Another season completed, the sight screens and roller have been put away and indoor league beckons once again.

Before we talk about the seasons achievements I think that we should thank the people who made everything possible for us. From the ground staff, without whom we would not have had so many good pitches to score as many runs as we did. Then there is our scorer, Lyn Joyce. She has to contend with all the tantrums from both the opposition and ourselves as well as the main duty of scoring! Others we could not survive without are our tea ladies. Many thanks to Mandy who saved the majority of the team the task of preparing teas, and me the task of finding 'volunteers'. I sincerely hope that everyone who contributed so much behind the scenes is around next summer as we cannot do without you.

Now, turning to the season as a whole. Having finally overcome the disappointment of not gaining promotion we can start to look for the positives that came out of the season. The biggest positive being that we only lost 3 games in the entire season. If rain had not intervened to prevent us playing at Cowplain, and despite our covers rain affected our home pitches against Hedge End and Purbrook, who knows what we could have achieved.

On the batting front the find of the year for me was Steve Osgood, over 300 league runs in relatively few innings. The highest aggregate number of runs was achieved by Jerry Weeks, who only just failed to make 500 in the season. Other significant contributions were made by Steve Joyce, only just missing out on his first league century, Simon Orr who was on loan from the 1st team, Danny O'Connell and Michael Bond towards the end of the season.

The bowling was much less successful overall. With only two bowlers taking more than 20 wickets in a season it made life very difficult if our batsmen failed at any time. Jeff McKeever was the .find. of the season always taking wickets when needed. It was such a shame he was not available more often. Colin Gooch bowled well at times but generally our bowling was inconsistent, lacked penetration and as a result we did not manage to bowl a number of sides out when clearly we should. We also lack good spin bowlers at this level.

On a more positive note, however, the fielding was much improved over previous seasons with a higher proportion of catches held, particularly by Graham Saunders in the slips! Ground fielding was also significantly better.

All in all it was a roller coaster season that eventually proved to be unsuccessful for both the team and the club.

I will end by laying down a challenge for 2004. As a playing staff from the 1st XI down we must improve if we are going to achieve what we believe we should. That will not happen without hard work and dedication. I challenge each individual to work hard in the winter to make the summer of 2004 the success that, ultimately, 2003 was not.