By Tara Murray
The young talent at East Sunbury was the biggest thing that attracted new coach Justin Nelson to the Gisborne and District Cricket Association Johnstone Shield club.
The Thunder announced that Nelson would take on the captain-coach role for next season.
He replaces Chris Watson as coach after he had to stand down due to work commitments.
Nelson said he was excited by the new opportunity.
“I live in East Sunbury so it was mainly the opportunity to coach in my own community and help build on what they have been developing for a few years now,”he said.
“The same people driving the football club’s revival are right behind the development of the cricket club also.
“It’s an exciting place to be around at the moment.”
Nelson previously coached at Sunbury and was a premiership player at the Roar.
For the past 3 seasons, Nelson returned to his original club; Flemington in the Mercantile Cricket Association, where he played and coached them to a first XI premiership in season 2023-24 as well as overseeing 2 s second XI premiership’s during his tenure.
Nelson said the bug to coach never leaves you.
“It’s always a huge challenge, but so rewarding when you get results,” he said.
The Thunder have a young core group that have been playing together the past few years.
This group was one of the main reasons Nelson decided to take on the Thunder job.
“It’s definitely the young crop of players we have,” he said of joining the Thunder.
“I watched the lads train a few times last season and they were extremely professional, it looked like a perfect fit for me.
“They’ve certainly got some exciting young players in the senior team, the challenge now is to retain them all.”
Nelson said they would look to add a bit more depth to the squad and had already made one signing on top of already adding him to the batting line up.
“It looks as though the bowling and fielding were their strong points last season so hopefully we can add a few batters and obviously find some improvement in the current list,” he said.
“We’ve already signed Englishman Tom King who will be our overseas player for next season so that’s a really good start to our recruiting.”
The Thunder made finals last season, but rain ended their grand final hopes.
Nelson said the group was gutted by that and he knows some players will use that as motivation for a big pre-season.
