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UTS North Sydney First Grade 2025/26 season wrap

UTS North Sydney District Cricket Club | June 21, 2026

There are seasons defined by silverware, and seasons defined by something harder to put on an honour board — and 2025/26 was, for the UTS North Sydney First Grade unit, a season of the second kind. We finished tenth of twenty in the Belvidere Cup and bowed out of the Kingsgrove Sports T20 Cup at the pool stage, and yet this was a summer rich in individual brilliance, in the blooding of the next generation, and in the kind of fine margins that, had a few fallen our way, would have told a very different story.

The season opened with the T20 Cup, and it began in the best possible fashion. At Bankstown in the first round, Justin Avendano produced a masterclass, making an unbeaten 99 to guide us home with two balls to spare. It proved, however, a false dawn for the short-form campaign. Drawn in a tough pool, we couldn’t back it up: UNSW and Mosman both chased us down, and Manly Warringah’s monstrous 4/229 — Charles Stobo and Oliver Davies teeing off at will — was simply too much on the day. Timothy Reynolds flew the flag with a brilliant 86 not out against UNSW and a punchy 66 against Mosman, but one win from four left us fifth in the pool and out of the running.

Tim Reynolds

The Belvidere Cup told a more layered tale. We stumbled out of the blocks: in Round 2, a commanding 5/308 — built on Reynolds’ 80, Avendano’s 78 and a brisk fifty from skipper Mac Jenkins — somehow wasn’t enough, Hawkesbury’s Jack James cutting loose for an unbeaten 124 to chase it down. A week later, 8/266 went the same way against Manly. Two rounds, two scores beyond 265, two losses; it was that kind of start.

But the side steadied. Round 4 brought our first win, a thumping first-innings result over Campbelltown Camden built around 86 from Jack Feilen and 83 from Jenkins. Round 5 was better still: against Western Suburbs’ 218, Reynolds (104 not out) and Finn Nixon-Tomko (94) put on 166 for the second wicket to all but win the game on their own. And in Round 7 came our most complete performance of the year, a mountainous 369 — Nixon-Tomko 91, Hedges a typically muscular 79 — before Harri Lee-young’s 4/29 helped roll Mosman for 227.

Jack Feilen top-scored with 83 on debut

The middle of the season offered genuine hope. Mac Jenkins’ five-for set up a five-wicket win over Sydney in Round 10, and we backed it up by chasing down UNSW in Round 11 to climb within sight of the contenders. The defining fortnight came soon after. Against Penrith we pushed hard for an outright result — Avendano’s 101 and Hamish Reynolds’ 5/47 earning first-innings points before we declared and went after the win, set roughly 125 in a thrilling fifteen-over dash. We fell agonisingly short at 7/93, and when the following two-dayer against Gordon also slipped away, our realistic hopes of finals went with it.

Mac Jenkins leaves the field after his match-winning 5-wicket haul at Drummoyne Oval

To the side’s enormous credit, there was no surrender once the equation no longer favoured us. In the final round we produced perhaps our innings of the summer, Avendano’s fourth century (118) and a heartbreaking 99 from Hedges lifting us to 386. Sydney University needed an outright result to play finals and could not settle for a draw; they chased hard, but we held them to 340 — ending their season just as we signed off our own on a high. It was, fittingly, a summer of cruel near-misses — Avendano’s 99 not out in the T20 opener, Nixon-Tomko’s 94, Hedges’ 99 in the finale — that somehow never dulled the group’s appetite for the contest.

Through all of it, one man stood apart. Justin Avendano enjoyed a season for the ages, amassing 748 runs in the Belvidere Cup at almost 47 and reaching three figures on four separate occasions — 113 against Fairfield-Liverpool, 101 against Penrith, an unbeaten 110 against Gordon and a commanding 118 in the final round against Sydney University. It was a body of work that earned him selection in the Cricket NSW First Grade Merit XII, and along the way he passed a remarkable run of milestones: his 20th First Grade century, his 7000th First Grade run, and a rise to fourth on North Sydney’s all-time First Grade run-scoring list. For his efforts he was a runaway winner of the Access Grants Bradman Medal as our First Grade Player of the Season and the club-wide Bevyn White Cricketer of the Year award. To watch him bat this summer was a genuine privilege.

Justin Avendano after his 118 against Sydney University

If Avendano was the headline, the bowling group ensured we were rarely without a fight. Hamish Reynolds led the way with 26 wickets, his 5/47 against Penrith (his maiden 5-for at the top grade) the pick of them, while captain Jenkins (20 wickets, including a superb 5/28 to demolish Sydney) and the indefatigable Fergus Fergusson (20) shouldered enormous workloads through the long days. Jamieson Hedges announced himself as a genuine all-rounder— 25 wickets to go with 417 runs — while Harri Lee-young (15 wickets) and James Campbell (13) rounded out a deep and willing attack. At the top of the order and behind the stumps, Jordan Netto was a livewire, his 506 runs studded with 18 sixes, and Nixon-Tomko’s 482 made him a model of top-order consistency.

Jordan Netto

If there was a recurring frustration, it was a tendency to be run down in the one-day rounds. Avendano’s first century of the summer, a fine 113 against Fairfield-Liverpool, counted for little when Brent Williams answered with an unbeaten hundred of his own to steer the chase home; and there were other afternoons — Hawkesbury chief among them — when a competitive total or a winning position was let slip in the final hour. Tightening those closing stages, with the ball and in the field, looms as the clearest priority for the summer ahead.

Beneath the results lay a more important story: the future. No fewer than nine players pulled on the First Grade cap for the first time across the two competitions — Dave Dubey, Jack Feilen, Tony Cornwell, Liam Whitaker, Dilraj Singh, Joel Austin, Aaryan Dixit, Jaden Sequeira and Aidan Thomas — several of them graduating from our junior and lower-grade ranks. Blooding that many newcomers at the top level is rarely painless, but it is exactly how a club builds for the long term, and the contributions of Feilen (241 runs, including that 86 against Campbelltown) and others suggest the production line is in fine health.

There were milestones aplenty beyond Avendano’s, too. Stalwart seamer James Campbell brought up his 350th First Grade wicket — a monument to years of dependable service — while Jenkins moved past 2000 First Grade runs to complement his 20 wickets, leading from the front in every sense of the phrase.

James Campbell and the team following a wicket

A season like this is held together off the field as much as on it. Our thanks go to Stuart MacGill, who coached the side through the front half of the campaign before stepping away — his expertise and presence were greatly valued during his time with the group. We are indebted, too, to scorer Sarah Berman for her meticulous work week in and week out; to Kathy Campbell, who has kept the North Sydney Oval canteen humming; and to photographer Tony Johnston, whose images captured the summer so beautifully. And to skipper Mac Jenkins, who led with bat, ball and example from first ball to last.

Tenth place will not satisfy a club with our history and ambitions. But in Avendano’s brilliance, a hard-working and improving attack, and above all in a clutch of debutants cutting their teeth at the highest level, there is a great deal to build on. The margins were unkind this summer; with a little more polish in the close finishes, this is a group that can climb the table quickly. Onwards and upwards for 2026/27.