Reubens team, Guildford Cricket Club, joined the Farnham Cricket Festival today, June 7th.

The cricket ground at Farnham Castle was full to over flowing, well the car park was.  There were three pitches on the normal cricket ground and a 4th pitch being placed on the top lawn, at the back of the park coffee shop.

It was fun for all the boys and girls and there were 10 teams playing, from around the county, from 10am to 4pm, to give the boys and girls a good sense of cricket competition.

It was Reubens first proper cricket match and he clearly enjoyed himself and was absorbed from the get go.  He looked the part in his “whites” and Chris brought his bat at 2pm for the 2nd half of the matches.

Reuben fielded well and had a chance at bowling and of course a few turns at the crease.  He also had time for some practice in the nets whilst his team was batting.

For the onlookers, as with all cricket matches, it was a case of bedding down, getting the special floor blankets out, director chairs and picnic hampers at the ready to keep sustenance levels going – mind you it was a DEFINATE risk getting a burger from the BBQ tent!  We had to take two back, even Steve does not like “rare” burgers!  The sausages were pretty wrecked too.

Still the sun was shining, it was warm, it was laid back, AND it was fun!

See the images below for a pictorial record and there are a couple of videos to view as well….

On Sunday Reuben had his first cricket session.  All dressed up in his “Whites”, well apart from the shirt.

The coach is a Kiwi, nice broad accent, but appears to be a nice guy.

The session took place at Guildford cricket ground and it was generally sunny, but chilly.

Steve and Shaun took Reuben and Josh to the ground as they had both stayed over with us.

Reuben seemed to enjoy himself and seemed to mix in well enough, though not pushing himself forward.  However the football games probably helped him mix in OK.  He did spend a lot of time on the floor though, which seems his favourite place when having to stand still for more than 15 seconds.  Consequently his “whites” soon became “greens”!

He also got into a habit if yanking his jumper down, hence why in the images he is the only boy with a cricket jersey without the traditional “pucker” around the waste.

All in all we think that the taster or this first session went OK, though he will miss out on this coming weekend as we have the family camp with Farnham scouts at Garners field.

One thing Reuben was very keen on was seeing if he could get back to Guildford City Boys Football Club playing ground to see if he could play in the 2nd half of the match that was going on, on Sunday.  He had forgotten though that he was going for lunch.  He’s already asking if this coming Sunday he can be got to the inter team football game, so he might have to shoot off from the Family Camp a little early.

Josh in the meantime was playing computer games and eventually wound up in the back of Zoe and Chris’ car playing with the Lego stuff that they had brought over for the over night stay!!

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Josh came too but preferred to stay in Zoe’s car playing with Lego…..

Reuben and Steve went to the Aldershot game last Sat.  it was a children get in free day and it was HEAVING!

Best attendance all season.

Aldershot were playing Chester, who turned out to be a bit handy, BUT boy were they girls!  By the end of the game 5 of them had been on the floor with some “injury” or the other, talk about time wasting!  To only real injury on the Aldershot side was one of the full backs got hit in the head by a boot and was really injured, in the sense that he had a cut above his eye.  He had to get it attended to and had a bandage on his head, which he promptly threw off after about 10 mins!

Anyway Reuben and Steve enjoyed themselves.  Reuben had his usual plate of chips and they had a little selfy session, though Steve has since had lessons on how to do this properly, from Zoe.

Got back home at 5:30pm and had a BBQ, whilst Reuben and Josh tried their best to kick the footballs they had in to everyone else’s gardens apart from ours.

Some match/game images…..

Reuben’s last football match for the season took place today, Sunday April 12th 2015.

Hi team, Guildford Dynamo’s were playing Farncombe.

They play 5 a side and Reuben is a fullback, it seems his natural position and even when he gets the chance to play “up front’ he seems to keep drifting back to his normal position.  His coaches think so much of him that they tend to keep him on for all, or most, of the game, whereas the other players get rotated.

His team also have a gifted striker, called Fynn (I think that is the spelling!), who can dribble the ball well and also scores some choice goals.  It’s been interesting watching certain of the boys progressing during the season and move from just kicking a ball to gradually learning how to control the ball, dribble, keeping possession and learning how to pass and cross the ball to another player, though Reuben does tend to have a habit of trying to keep the ball just a little bit too long on occasion.

Anyway, back to today’s game.

The coach said, just before the start, that “we had better not thrash them too much otherwise they will get upset”, so what did Guildford Dynamo’s do?  Thrash them 8-1!

It was clearly a one sided game, totally dominated by Reuben’s team, though to be fair to the other team they did have one or two chances and only good goal keeping and a strong defence kept them out of the game.

One of Reuben’s mates, Ben I think, has his birthday today so he was made captain.

Here are some images from the game:-

Here is a short video:-