2018 Hornets Review

The Hornets have a had another successful year on and off the field. The season may not have been as long as we had hoped but there were plenty of positives to take out of it. 

Starting with last night at the Auckland AFL Best & Fairest awards the Hornets had a great showing. The first award of the night was the Best First Year player which Hornets Kevin Crowe won last year. The trophy will be kept in the Hornets cabinet for another year with Harley Jenkins taking out the award against some stiff competition. Harley has been a influential player on the field being able to be played both up the field in the forwards and floating down the back in defence. He has picked up the game incredibly quickly and will look to further develop his skills over the off season to take his game to the next level in 2019.

The next award last night was to the Volunteer of the Year award. Last year the Hornets narrowly missed out on this award but with the superhuman effort put in the by the one and only Paul "Taco" Millar the award was locked away. Paul is the most deserving of this award for all his time and effort he has put into the club over the last few seasons. This year Paul was involved with every single event organised by the Hornets from the Golf day through to preseason camp to the themed parties and would turn up to every training and run waters at each game travelling all the way from Bombay. Well done Paul.

The golden boot award and coaches award were picked up by Mt Roskill and were deserving for the season they have had this year compared to last year.

The biggest award of the night was the Best and Fairest as voted by the Umpires from each match over the ten rounds.  The Hornets showed up strong in the votes with 11 different people receiving votes over the season.  After the 10 rounds and beating a Mt Roskill player by 1 point our very own Jay Green was named Best and Fairest for the Auckland AFL. This is a monumental achievement and well deserving for Jay who has been very consistent for the Hornets this year. Jay managed to win the award missing the last round through injury which shows how well he played throughout the season. Well done Jay for this awesome achievement.

The AAFL awards were polished off with 3 Hornets named in the All Auckland team, Jay Green, Fraser Kessling and Kevin Crowe all named in the squad. Well done!

The season finished with round 10 against Manurewa. A victory against them and if North Shore lost to Waitakere then the Hornets would be playing finals in only their second year! The Hornets did what they could and won the game against Manurewa but unfortunately North Shore beat Waitakere and the Hornets missed out on playing finals by 2 points.  The Hornets improved on last years performance with another 2 points on the board and although they did not kick as many points this year their defence locked down the opposition and had less goals kicked against them and their overall points differential was less. This is a positive step for the Hornets as we look to 2019.

The reserves have managed to slip into the finals with one win against North Shore will see them playing finals at QBE stadium next week. Good luck to the reserves tomorrow.

Finally, the Howick Hornets B&F awards are next Saturday (24th) at the Paparoa Park. It would be great if we could have our supporters there to celebrate the achievements of our club this season. Details will be posted on the website this week. 

Up the Hornets!