition? And really, should we not support the poor souls who have taken on the task of selecting sides every week only to be told that there are conditions to your availability. Come on lets all pull together and be more Beckham than Terry, Moyse than Benitez, Marmite than Vegimite, and rattle than vuvuzela.

Shame Australia didn’t make it out of Group D else we could have beaten them at football as well as rugby and cricket. Bring on the Germans and Amersham Hill, which is more hated?

What a game the other week! I went over to Hurley fully expecting to see fours a plenty but instead it was wall to wall four by fours. I could not park and had to go down the road and sneek into the Old Bell car park. It was the first under 11s game and our boys were taking on the might of Royal Ascot. Set 112 to win in 20 overs, our brave lads set off at a terrific pace (fuelled by coke and fruit pastilles) and as the runs flowed (admittedly mostly in wides) so the bar did a roaring trade. The highlight had to be Ollie Dawkins’ reverse sweep and Dad Lardy’s chest swelled with pride and Stella. Sadly the boys fell just short on 103 but it was a terrific evening albeit a few tears as messing about turned to a split lip for one tadpole. There is certainly a buzz around the place that was not there last year and certainly a few green shoots of recovery. The colts programme is progressing better than expected and we expect to secure Clubmark very soon. The promising U17s are breaking into the senior sides and showing real promise and the two innings from James Taylor and Ross Brown against Little Kingshill were brilliant to watch. It must have been much less fun for the adults bowling to them. I realised that the last time we won the Chilterns League, Ross was only 1 year old and the term ‘fill yer boots’ had a whole different meaning. A miserable evening at Holyport saw us crash out of the League ko in the last over despite the heroics of Jacko. Never mind, we fielded a very reasonable side but never pinned down two of their batsmen. Finally, congrats to Steve T for his century on Sunday and Scotty’s and Sam’s exploits on getting us across the line at Theale. I realise that the weather was not so hot as the Saturday Steve got 52 for the 1XI, but if there is any correlation between runs and the crimson colour of his head then commercial jets must have been using it to approach Heathrow on Sunday.