Moe v Ex-Students
(Day 2)
The visitors resumed at 8/290 and lost their final two wickets in just 8 balls of play on Day 2, all out for 294. Laytten Smith & Keenan Hughes each claimed a second wicket for the innings.
Hughes finishes the season with 36 wickets @ 15.2, seven clear of the next best in the league. Well done Keenan 
Moe had 83 overs to bat to score 295 or claim a draw if not all out.
Evan Sheekey (12 off 41) was first to fall in the 14th over, out to Brady. Laytten Smith (35 off 75) fell to Lee Stockdale’s first delivery of the day to start the 28th over, 2/62.
Andrew Philip & Benn Zomer added 52 from 24 overs, Zomer bowled by Matthews for 24 off 80. 3/114, 31 overs left in the day.
Noah Kane (6 off 12) & Rob Phoenix (8 off 9) had short stays before departing, 5/131 after 59, 24 overs remaining.
Philip & Keenan Hughes (29* off 69) frustrated Ex-Students through to stumps, Moe 5/168 and claiming a draw – a decent result against the reigning premiers to finish the season. The result was similar to what Students had done to Moe to advance in last year’s semi final, but without the high stakes. Philip faced more than 35 overs worth of deliveries and remained unbeaten, 48* off 212, moving past 800 runs in a season for the third time in his career. Brady took 2/35 with Matthews & both Stockdale’s taking 1 each.
Philip scored 803 runs @ 73.0, 116 ahead of next highest in the league and almost 300 ahead of third. Well done Andrew
After a semi final reverse outright loss and a drawn game, effective loss, the last two years, the Lions couldn’t go one better in 2024-25, instead going one worse and finishing 5th. Moe had the top batter and top bowler in the league aggregates and miss finals which begs more than a few questions. The Lions will go away in the off-season searching for answers to right the wrongs of this campaign and return looking for better in 2025-26.
In a positive, we saw 4x A Grade debuts in 2024-25. Congratulations again to the following:
– Braden Finn – Brodyn Blandford – Kye Micallef – Ritvik
Semi Finals next week
– Ex-Students host Morwell – Glengarry host Centrals
apologies regarding the live stream, the actual stream worked fine but bizarrely for unknown reasons, the live scoring didn’t sync to the stream or app despite the tablet being online, leaving the day 1 stumps score over the vision all day. No highlights package this week.
