The club awarded the Lincoln Cricket monogrammed baggy caps to Wal Scott and the family of three deceased members, Wyn Jones, Gavin Barkley and Errol Tweedy. The men will receive plaques on a new honorary plaque in the Lincoln Rugby clubrooms.
Lincoln entered the senior competition in 1947 and began a gold series of championship wins in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1985, the club had won 12 equal or equal wins for the Ellesmere competition.
Wal Scott joined Lincoln in 1966 and his first silverware came in the 1968/69 season when the senior team won the PV Bailey Memorial Cup. Wal, who captained and opened the at bat, had a top score of 165 not out that season. The following season, the team won the Ellesmere Cricket Association Shield.
“It was a lot of fun and we tended to have some pretty intense competition against Leeston; they were always a pretty strong team at the time,” he said.
“To be honest, we had a pretty good team. We had four or five what you would represent cricketers to the sub-association, and then we’d have three or four boys from Lincoln High all leaving together – and they were all representatives. So you bring in these young guys, plus a couple more and all of a sudden you have a pretty excellent side.”
In 1970, Wyn Jones moved to the district away from Dannevirke to work as a school teacher. It didn’t take long for Wyn to prove his abilities and he quickly established himself as a valued member with his bowling and batting.
In 1972, Gavin Barkley made his senior Axis debut. He was a strong middle-class hitter who played for the side for about 12 seasons until 1984/45. At the ceremony of membership of life, it was recalled that Gav was also known for a cigarette, mostly home-baked, and quite a bit of smoking was involved in the field work.
Wal remembered a game against Leeston. Gav was fielding on the square leg boundary and rolled a fag. Wayne Nordstrom slammed the cover one straight off toward square leg. Gav held up one of his big paws, caught an absolutely screaming one, still rolling the cigarette in his other hand.
One of the original recipients of a lifetime membership to the club, Errol Tweedy was an opening batsman and wicket-keeper who began his cricket career with Dunsandel before the Second World War.
Errol’s son Mark, recalling his father’s contribution, said: “Like so many young men of his generation, Errol’s cricket was interrupted by the Second World War when he left for North Africa and Europe. While this derailed the careers of many promising athletes, it had the opposite effect for Errol and it appears that this served as a four-year spell at a foreign cricket academy as his percussion really took off when he returned home and started. to play for Springston. My mother has read Errol’s letters home from the war and it is clear that there was plenty of time for cricket, as well as for the small matter of winning a war.’
Errol made frequent appearances in The Ellesmere Guardian, where they used phrases like “Tweedy hit hard”. A report reads: “Tweedy fought for the runs but in an attempt to hit a full toss in the borough of Springston he missed, the ball fell in flight and fell to the wickets with the wreckage of a bomb.”
In the 1960s, Errol moved to the Lincoln, where he played for the next few years, still occasionally picking up half a century. However, his contribution to Lincoln was largely off the field. In addition to coaching at Lincoln High School, Errol became club president in 1964 and remained in that role for 31 years.
His successor as president, Greg Hills, told a story at Errol’s funeral in 1998.
He said he had run into Errol at the Lincoln stores a few months earlier and said they were struggling to get a senior team together.
Errol’s son Bruce played for the team and they should have brought in Bruce’s son Ryan, who can’t be more than 12 or 13 years old, to play too. Errol, who was 78 at the time, jogged three paces in, rolled his arm over and declared himself available for Saturday.
When Errol joined Lincoln, he started a family tradition that has seen him, or at least one of his children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren play or contribute uninterruptedly off the field for the past 58 years.
-By Tim Fulton