20/03/2026
This write up was a bit of a surprise but if you've got some time please feel free to have a read what NSW Country Baseball have to say about the 1st Grade Grand Final tomorrow.
Its almost game time 💜🐾🏆⚾️
A Baseball story for the ages
Have we got an amazing story to share with our followers!
Picture this, It’s a summer baseball Grand Final, to be held on the sunny central coast, at a field called Watanobbi Oval.
The teams involved ?
Just the oldest team in the competition at 71 years going strong, there last title was back in 1995 vs a team in its first year of creation, that wasn’t even in this associated region!
We have the Gosford Pirates 🏴☠️ with a 9-4 win loss record vs Hunter Dingos 🐕 who have a 9-6-1 win loss record.
This is just the surface of how level these teams have truly been this season.
They have played each other 3x already during the season, Pirates having the edge 2-1, but two of those wins, one by each team was won in walk off fashion.
Game 1 was a walk off sac fly by Nick Sinclair to give Hunter Dingos the win 4-3
Game 3 was a walk off Homerun by Bass Cooper of the Pirates to give them a 9-8 win
Looking over there rosters and stats deeper it’s even more impressive
Of the 11x regular players on the Dingos roster, 8 have a batting avg of .316 or higher, with the highest been .455 by Jake Bramble.
Cameron Henderson leads the power rankings for Dingos with 3 Homeruns and 24 RBI’s
On the Pirates side, they have 10x regular players, of which 8x have a batting avg of .304 or higher, with the highest been .447 by Rhys Neuhold.
Power wise, Rhys has 3 homeruns and 11 RBI’s and Bass Cooper has 2 Homeruns to go along with his 9 RBI’s.
To say this is a hitter friendly league is an understatement, I don’t expect to see any no hitters been thrown come Saturday!
Pitching wise, both clubs features a similar trait of 2x players from each club doing the bulk of the work.
For Dingos it’s, Timothy Voigt and Luke Kovac, each pitching 48 and 44 innings respectively, to a tune of a 5.62 and 4.03 ERA.
The strikeouts from both pitchers is there, 43x each so almost a strikeout per inning across the entire season.
On the Pirates pitching staff we see Adam Murphy and Rhys Neuhold doing the most work together, 27 innings for Murphy and 45 for Rhys. The ERA’s are a touch better with 4.20 and 2.30 respectively.
A few less strikeouts for Pirates normal starter Murphy with only 16, but it’s backed up by Neuhold strongly who has 45x
So on paper you might say Dingos need to get to Murphy early, because it’s hard to score runs of Neuhold as he racks up the strikeouts, or will Pirates gamble and start Rhys ? In there first matchup Rhys started and went 8 strong innings, so the Pirates definitely have that option.
The match will be held on Saturday the 21st of March, first pitch scheduled for 3:30pm.
We hope you can make it in person to cheer along your favourite players or team but if you can’t, you can follow the game via GameChanger app which will have the game streamed.
Search Hunter Dingos 1st Grade or Gosford Pirates 1st Grade
Also available via stream will be the boys from Harsh and Unfair Broadcasting on there YouTube channel 📺
Now it wouldn’t be a true story if there wasn’t any extra content to share with you all.
I sat down with Jake Bramble, an old friend of mine, who toured alongside with me in Europe with the Country NSW team where we played against teams In Germany 🇩🇪 and the Czech Republic 🇨🇿
He is 1x of the founding members as well as a committee member of the Hunter Dingos, I wanted to deep dive and share the story of how and why the Hunter Dingos came to be!
Q1. When did the team get founded and why ?
A1. Team was officially founded and launched this summer season of 2025/26, but had been in the works for some time. The reason was basically in Newcastle where the team is based from, they had no summer baseball team and was only a winter season sport.
The Voigt family had been involved heavily in the Central Coast Baseball Association (CCBA) for some time during summer seasons but was back in Newcastle during winter seasons. With the desire to bridge the gaps between Newcastle Baseball Association and the CCBA, the thought was to create a single team from Newcastle, with multiple grades (1st, 2nd and 3rd’s) but participate in the Central coast league and see how that may feel and look for perhaps a much larger bigger picture later down the track.
During winter seasons, many players and teams talked about Newcastle and Central coast leagues potentially playing together or against to create a much more diverse and dynamic competition given the only thing separating them was the M1 motorway which was a straight stretch of road spanning 100km.
Over the decades nothing had eventuated, was this the potential start of that merge? We hope so!
Q2. How many grades in your club ?
A2. We started with 3, a 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade, we didn’t want to overstretch our selves early, we wanted to get it right before we looked at expanding. Ultimately we would love to create a pathway to grade baseball for baseball players in Newcastle by having a junior or even woman’s grade, because we all love baseball, we just have to do it the right way and pace so we don’t fail.
Q3. What made you join the CCBA ?
A3. As mentioned before the Voigt family was really the heart of this creation and Josh Voigt playing with the Rebels who are a team in the CCBA, but he was also a committee member of that club, so him been all across that league made it easy for us to create a single team from Newcastle and join here vs a much harder situation of trying to create 4-6x clubs and competition here in Newcastle during summer months when players from winter teams look for a break.
Q4. Do your teams mind the travel ?
A4. They love it, it’s not as far as the map says it is, plus we have our home games here in Gateshead, Newcastle also, so we are not travelling every week down there, plus for some of us, the excitement of playing at new grounds, meeting and playing against different teams, really brings back the excitement and memories of playing baseball growing up and going thru different grades and leagues again. Most of us would love to see this be a year round thing between the two associations as the rosters would differ given the player availability’s during summer and winter.
Q5. How has CCBA and the teams in the league treated your team overall and given your immediate success in year one ?
A5. Very supportive, I can’t say enough how open armed we have been welcomed to the league, there are some pre existing friendships between players because some have been on representative squads either together under Newcastle or Central Coast banners or simply faced each other at those Country Championships held yearly up and down the coast.
For everyone involved, we wish to see baseball grow at grass roots and regional areas, and continue to create superstars who have gone onto playing for Australia 🇦🇺 or even go on to sign MLB contracts like Rixon Wingrove or the Wells brothers.
These are the dreams we want kids to keep having and reaching for.
Q6. It was hard NOT to notice the very impressive website, logo, merchandise, live streams and GameChanger coverage, tell me who made all this happen ?
A6. Haha again, it’s the Voigt family, together with their sponsor Chris Jordan from Gameday. They had the vision and the understanding of what players and fans want from a baseball club. I think some of the merchandise is still sold out it was that popular!
Q7. Speaking of website, I can see the founding members list, tell me more about that?
A8. Yeh I mean, it’s in a nutshell the history of names of those people who helped create and financially support the club from the ground up, to what you see on the field in the very first year. The results have been amazing and it’s with that level of support where we feel we can expand to more teams or grades I mentioned earlier.
The support isn’t from a bank or anything, it’s past players, coaches, family members or friends who genuinely care about baseball in regional areas, who wanna see more of it.
Q9. Is the foundation capped at #100 members?
A9. In a special way yes, we really wanna respect, honour and celebrate those who helped from before day 1, this wasn’t an overnight thing. Obviously as time goes on, our name, club and success grows, other people will hopefully want to help us continue in the right direction and we will be very grateful when that happens.
Baseball community is about giving back in different ways from money to time to just been a fan of the game, we want to help make this a great thing for the whole baseball community.
We have #8 spots remaining and would love for those spots to be filled ASAP, it will help us deliver the best possible product and service to the community, we offer 2x packages, a $100 and a $150 one which you can see on our website and get in touch with us via.
Q10. Lastly, how do you feel about your 1st grade team making the grand final in their first year but also going against the pirates with there Rich history of 71 years of experience, do you feel your stealing there thunder or fairytale haha ?
A10. Hahaha oh man, yeh what a season right ? No look, beyond super proud of what our team and club have achieved in its maiden season, sometimes success isn’t measured by simple wins, losses and trophies, to those who deep down know where it came from, but the winning it all thing definitely puts the potential cherry on top of things!
As for the Pirates man, this is not a easy game to win for us, I mean they were minor premiers for a reason, from what I understand the last few years there club has really turned things around also, which isn’t easy at all, players, coaches, teams and clubs all get into routines of this is just how things go and so often change is hard because no one wants to rock the boat you know ?
They had multiple seasons where they only won 1 single game, and with there last title over 30 years ago, That hurts as a player, coach, fan, friend or club to feel and go thru, thinking is this us ?
I know that current Pirates president Paul Williams and Adam Murphy, decided to take the club in a different direction last few years, focusing on recruiting the youngest 1st grade players like Rhys Neuhold, Kai Pora and Cam Chivas.
Even getting some import players from the US, who also played in the 1st grade state league competition down in Sydney.
They also brought in Tad Powers as the club coach and Bass Cooper who has returned to play but also coach U15’s players.
They did a lot of little things right over there and turned that ship around in the best possible way, baseball is the real winner here and we are just happy to be there surrounded by it!
Well there you have it folks, a truly amazing and inspiring story that was hopefully worth the read and got you hyped for the game tomorrow!
Let me know in the comments below who your barracking for tomorrow, I’ll put there Team Logos there, go show them some love!
🏴☠️🐕⚾️
