Following a fall the weekend before, John was taken to hospital where despite all the best efforts of the medical staff, John sadly passed away following a short stay in hospital.

Fondly known as “Sir John” or just plain “Tricey”, he was one of those club members who could not do enough for the club and members. He was a kind, gentle, polite and affable gentleman. Those who spent many happy hours in his company will all agree. John was an only child and was born, raised and lived all his life in the family house in Petts Wood. A very intelligent man and well educated, having been a pupil at Kings School Canterbury as a boarder, he could have a very serious side to him, especially when it involved the ground, pavilion and the Manor Way surroundings. On the other hand, he had a beguiling and some may say, very dry sense of humour. He was a shining example of the English gent. One of our members did comment that John was the only person she knew who used a knife and fork to eat a banana. He always fondly referred to his parents as “mother and father” and would recall what appeared to have been a very happy upbringing and a strict formal education. Being raised through the war years and the austere way of life following, John’s “mend and make do” philosophy saved many a penny over leaner years at the Club. This continued all through his life where he needed encouragement to spend money on himself! After the death of his father, he took over the family carpet business. He had a great interest in Stocks and Shares, would study current market trends and was often to be found studying information from a reliable broadsheet newspaper. He had a remarkable knack of reading the newspaper and concentrating on the on-going match. We all have our own memories of John including how many players received the John Trice bottle of wine, wrapped in newspaper, following a performance with bat, ball or catches held in a match.

John was also an exceptional athlete and was selected to represent Great Britain in the 1960 Rome athletics in the 100 metres. Sadly, John’s father passed away leading up to the games and John had to withdraw from the squad. However, it is still a huge credit to his all-round athletic prowess.

John joined Bexley CC in the late 1970’s having previously been a member at Bromley Cricket Club. For a time, he was captain of the Sunday B side, where under his leadership, many younger players would experience the competitive side to John but always balanced with an ethos of fairness, politeness and respect for opponents. In one such match at Manor Way, John was batting when two members of the local constabulary arrived concerning his dog biting a child on the boundary. He was escorted from the wicket and the scorer of the day recorded John as “retired not out – arrested”. John played for many years at the club in various elevens along the way. One of his main gripes was the bowling of a wide ball and he would often talk about receiving “punishment” from the school cricket master for bowling such a delivery; he soon stopped bowling wides! Playing days over, his love of cricket continued and it wasn’t long before he was a regular umpire where again, his fairness and the belief in playing the game in the right spirit were always evident. Some may say he was too fair, especially to opposition batsmen following a Bexley LBW appeal!

Manor Way is one of the most attractive grounds in the cricket set up in Kent and possibly far beyond that. John, apart from his cricket interests within the Club, immersed himself fully in the all-round maintenance and improvement of the Manor Way facility and it was only a matter of time before he became Chair of the Ground and Pavilion Sub-committee, a post he held until recently. In collaboration with the groundsmen, Brian Willmott and Dave Sealey over the years, 17 of those with Dave Sealey, some of his own ambitions evolved into what you see today. An everlasting memory of John would be the hundreds of hours, come rain or shine, he spent on the roller preparing wickets for the weekend, an activity he was obsessed with and very proud of. It didn’t end there as come the weekend and whenever possible, John would be present and ready to go at the tea interval and, as John would call it, the luncheon interval during all day matches, to re-mark the crease lines, brush and lightly roll. He always looked forward to his tea reserved for him by the tea ladies after his “duties” and always spoke highly of their magnificent teas. In recent years he was fortunate to have the help of a small army of volunteers who would assist him with the tasks, but it was understood that it had to be done in the appropriate fashion under John’s meticulous directions. We cannot thank him enough for his years of dedicated devotion to the ground.

However, it doesn’t stop there. Many years ago John had a plan to organise what he always described as a Kent Cricket Tour, involving a series of midweek fixtures with clubs predominantly situated in the Weald of Kent. Believed to be in 1987, it came to be with games arranged at clubs such as Headcorn, Cranbrook, Speldhurst, Linton Park and Hollingbourne to name a few. The “Tour” became very popular and a regular feature in the Bexley Cricketing calendar and always without fail, in the first week of August. Following his team selections in his little red book, meetings at hostelries of John’s choosing were arranged for lunch followed by the players and numerous travelling supporters attending the match and enjoying an afternoon in the summer sun watching cricket. Over the years, many playing and non-playing members have enjoyed the “Tour” experience. It also afforded an opportunity for younger players in the Summer school holidays to play some “men’s” cricket and the chance to be in the team photo of the day taken on his “Kodak Brownie” camera and the call would be heard, “is that a digital camera John?” In the latter years of the Tour, midweek availability became a problem but this gave our young colts, who often made up the majority of the team, some enjoyable experiences playing social cricket. John would spend hours wrangling players and all would be recorded with pencil and paper. Taken together with the post covid years and the struggle for clubs to field midweek sides, this regrettably witnessed the end of the Tricey Tour in 2023, but there will always be such happy memories of those Tricey Tour experiences.

Many often use the word legend when describing fellow club colleagues at the time of their unfortunate and sad passing, but John was indeed a true Bexley CC legend. His contribution to the Club cannot be quantified but most agree it was exceptional.

Rest in peace Sir John, you will be sadly missed, especially on a Saturday.

Funeral Arrangements

Date: 4th April 2025
Time: 11.15am
Service: St Francis of Assisi Church, Greencourt Road, Petts Wood, BR5 1QW

Following the service you are all invited back to the Bexley Cricket Club to celebrate John's life.

In order to gauge numbers could you please follow the link below and complete the form by 14th March.

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