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Club Centenary Season 2002

The accepted wisdom seems to be that the Romany Cricket Club was founded in 1902 by a group of soldiers returning from the Boer War. To judge by the principal characteristics of many of those who have since played for the Club, it could just as easily have been founded by a group of bores returning from any old war.

The earliest clear evidence of the existence of the Club was a newspaper cutting from 1903. That stated that the start of the Romany's match against the Yorkshire Gentlemen was delayed until 3.00 pm due to the late arrival of the Romany team. That seems to fit. These days indeed, the published starting time is the time that the average player starts to look for his boots before setting out from home.

There were various other suggestions in odd places as to the date of the founding of the Club. For example, the minutes of the annual general meeting in 1925 contain a reference that might place the Club's origins in 1901. The minutes of annual general meetings are, however, usually written up (if at all) the evening before the next meeting. Given that few of the Club's secretaries could be relied upon to remember the next morning what was said at any given meeting, those minutes may not be entirely reliable.

Further suggestions are that the Club was playing as early as 1897. If Boer War veterans were indeed the founders, they must have been remarkably prescient, given that that was two years before the start of the war.

After much deliberation, the committee was unanimous in deeming the foundation of the Club to have been in 1902. That was mainly because we were not ready to celebrate a centenary any sooner, the hundredth anniversary having crept up on us rather quickly. That is not of course to suggest that we were ready for a centenary by 2002, but we decided to have one then anyway.

The Centenary year was launched by a traditional pre-season dinner, held at Pannal Golf Club. That it should have been held at a golf club was entirely appropriate - the Club has often struggled to find eleven players to take the field on a Sunday afternoon, but has usually managed easily to find twenty golfers to give up an afternoon's work on a Wednesday for the annual golf tournament.

The dinner was attended by Robin Smith, the President of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and a Romany member of many years' standing. He brought with him the County Championship trophy, which Yorkshire had regained the previous September. The trophy was passed around the assembled Romany members (most of whom had never seen one before), before being returned to Robin in time for him to preside over Yorkshire's subsequent relegation from the First Division. Those with any personal pride may not wish to be reminded that the evening was commemorated in a series of photographs subsequently published in Yorkshire Life magazine.

The Centenary was also celebrated on the field of play. Now for every winner, there has to be a loser, and one of the traditional roles of Romany Cricket Club is to provide that natural sense of balance. Thus it was appropriate that the official centenary match ended in a hard-won defeat against the Yorkshire Gentlemen at Escrick Park in late June.

On-the-field activity rolled over to a remarkable tour of West Sussex in August. There were those who doubted that the Club could fulfil five midweek fixtures. In the event, we turned out no fewer than seven teams in five days, playing Singleton and Petworth simultaneously on the Tuesday, and both Hambledon and Goodwood on the Thursday. Taking in games also at Slinfold, Chichester and Midhurst, our 34 tourists reversed our traditional policy by winning five and drawing one of our fixtures.

Our claims to longevity were, however, rather overshadowed by Goodwood's tercentenary, also being celebrated in 2002. His Grace, the Duke of Richmond rather fortuitously chose the day of our match to pose in 18th century garb for Goodwood's official photographs. We cajoled the rather bemused duke to join us in our own team photograph.

The season closed with the retirement of Dick Hylton as President. He has been a marvellous supporter of the Club and a wonderful President - aside from his many other qualities, how many octogenarians do you know who can still do headstands?