Our Newest Life Member | Kevin Buchanan
Congratulations to our current President Kevin Buchanan on being awarded Life Member of our club.
Kevin was presented with his Life Membership at our Senior Presentation evening on 1/4/2023 by former Club President, John McCulloch.
Club Vice President, Chris Horn, gave the following speech as part of the presentation.
On behalf of our BCC Committee, it is my honour tonight to announce the awarding of Life Membership to a very important and valuable man within our club.
We currently have 18 Life Members of our club, all who have made significant contributions to our club over many years of our history. It is wonderful that a number of them are able to be with us this evening, including John McCulloch, a long serving president of our club and the driving force behind this clubhouse and ground becoming our home a little over 20 years ago. Can I please ask John to come forward to present Life Membership to our latest recipient tonight.
We add one more name to the Life Membership list tonight, having been nominated and agreed on unanimously by members of our committee.
This man has been associated with our club for 40 years as a player, coach, vice president and president.
He started with our club as a young junior player in 1982. He made his A Grade debut in the 1987/88 season as a teenager and was a member of our A Grade team for the most part of the next decade. Research put together by Gary Friend has placed him as our 105th A Grade player. He played more than 20 consecutive seasons for our club even during a year where he had moved to Proserpine. He travelled from there each week to play for our club that year. He has been captain of many of our Senior Grade teams over the years and has been our Vice President Seniors. He has coached many of our juniors, not only teams including his son but others as well. He has served as Vice President Juniors for our club.
When the time came for John here to hop on his horse and ride off into the sunset to Thuringowa Sports Club for Lawn Bowls, our newest Life Member filled his big shoes. He became our president and has been a wonderful servant leader, enjoying the good times and working through the tough times. In his time as president, he has led the upgrading of our training nets to include string netting, the extension to our shed, the painting of the inside and outside of our clubhouse and the lighting up of our training nets. He has also been at the helm for 2 A Grade premierships in the past 3 seasons.
In amongst these achievements, our newest Life Member has battled through tough times where there have been 6 or 7 players needed to fill a team on the Thursday night before a weekend game. He has cut and rolled our wicket and cleaned the clubhouse including the toilets and canteen many times when there was nobody else willing to do it. He has kept our canteen stocked, has ordered our clothing and equipment and has led fundraising projects including Thursday night raffles at Brothers Leagues Club and Bunnings Sausage Sizzles. He had pursued grants and sponsorships successfully for our club. He has chased fees from players season in and season out despite the best efforts of some to avoid him. He has ensured that we are able to enjoy the celebrating of each season by leading the organisation of our annual presentation night. He has handled times of conflict with patience and understanding and has always acted with the best interests of this club in mind. A comment of his early in his time as president has stuck with me. "It is not my club, it is our club". This is how this man has led, considering the opinions and wants of us as members.
This club owes great gratitude to this man, particularly us as current players and members of our committee. It is therefore my pleasure on behalf of our Brothers Cricket Club committee to announce the awarding of Life Membership to Mr Kevin Buchanan!
Before I hand over to Kev to say a few words, I would just like to share my first memories of him. I met Kev when I was first selected to play for our 3rd Grade team as a 17 year old and Kev was the captain of the side. It became clear very early to me that Kev loved to talk and loved to smoke but most importantly he loved the game and he loved the club. I couldn't believe it when towards the end of one game on a Sunday afternoon, in came Jodie pushing a pram with twins (Blake & Tegan) and two other little kids (Steve & Kaitlyn) running in beside her. As a teenager I thought wow, this bloke has a very generous and kind wife to be able to play cricket having these 4 little kids. It is clear that Kev's contributions to our club over the years have had significant support from his family and I therefore would like to acknowledge them as well tonight.
