Afterwards the family would like to invite everyone to join them for a Celebration of Life at Sunbury Cricket Club, Geoff Kaye Memorial Ground, Kenton Court Meadow, Lower Hampton Road, Sunbury-on- Thames, Middlesex, TW16 5PS.

We kindly ask that you dress in smart, respectful attire. Wearing black is not essential. Sunbury cricket club ties are welcomed if preferred.

Family flowers only please. If wished, donations can be made to Sunbury Cricket Club in memory of Tony via Just Giving.

Please let the family know if you will be attending so they have an idea of how many people to expect on the day - thank you. RSVP: jodie5777@hotmail.com

For further information about the arrangements, please visit - https://robertschaffer.muchloved.com/.

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Tony Schaffer
10th June 1943 – 24th April 2026

Tony was one of the original Sunbury CC colts at a time when we had only a single colts’ team playing a sprinkling of matches each year during the school summer holidays. It was during this time that he established his long running opening batting partnership with Les Wood which progressed through the senior sides and then, for much of the 1960s, into the 1st XI. During a large part of this time Tony also became the 1st XI wicket keeper, a position he gave up to Dickie (R. A.) Brooks when he joined the Club prior to playing for Oxford University and Somerset in 1967 and 1968 respectively. Tony was a was a bustling batsmen and a born competitor who managed risk well, winning the Club’s single wicket competition on at least one occasion. He scored 7,910 runs for the Club, most of them in the 1st XI with centuries against Laleham CC and the MCC.

He will be remembered more amongst those who knew him as a lifelong administrator within the Club. Beginning in his early 20s, he was a very effective team secretary, a role he performed for five years between 1963 and 1967, persuading members not to drop out of their selected XIs; and having to find other players to fill their places if and when they did drop out. This was in an era when the Club fielded 4 competitive XIs on both Saturdays and Sundays, including a number of all day Sunday matches, principally for the 1st and 2nd XI, together with a few all day 3rd XI matches which added to the demands of the role. It was also before the advent of mobile phones and the internet. Business was conducted by post and landline, or by a presence in the bar - to which Tony was no stranger. Most members were informed of selection by post following the selection committee’s deliberations on Mondays. It was the most onerous of roles. He also organised two memorable week long cricket tours to the West Country in 1967 and 1968.

He was Hon Secretary from 1971 until 1979 during a busy time for a Club which was becoming ever more ambitious, and when earlier ambitions were being realised. Organisational input was also required when Surrey played three John Player League matches on the ground between 1972 and 1974 against Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire. This stretched the resources of the Club considerably, much of it falling on Tony. In 1974 the Club won the National Knock Out Cup at Lord’s, by which time Tony was playing very little cricket. He organised the ‘Sunbury Fayre’ for three successive years, a new, short lived but successful enterprise organised by Tony on behalf of the Sunbury Sports Association representing all the participating sports clubs on the ground. The Fayre was held on a Sunday and involved selling programmes door to door, an element of fly posting and nurturing the enthusiasm of Club members to support the event. It raised considerable sums of money but became a distraction from managing the cricket club. He was elected a Life Member in 1980.

Tony also played hockey for Sunbury Hockey Club, now Sunbury and Walton Hawks HC, with whom we shared the ground and pavilion. Although he found himself playing rugby for Olinda Vandals RFC for a short period, he was serious about his Saturday hockey and played in goal for the 1st team through most of the 1960s and became 1st team captain in the early 1970s when the Hockey Club was in Middlesex Division 1. He was fearless and aggressive in goal and able to clear the ball from the D with a running kick which could send the ball first bounce beyond the half way line. Tony was also usually in the thick of the post-match socialising in the bar – that was true of the summers as well. Always looking for new challenges, he agreed with the Hockey Club Committee to form and captain a Sunday 4th mixed XI, the Mixed Ds, in 1965. It was a team that survived well into the 1970s based initially around a selection of women from the lower ladies XIs. The male members of the team were more readily recruited from amongst the ranks of young single cricketers, many of whom were new to the game of hockey. He also organised a hectic men’s Easter hockey tour to Guernsey for three successive years between 1969 and 1971.

Tony stood back from much of this activity with a growing family as the 1970s progressed into the 1980s, but was often on the Committee organising various fundraising activities including all the arrangements for the Christmas Draw.

Tony further committed himself to the Club as chairman from 1995 until 2001, a period when we attracted Jimmy Adams, the former captain, and subsequently manager, of the West Indies cricket team. This was an onerous period when many of the older members of the club, who had carried the burden of club management, were relinquishing their roles or were just not there to do it anymore. After serving as Chairman, he again took up a fund raising role through the early 2000s until the Pandemic, as chairman of the finance and funding committee. He was also at various times our kit supplier and became President from 2005 until 2009 as younger members emerged to take on the weight of the Club. Through most of this period and until last season, he loyally attended 1st XI home and away matches, often supplying match reports for the Club website and to the Surrey Herald.

For many years he was the cricket club representative on the overarching Sunbury Sports Association (SSA), subsequently becoming Hon Secretary of the SSA and Chairman of the Bar Committee between the early 2000s and 2015.

Tony was ever present in the Club, even when working in the background. He had a love of cricket, particularly of club cricket. Most of all, he had a love for Sunbury Cricket Club, his association with which spanned exactly 80 years from when his father first joined the Club in 1946.

Courtesy of Peter Browne (SCC Life Member)