{"id":272813,"date":"2025-07-18T19:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T19:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/272813\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T19:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T19:23:10","slug":"hundreds-attend-david-syd-lawrences-emotional-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/272813\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds attend David &#8216;Syd&#8217; Lawrence&#8217;s emotional funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The funeral was followed by a wake at the County Ground in north Bristol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lawrence, affectionally known as &#8220;Syd&#8221;, was given an MBE in the King&#8217;s Birthday Honours weeks before he died for outstanding services to cricket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He played five Test matches for England and took 625 wickets in 280 matches during a 16-year career at Gloucestershire, where he grew up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After retirement he became a nightclub owner and amateur bodybuilder before being named Gloucestershire&#8217;s club president in 2022, a role he remained in until his death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former cricketer Andy Brassington said he was with Lawrence, who he was friends with for more than 44 years, just an hour before his death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking outside the church, Mr Brassington added he &#8220;has lost a best mate&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was a difficult situation for us all, and it was time for Syd to go. But right until the end was there he was positive.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The funeral was followed by a wake at the County Ground in north Bristol. Lawrence, affectionally known as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-272813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114875872423057038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}