My First Butchers Annual Presentation

On Saturday night Jenifer and I attended my first ever “Preso”; the annual awards night for the Cricket Club that I play for. Due to work commitments and overseas travel I had been unable to attend the last two years’ end of season shebangs. Somehow the photo slide-show ended up in my lap, so joining forces with Luke Coleman we set about making a production worthy of the Logies. Coleman with his panache for finding embarrassing Facebook photo’s and I with a wee bit of music and video skill.

We literally spent a week and a half (on and off) putting it all together. We broke the video into segments; Highlights, New Players, Newest Team, Representative Players, Top Performances, Low-lights, Sexy Butchers, Around Town and finally a gentle finish to probably the most ideal song. The goal was to stir the emotions and plant the seed of wanting next Summer to roll around again sooner rather than later.

Finding photos and coming up with related music was an absolute blast. A great friend of mine and local sports Photographer Rob Sheeley also has tremendous skills on the Guitar (and mixing) as he put together the club’s theme song “Up The Butchers” which was used in the Highlights section.

For a laugh we chose Tim McGraw’s “Welcome to the Club” for the New Players section, keeping the laughs up with “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M to honour our newest team – who just happen to be mostly players 50 years and older. Classic.

AC/DC’s “It’s a long way to the top” rounded off the Representative Players. Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” was used for Top Performances for the perfect lyrics found within – “We’ll do it all, everything, on our own”. Metallica’s “Hero of the day” was just snubbed at the finish line out of the two songs.

Low-lights just had to be “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters while Sexy Butchers was a given – “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon. “What’s my age again?” by Blink182 was our choice for the Around Town gallery and wrapping it all off was a gentle song I had never heard but was applicable and ideal, “So long sweet summer” by Dashboard Confessional. These photo’s were just a mix of some of the better action shots taken this year by our Photography guru.

The presentation went off with a bang. We received so much great feedback; so many impressed current players, guests, mothers, fathers and Life Members it was quite overwhelming. The Awards Ceremony too was brilliant with every winner a rightful and deserving one. Simply a fantastic night capped off with memorable induction into Life Membership for one player while another retiring player received a tear jerking farewell

So, sit back and enjoy the 13:20 worth of season highlights.