It's that horrible time of the year when we have to say a final farewell to some of the players at Sussex.

At our recent contract meetings, three players were not offered new contracts.

For differing reasons the management have decided that Jamie Carpenter, Dominic Clapp and Paul Havell are expendable and our end of season team night out was tinged with poignancy as we said goodbye and thank you to these three and Will House.

Will has retired, frustrated at a lack of opportunity at first team level, but he finished in style with a six to win our National League match against Hampshire.

This will have given him some small amount of satisfaction and something to remember when he is sitting at his desk in London next year making another million pounds.

Jamie Carpenter was in the same situation as Housey. He had been at the club for five years and only played a handful of games in the Championship, the competition in which players are really judged.

I think he would have retired anyway and everyone at the club wishes him well for his future, also possibly working in the city.

He was a popular member of the squad and his broad Scouse accent will be missed. It is always good to have a range of dialects in the team to take the mickey out of and now we are down to only two or three.

The signing of Mustaq Ahmed will redress the balance slightly but we had built up quite a repertoire of Scouser gags and they will have to be shelved for a while.

For Carps will be the satisfaction of a winner's medal thanks to the Norwich Union League division two title in 1999.

He was a vital component in our one-day team that year, not least with his sharp fielding in the covers. He took many a stunning catch, which helped to turn games our way.

Paul Havell has also been unlucky not to have been given more opportunities to show the Hove crowds what he is capable of.

He possesses a genuinely quick ball when he wants to let it go and has the ability to rip the ball in off the seam. Many a batsman has finished his net facing Hav this year with a bruise or two on his inner thigh.

He is also a great character whose one-liners and jokes have had us in stitches at many times throughout the year. If he moves to another county, as we all hope he does, the girls of Brighton will be disappointed too.

Dominic Clapp only played one first-class game for Sussex. I mentioned in this column after that game, against Leicestershire at Horsham, that I was impressed with what I had seen of Clappy.

He did not score many runs, but showed a good range of footwork, moving right forward to Devon Malcolm when the ball was full.

In fact, his technique has not been in doubt. It is his temperament that has perhaps not enabled him to score the weight of runs he should have done at second team level.

He deserves to get a go at another county and if he does, I would not be surprised if he made it at county level.

All four players have had their moments on the pitch and plenty off it over the past few years and we wish them well in their future career paths.