CRICKET

CRICKET LATROBE VALLEY

By LIAM DURKIN

 

NEXT time you go for a hit in the Duncan Cameron Reserve, Traralgon nets, just know they are named after four living legends.

The names of four greats of the Rovers Cricket Club, who call Duncan Cameron Reserve home, now hang proudly in four separate lanes inside the nets.

The new nets have been in use for a number of weeks now, with the namesakes revealed at a special presentation recently.

Fittingly, Rovers formally announced the ‘net-sakes’ at the tea interval of a junior game on Sunday, March 3, giving the club’s youth the chance to look up in admiration of their senior heroes.

The new nets feature three ‘private’ and one public lane, which is a traditional cage net accessible any time of the day.

Taking naming honours for this net was David Little, a six-time Rovers CC champion and Traralgon District Cricket Association (now Cricket Latrobe Valley) life member.

Having Little’s name attached to the public net was seen as quite appropriate, as he has contributed countless hours to ground works a little further the road at Terry Hunter Oval (Traralgon Recreation Reserve).

His surname itself offers something of a contradiction, as with 249 games and close to 400 wickets, his service to Rovers has been anything but ‘little’.

Fellow 200 gamer Simon Duff was also honoured with a lane named after him.

Duff, who is still playing A Grade, is a former A Grade captain, and one of only two Rovers players to play 200 first grade games.

His modern day contemporary, Dougal Williams joined Duff in having a naming honour bestowed upon him.

Williams has captained Rovers for five seasons and been club champion twice.

Rovers clearly see a great role model in Williams, so much so they decided to name something after him at just 25-years-of-age. Given this, he may well be the youngest person in Latrobe City to have a permanent structure named after them.

Rounding out the honourees was Steve Carney.

Carney is a Rovers life member and seven-time club champion, who, like Little, Duff and Williams, has dedicated an extraordinary amount of work to the life and times of the club.

With new nets and finals beginning this weekend, and with Rovers sitting atop the Cricket Latrobe Valley A Grade ladder, a Rovers premiership would surely go some way to justifying the hours spent by the quartet behind the scenes.