Reflections of the playing season for County matches in 2025
2025 was a season of transitioning for the County with a new way of picking the competitive sides, we also had a new captain in Howard Watts, who proved to be an excellent choice.
We started with the Balcombe trophy which was held over a weekend at Desborough. We battered Berkshire in the opening game, always enjoyable, were extremely unlucky to narrowly lose to Buckinghamshire and lost to group winners Northamptonshire, in the last match.
We opened our Middleton cup campaign at a very wet Hereford, winning by 44 shots. The following week we hosted Worcestershire at Chipping Norton on a green that was too quick for the home side and narrowly lost in a game that went to the last end. The highlight of the season was an away win against Warwickshire, that left the home players in shock. We finished with a narrow defeat at South Oxford against a strong Gloucestershire side. The spirit and atmosphere at the games was the best I have seen, the team played well in every game without a lot of luck, despite what Warwickshire might think. Going forward there was a lot of positives, there were mistakes and lessons to be learnt but we are going in the right direction.
The Home Counties side had 14 new players in the team for the first game away to Buckinghamshire including Finn Jelfs who was celebrating his 12th birthday, he was also one of the standout bowlers on the day, we lost by 12 with one rink losing by 20. Our second game was at Banbury Chestnuts against Middlesex, we where 24 shots up with 3 ends to play, but dropped 25 shots to lose by 1, disappointing. The last game away to Surrey was a dead rubber which Surrey didn't want to play.
As far as the midweek side was concerned it was a season to forget. Availability issues and drop outs were the story of the season. Sixteen regular players, for various reasons, decided not to play this season. For the first half of the season we were scratching about for players, the number of drop outs from day one has been ridiculous. There have been several games with 8 or 9 players dropping out, many on the day before. There have been cases of players dropping out because they don't like the position they are playing, to me this is totally unacceptable.
On the positive side there has been a hard core of players making themselves available for the away matches. We fulfilled all our fixtures though we only had 4 rinks at Herefordshire and 5 at Middlesex, who incidentally won the prize for the worst meal of the season.
The second half of the season was better with several new recruits coming in, South Oxford must be thanked for the way they have supported the County. Results picked up and at times we actually played some good stuff. We had an enjoyable few days on the Isle of Wight and hope to do the same next season when we play Dorset at Weymouth.
The Oxfordshire clubs who hosted matches were excellent and easy to deal with, Bloxham had their first match, unfortunately games at Adderbury and Charlbury were cancelled by the opposition. We are playing at Watlington next season against Middlesex in what will be the first visit there for a long time.
I would like to thank my assistant Brian Bloomfield for all his hard work which mainly goes unnoticed. Also Chris Weller and Greg Moon for their help with the competitive side.
Ann Lattimore was a good choice as first unified President, she was very supportive of the men's teams and mixed in well. She will be a hard act to follow.
Winter well.
Alex