BRIGG CRICKETERS WILL MISS PLAYING SOUTH KELSEY

Brigg Town Cricket Club will not be getting the chance to take on South Kelsey in 2015 because the villagers have withdrawn from the Lincolnshire County Cricket League - very sad news indeed.
Games between these sides were always keenly contested as far back as the mid-1970s when the newly-formed Brigg team joined the Grimsby Saturday League.
The games continued in the Humberside Alliance and then the Lincolnshire League.
Kelsey played Brigg at the Recreation Ground, Sir John Nelthorpe School and the Sugar Factory venue, off Scawby Road.
In 1983 a team comprising many Kelsey cricketers played football at The Rec against a newly-formed side  from the Black Bull pub in Brigg, which became Ancholme Valley Royales and then Black Bull FC, enjoying a few seasons in the Barton Regional Sunday League.
Kelsey played home games on a tiny ground in the village for decades before moving to the former Nettleton Mines ground at Holton-le-Moor, behind the Hope Tavern - a very picturesque venue with the Wolds as a backdrop.
Many Brigg cricketers of the past 40 years will have happy memories of playing Kelsey - home and away.
On one occasion, Simon Church, the former Brigg batsman who emigrated to Australia, came back on holiday and we managed to fit him in for a game at Kelsey, when Adam Dunderdale, Brigg's star all-rounder, scored a century and took eight wickets. 
It meant the rest of us didn't have to expend much energy on what was a very hot day and were fresh to share a good few beers with Simon afterwards.