Albion veteran knows the score
WHO has scored the most runs for Albion?
If you guessed Glenn Turner, Jamie Glenn or perhaps one of the McCullums, you would be wrong, wrong and wrong.
Helen Simpson has outscored all of them put together.
Remarkably, the 68yearold is in her 50th season as the club’s scorer.
She has spent countless hours at Culling Park and the various grounds around the city faithfully recording the score.
That is 49 years, in case that fact slipped you by — almost half a century of skipping a summer holiday just to make sure everything adds up.
All the counting and careful recording has its rewards. There is always a glass of bubbly to look forward to at the end of the match.
Occasionally, someone will turn up with ‘‘a bunch of flowers or a bottle of wine’’.
She has a team jacket with a very warm lining. And when Albion has made it to the national club championships, Simpson has gone with them to Auckland to keep the score.
But what has kept her returning each summer has been her passion for cricket and the simple enjoyment she gets from a job well done.
‘‘I enjoy it. It is that simple, really,’’ she said.
‘‘There is something actually quite satisfying about sitting there with your book and it all adds up at the end. You look at some of the other books and you wonder how they ever work out the averages at the end of the season.’’
Simpson played cricket while at Bayfield High School. She will tell you she was not very good, but enjoyed the game and wanted to stay involved.
A family connection suggested she might like to score for Albion. That was in 1970. She was 18.
She remembers her first day vividly. New Zealand cricket great Glenn Turner was the captain of Albion at the time and he picked her up in his grandfather’s Ford Prefect and drove her to the ground.
‘‘[Former Otago Nuggets coach and Otago spinner] Carl
Dickel was playing in the opposition and he was given out lbw. He was renowned for doing his scone and he came off with expletive, expletive, expletive. ‘‘It was quite memorable.’’ She has had many highlights during the decades. Albion has won four titles since 1970 and