My Account
The Year Six Mahurangi Pacers hardball cricket team beat 12 Auckland teams to win the Auckland Cricket Year 6 T20 Saturday post-Christmas competition.
The team finished its first competitive season undefeated and received their winners’ pendants at a ceremony in front a large crowd at Eden Park stadium earlier this month.
Coach Mark Macky helped form Rodney Junior Cricket 18 months ago to provide a pathway for players who might want to play cricket at college level. Three teams were established.
Macky says junior cricket players were previously expected to travel to Whangarei for matches and, as a result, parents would often give up on the sport.
The new club allows them to play under the banner of Hibiscus Coast and compete in Auckland.
Thanks to support from both Northland and Rodney Cricket, the club had the funding to bring on local former Blackcap Brendon Bracewell to coach the teams and get them match ready.
“Brendon is gruff and forthright with the kids, and they just love it and responded fantastically well,” Macky says.
Coach Bracewell said the Year Six kids trained hard all winter ahead of their first competitive season.
“Consequences train a man very quickly, and they probably did more sprints and burpees than the Auckland kids combined because of their mistakes,” Bracewell says.
“It took a while to get it out of them, but it’s all about attitude and being hungry. I am a believer that the best way to develop is to play at a high level.”
The eight players in the Mahurangi Pacers had no idea what to expect when they challenged the better resourced Auckland clubs.
“We thought we were going to get a hiding from North Shore in the first game, but then we beat them and the kids thought, ‘jeez maybe we can play in the top Auckland competition,’ and they fought really hard,” Macky says.
It wasn’t until there were only four weeks left in the season that the team began to wonder if they might be able to take out the tournament.
“We looked at the table and saw that the last four games were against three Cornwall Park teams and an Auckland University team, which are two of the strongest clubs in New Zealand, and we thought we would get toasted,” Macky said.
But the Pacers continued their winning streak and made it to the final against Auckland University still without a single defeat in the tournament.
“The final was a real seesaw and the opposition had two boys who were top of the rankings in batting and bowling. University got off to a cracking start, but we fought our way back and ended up winning by 25 runs in a T20,” Macky says.
Brendon Bracewell is confident that the programme is producing players that have the attitude to become champions.
“As long as they don’t get too good at rugby, there are quite a few kids there that will go the distance if they keep playing up to ages 15 and 16,” Bracewell says.
“When they won every game, I thought ‘holy smokes, Auckland club coaching must be useless!’”
