========================================================================== BORN: July 21, 1972 Debut: Nunawading South PS v Nunawading PS - 1983 Final: Melbourne Uni. Earth Sciences v Monash Uni. Earth Sciences - 1994 Left-Handed Batsman, Right Arm Off-Spin Nunawading South Primary School, Yarra Valley Anglican School, University of Melbourne ==========================================================================
Regularly on the fringes of selection, Chris Godfred was a slim left-handed batsman of dour approach, whose cricketing career was hampered by his complete inability to play attacking shots on the off-side, plus a dislike for getting struck on the fingers by the rising ball (or anywhere else on the body for that matter). He tried to compensate for this by regular, vigorous application of the pull and hook shot.
Upon his introduction to secondary school, the young Godfred took to bowling with more enthusiasm. Promotion from back-stop in the field also reinvigorated him, with his round-the-wicket off-breaks culminating in 3/9 against Luther College in 1986, as well as a bruised shin from copping a bad bounce in the field, and a severe hay-fever attack towards the latter stages. Greater glory was to follow next cricket season in the school's inter-house trophy. An heroic, unbeaten last-wicket stand of 25 with Brent Lodding enabled Arnott house to overhaul Annell's target with an over to spare. Godfred's own contribution was 7 not out. Lodding himself was to scale even greater heights - an unbeaten innings of his own enabled University to claim the Melbourne VCA District Grade pennant during 1995/96, and he has since debuted in the Victorian Sheffield Shield side as an opening batsman.
After these halcyon days Godfred was forced into relative obscurity, although he was coaxed out retirement during the 1994/95 season to play in the annual grudge match between Melbourne and Monash Universities. Here he impressed with quite pacy seamers on an astroturf wicket, although the impression he made was somewhat less memorable than the severe sun-burn that afflicted him for the next fortnight. Given Godfred's training in the atmospheric sciences (in which he is now attempting a Ph.D.), and the knowledge that parts of the ozone hole do drift over SE Australia during late spring, one suspects that he should have known better.
Since then, Godfred has restricted himself to occasional net sessions of leg-break bowling in the tea room of the University's School of Earth Sciences. Like many Australians, he harbors a secret desire to break David Boon's apocryphal record of 51 tins of beer consumed on the flight between Sydney and London, as well as hazy thoughts about what might have been if he'd coerced his younger brother into a few more backyard training sessions during his youth. Due to a fondness for Draught Guinness, such reveries are becoming hazier by the day ...
Sites highly recommended by Godfred include:
The Dilbert Zone - Whether it's been Asterix, Tintin, Footrot Flats or Beetle Bailey, I've always loved pictures with my words. Never was the lure of academe so strong after checking out this site.
The UExpress Comics Page - More of the above - only multiply by 30. Daily strips of Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes ...
X-Rate - An Ob-XFiles site? I just ignore the ratings and devour the fluent, perceptive reviews of Sarah Steggal.
Dorna/TWP - World Motorcycle Championship -
If you think Formula 1 has degenerated into a hi-tech tractor
parade dominated by prima donnas,
then check out some real racing (or in this case all the stats, times
and results of the racing). The 500cc World Championship is the pinnacle of
motorbike racing, and this well designed site gives you the session times, classifications
and images of the action, practically as they occur. Hmmm ... cricket archives, bike
racing archives, comic archives ... maybe I should have been a librarian.
NCAR Home Page - At last, a home page relating to my work! Get a feel for the cutting edge in atmopsheric and oceanographic research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology - We got forecasts, rainfall maps ... something for the Eric Olthwaites of the world. Let's hope they don't start charging for the info!