A fine and fresh good day to you all, from a bright and breezy Northerns.

Mother Nature obviously heard my comments about the weather last week and came back to show me who’s the boss (remember the TV show)….and autumn has arrived on our doorstep….that said, the weather during the day is still lovely, just as that sun starts to dip toward the horizon in late afternoon that there is a bit of a scramble for the jerseys and jackets.

At our special general meeting held last week…there was overwhelming support for the proposals that were presented….for those that have been in a hole for the last while and have not heard about the meeting or the reason thereof, I will quickly explain…..In the recent past, we have been approached by three different business entities, as to the possibility of them housing their operations at the North….I will start with the first of those being the Cricket Shop, a retail sporting goods retailer, that have five current stores, in three major sporting fields namely the Wanderers, SenWes in Potch, and SuperSport Park in Centurion…whilst having a retail store in the Brooklyn Mall….their other store is at the Alberton Cricket, which is where their humble beginnings originated….they have a footprint in almost all of the sports that we offer here…..another is Home Ground which is a coffee shop and boutique bakery which will be offering gourmet coffees and sweet treats…some of our early morning members and weekend fitness movers have requested such an offering for a while now….The final one is the Benoni Actions Sports Arena….they are currently in an area that is not conducive to an after hours sport and are willing to relocate their operations to Benoni Northerns… with all of these businesses, the owners are prepared to build their own premises which will house their operations….At the meeting, there was over a 95% support vote that we continue with these negotiations…. As a club, the way forward now is to get approval from the Council who are the owners of the property… hopefully this will not hold up the process, in order that building operations can commence….

Despite the cooler climes, we have still had masses of happenings at the North….and our winter sports are busy with their leagues and matches… only our rugby fellows are still not in their competitive matches as yet, but are till on the training grounds getting fit and honing their skills in anticipation of the forthcoming leagues….
Baseball also began their league programme last weekend with centralised fixtures at Boksburg. At the time of writing, I have received no results, so I am unable to broadcast their progress as yet….

The hockey has had mixed results…. with our ladies forming majority of the Premier league, we have teams in the second to fifth spots in the 10 team league…. In the reserve league, we only have one side which is currently 3rd out of 7…..but with only 2 matches played thus far, it is really difficult to assess our relative success….in the mens premier leagues we have all our sides in the lower half of the league, but after two rounds some of our sides have only played one match which skews the results somewhat…..in the reserve league some sides have also only played one match….so it may be easier to assess after one full round of fixtures….what I can say is that it is wonderful to have the hockey and other sports people back at the club…..2020 was a crazy quiet and silly COVID year and we missed all of our sports people with their antics and shenanigans….

Our athletes are still a really busy bunch….morning runs….time trials….club runs….and then their weekend outings where they are all putting in lots of mileage….and supporting the Club and pub as the true athletes they are….

The Soccer boys were away at Olympia (which happens to always be our bogey side) last weekend…..and the reserves shrugged off their loss against Robertsham, with a solid 2-0 win…. we remain in second spot, but after only 6 matches it is clear who the top two sides are, with some space already appearing from the chasing pack…. The first side unfortunately suffered a temporary setback….after some players let us down at the last minute…despite conceding a silly goal, we still were able to dominate the game without being able to score….we were even unable to convert a penalty in our favour…. Followed by a minute of madness as our goalkeeper was sent off for a silly offence…..so the bogey side mantle remains….after 6 matches we are now in third place, one point behind Alberton and two behind Robertsham…. This week we host Randburg, who are usually a quality unit….and this promises to be a super match up between our Clubs….as usual, proceedings start at 13h45 with the reserve match, followed at 15h30 by the First teams….please remember to come to the Club to support….but we are still not able to watch according the Local Association COVID protocols….

We are still looking for someone to find the Joker….as Mike Williams, who’s name was drawn for a third time in recent history, was still is unable to the have the x-ray vision required to find this elusive card… This week the Jackpot has been raised to R33246….. please join us this week….for a mere R5 you could be drawn from the beeeeeg black box….and find yourself in front of the Joker cabinet to make your selection….

Have a super rest of the week…. See you over the weekend….

Take care and stay safe….. Rod