Summer Sports - Cricket
“When I arrived at the ground, the fire had really taken hold. It was just awful to see. All our history up in flames!”
The old clubhouse the morning after the fire
planing off the top to leave a flat surface, removing any thatch or debris, but leaving the root structure intact, the surface was then mechanically raked to create a tilth and then fertilised with pre-seed and, finally, dressed with approximately two tonnes of Boughton County loam. I can’t wait to see the final result and produce a track!”
“I try to keep costs down to a minimum,” continues Roy. “As chairman, I am acutely aware of our finances. However, I normally have a free hand, and give the committee an estimate of the costs.”
“I originally used Barenbrug Bar The fire completely gutted the clubhouse
requirements for the pavilion, but were really helpful and awarded us a £160,000 grant”
“The ECB had their own guidelines as to the
78 PC OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013
Extreme, with some success, and then tried Taylors Organex No 12, which seemed better. However, Taylors no longer sell this particular mixture so, for the last two years, I have switched to DLF Pro Master 35, which seems to give me a better sward. Last year, though, the germination was virtually zero, what with the wet and cold weather.” “I regularly attend meetings of the Cheshire Association of Groundsmen, (CAG), and we arrange occasional visits, most recently to Old Trafford where, this year, they had bare areas on their square! That made me feel a lot better about having them on mine!” Roy says with a smile.
“Due to the number of fixtures we now play across all age levels, each track will get used at least four times, and often five, so it’s hardly surprising there are a few bare patches.” Asked about the ‘mystery’ fire, Roy
explains that he was in a nearby house when he got a call, just after midnight, telling him that the pavilion was on fire. This was in early September 2008 and the club had recently spent around £30,000 during their Cricket Force week in preparation for their centenary year in 2009. “When I arrived at the ground, the fire
had really taken hold,” says Roy. “It was just awful to see. All our history up in flames!” “To this day, we don’t know what caused it. The fire service and police forensics suspected foul play, but no evidence was ever found. We have an idea ourselves of what could have happened, but that is only supposition.”
“We claimed on the insurance and, typically, they did their level best to give us as little as possible, as you might expect. For the following two seasons we had a big marquee at the other end of the ground, and we also managed to get hold of portable toilets for males and females which we situated out of sight. We just had to make do really. The members were brilliant and all rallied round to help.” “The ECB had their own guidelines as to the requirements for the pavilion, but were really helpful and awarded us a £160,000 grant so, along with the eventual insurance payout and a small bank loan, we were able to begin rebuilding the clubhouse.”
“In hindsight, what we should have done was flatten the old building and start afresh because, in reality, it was only the back wall that was eventually left standing. Over the eighteen months that it took to sort the finances, the condition of the building had only got worse. The new building was more or less designed on the same basic layout as the original and retained the old back wall. The new clubhouse was eventually finished during the 2010 season.” “A few years prior to the fire, we had an
extension built to improve facilities and make the changing rooms larger, so that was incorporated into the new building. But it took an age to build,” bemoans Roy. “Over twelve months.” This year, we had the extremely good fortune to be awarded a Twenty20 match against an England Legends XI, which included the likes of Michael Vaughan, Adam Holioake, Neil Fairbrother and Devon Malcolm, played against, basically, our first X1 and sponsored by NatWest as an extension to Cricket Force.” “That was a very successful event,” says
Roy, happily. “We had over 1,000 spectators on the day which certainly added to the club’s coffers, as well as giving them the chance to see some real stars of cricket.”
“It was a fairly complex process to get them,” explains Roy. “We firstly had to finish in the top ten of an on-line poll, where we actually finished third. We then had to submit a report explaining what we were planning to do with any money we made. We obviously mentioned the fire and our strong juniors section, plus our
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