Outstanding Queensland stalwart and team man Clinton Perren reached a rare personal milestone during 2008-09 when he became just the second XXXX GOLD Bulls player to register a century of one-day games for the State.

Perren achieved the milestone against Victoria at the MCG in mid-February 2009, a week before his 34th birthday. He scored a pugnacious 35 on a difficult MCG wicket, where the Bushrangers later collapsed to be all out for 95.

He played the 10 qualifying rounds games in 2008-09, but was squeezed out of the starting XI for the euphoric win over the Bushrangers in the Ford Ranger Cup final at he same venue a week later.

With James Hopes returning to the side from international duty, he assumed his regular opening spot and the emerging Ryan Broad maintained his position.

Perren was a member of the 2006-07 Ford Ranger Cup championship team and has played in five one-day Finals for Queensland after making his debut against New Zealand in 1997-98.

He has scored 2885 runs in his 101 games at 36.51, with two centuries and 21 half centuries, to be Queensland's second highest runs-scorer behind former captain Jimmy Maher (4789).

Perren added three Sheffield Shield games to make his career tally 82 at the end of 2008-09, waiting to Round 3 against WA in Perth for his first chance in the four-day game.

He made 58 in a 226-minute vigil batting at No.3 in the absence of Martin Love in the first innings and three in the second. He made two in his only bat in Sydney at No.4 in the absence of Andrew Symonds, then 34 and four on a treacherous deck in Hobart.

Perren averaged 15.5 from seven innings for club side Norths.

He went into the summer keen to rekindle the consistency in his batting for which he was renowned after being omitted for the Bulls' final three Shield matches in 2007-08.

Perren had been the model of consistency since breaking into first class ranks in 1998-99, but his 434 runs at 31 in 2007-08 was down on his previous efforts.

Nonetheless, he scored a fighting 71 in the second innings of the Shield game in Tasmania before being omitted, one of three half centuries for the summer.

The highlight of his season was a 62 not out off 73 balls to pilot the Bulls to an unlikely four wicket win over Sri Lanka in a matchwinning second innings knock in the Tour match at Allan Border Field in November 2007.

He also managed just three of the five KFC Twenty20 Big Bash games and nine of the 10 one-day games after playing every match in all three forms of the game over the two previous seasons.

Now one of the elder statesmen of the Bulls line-up, he headed the runscoring aggregate for the Bulls across the Pura and Ford Ranger Cups and KFC Twenty20 Big Bash in 2006-07.
 
Perren was the competition's leading runscorer with 470 at 58.75 in the one-day game. And it was Perren who took up the lead with Jimmy Maher to forge a 161-run partnership for the second wicket in the Ford Ranger Cup final to set up victory. It was enough to earn him the Bulls Ford Ranger Cup Player of the Year Award.
 
His form in the four-day game was more inconsistent, with 594 runs at 34.94 including one century and four fifties. However, it was his second innings 99 against Victoria at the Gabba that helped set up the Bulls' final outright win of the summer on a wicket where bowlers dominated.
 
Perren also totaled 123 runs at 30.75 in the helter-skelter form of the game, including a cavalier 82 against Tasmania in Toowoomba.
 
An Academy attendee in 1995, Perren graduated to a first-class debut in 1998-99, but he had to work hard at becoming a regular and it was not until 2002-03 that he really began to blossom. At the end of that breakthrough summer he was crowned Pura Cup Player of the Year, and it was the first of four consecutive 700-plus run seasons.
 
A strokeplayer who is capable of really putting his foot down, Perren has also shown admirable versatility in fluttering around the middle and top orders depending on the competition, team make-up and game situation.

In the 2005-06  Pura Cup Final he was listed at No.5 and produced a fine 173, which was an innings of early poise followed by rapid acceleration. The 278-ball display contained 10 fours and five sixes as the score grew and grew before its eventual resting place at 6-900. Perren and Shane Watson, who retired hurt with cramps on 201 with the total at 860, combined for a state-record partnership of 329, overhauling the previous best set by Peter Burge and Tom Veivers in 1962-63.

It put Perren on the partnership honour board for the second time after his second-wicket stand of 369 with Stuart Law against Western Australia at Brisbane in 2003-04, when he got 141 and Law pounded 203.

Earlier in the season against South Australia he had a double of 74 and 160 not out, which included 18 from one over of Cullen Bailey's legspin, and his career-best effort was also against the Redbacks when he collected 224, the 11th highest score in the state's domestic history, at the Gabba in 2002-03.

Performances like those helped him move into the top 20 of Queensland run-scorers with 4737 in 82 first class games.

A regular for stints with English league clubs during his 20s, Perren has stayed home for the past five winters. His representative highlights remain Australia A selection against South Africa A in 2002-03, and he also toured India as part of the Australian Sub-Continent Assimilation program.

Married to Cath with two children, Perren began writing a popular newspaper column for the Sunshine Coast Daily and Bulls website in 2007-08 and is an accomplished sports dinner compere.