Brigg Town Cricket Club will be playing East Halton this coming weekend in Lincolnshire League Division Three.
Good relations have existed between these clubs for decades, as demonstrated by the match pictured here from which we see both groups of players at Sir John Nelthorpe School, outside the old wooden pavilion (since removed).
It was mid-August 1984 and East Halton contacted Brigg by phone in the morning, with much regret, to say that team-raising difficulties meant they would have to forfeit that afternoon's fixture between the respective 2nd XIs.
However, the Brigg club managed to find them some stand-ins from across the town to help make up the numbers, including a few better known for football than playing the summer game.
The Humberside Alliance match was soon back on again... and East Halton went on to win!
Still, for Brigg Town 2nds, it was considered much better to have played and lost than not to have played at all.
There's an important policy in cricket which calls on all those taking part, and their clubs, to uphold The Spirit of the Game. Another mission statement urges everyone to Get The Game On.
What Brigg did in August 1984 certainly complied with both directives.
Brigg and East Halton first met in 1975 in the Grimsby Saturday League, and the last game of the season, that September, saw the villagers secure a narrow home victory while still playing at Townside Farm Ground, a very rural setting.
Since then the clubs have played each other many times in the Lincs League, the Alliance, the East Yorkshire Alliance... and latterly in the Lincs League again.
