Sport
Old Students and Notre Dame-St Brendan’s young guns to battle it out for under-16A glory
The best young talent Cricket Shepparton has to offer will be on display at Kialla Park Reserve on Sunday as Old Students and Notre Dame-St Brendan’s face off in the 2022-23 under-16A grand final.
With the two clubs making up 11 of the 12 players selected in the association’s under-16 Country Week squad, this will without doubt be a battle of the competition’s two standout sides, as both sides enter the clash chocker-block with impressive young talent.
Old Students — who come into the decider a red-hot favourite — will be striving to complete a perfect season, with the likes of Ashton Young, Sam O’Brien, Oscar Lambourn and co to lead a formidable unit.
O’Brien, who will captain the side on Sunday, said he and his squad could not wait to get out on the park and put in one more good performance as their junior careers come to an end.
“I am pumped to get out there and play with my mates who I’ve been playing with for a long a time,” O’Brien said.
“This is our last game together as juniors before we split off together, so that just adds to the day and we can’t wait to give it our all together one last time.”
This match also serves as a chance at revenge for the Old Students squad, after this group of Notre Dame-St Brendan’s players got one over it in the under-14 grand final two years ago.
“That still hurts that loss,” O’Brien said.
“They have a lot of good players, guys like Ryan Ash, Max Hooper, Rory Duffy, they are going to be very hard to beat.
“We just need to play our way to get the job done, if we play to our strength and bat really well that will go a long way.”
But while they come in a major underdog, the Tigers’ cast of stars headlined by Max Hooper, Gemma Boyd, Ryan Ash and Sam Holland will be confident they can play the role of spoiler in what is set to be an epic decider.
With an extended 45-over-a-side game the only thing separating the Tigers from premiership glory, Notre co-coach Peter Holland said his squad was excited to take on the challenge of toppling Old Students.
“It’s been a bit of an indifferent year with a fair few interruptions, but it is good to finally get to the grand final which I’m sure the kids will really enjoy,” Holland said.
“Old Students have been the best side all year, they bat really well, bowl really well and have so much talent, so we are expecting them to really come out firing.
“We played against them in the under-14 grand final a couple of years ago and it was a very similar scenario, so hopefully history can repeat itself and we get the win in what is going to be a very good game of cricket.”
As for which players he believed would rise to the occasion, Holland immediately looked to his leaders to stand up.
“Our more senior players are going to be very important, our skipper Ryan Ash will open up the batting and he goes quite well and Max Hooper fresh off his first A-grade game will lead our bowling attack,” he said.
“Then we’ll look for important contributions from the likes Ethan Beck and Sam Holland to get amongst it, while Gemma Boyd is in some great form with the bat and it will be great to see her in the grand final.”
The Cricket Shepparton under-16A grand final will take place at Kialla Park Reserve from 10.30am.