Hello chaps, bit of an essay, sorry! Forums are for letting off some steam though, and i thought a few of you would enjoy the read.
I have mentioned this subject in passing on the forum and had a chat with a few of you at our forum event about the situation at my cricket club. Now that everything has happened and been confirmed, i thought i would share my tale, and also invite a few extra follows on twitter
- more details later.
So for the past 6 years, Robin (Vitas Crickets owner, and one of my closest friends) has been the chairman and first team captain of the club i play for, Castor & Ailsworth CC, i have been vice captain for the past 2 seasons. In recent years we have enjoyed a good amount of success. Winning the Cambs & Hunts Premier League Div 2 in 2011, a couple of Sunday league titles as well as finally winning a highly competitive week long sixes festival after being runners up 2 years in a row, all this culminated in us finishing 5th in Cambs & Hunts Premier League Div 1 (1 league below the East Anglian ECB Premier League which is an outrageous standard) this season.
During this time, the facilities at our little village club have gone donwhill somewhat, the wooden pavillion is on its last legs and the deck (a pudding at the best of times) was really poor this year. We finished bottom by a long way in the ranking table based on umpires marks for the ground/facilities, this score boosted by playing our last 2 home games at another club.
In previous years our poor wicket has played into our hands and has been our fortress. Our team has evolved to the extent that by August we had not won a home game, but were largely on fire away. Myself and Robin took the decision late in the season to experiment and try playing elsewhere. There is a fantastic sports club in a village about 8 miles down the road, Ketton Sports Association. Their cricket team only play on Sundays. They have a fantastic pavillion, sky sports, proper bar, the works. The deck is a road, great outfield, electric scoreboard, best tea in the area, basically cricket heaven. We know the guys there very well, so the 'hiring' of their ground was free, we only paid for the tea.
This went well, our second game there (also the final game of the year due to subsequent weather) saw us rack up 301-1 and bowl the oppo out for 100.
As far as we were concerned, we were playing our home games there next season, done deal. Unfortunately, many members of Castors committee strongly disagreed with this. The league panel had made noises about removing us from the league due to the state of our facilities if we continued to play there, they assumed we would play at Ketton based on the positive comments from opposition and umpires. Many members of the Castor committe were so against playing away for a year or two (we have a pavillion in the works, and sorting the deck will be costly but not impossible by any means) that they were of the view that we should pull out of the division we were in and drop down the leagues. We explained that Robin had no desire to rip up 6 years of hard work building his team to where we are today. We made it as clear as possible without actually saying 'if you vote no to this, we will leave the club and take our players with us.'
We were outvoted by a huge margin, and after some brief chats with Ketton about taking our players and forming a Saturday side under their banner, we resigned from Castor.
Our initial thought was to form a side and enter into the Hunts league (a feeder system to the Cambs & Hunts Prem) as high as we could, ideally Hunts 1 so we could be back in the league we won in 2011 within a season. The Hunts league committee told us Hunts 4 was the highest we could enter, so we looked elsewhere.
At this point, Robin rang the Chairman of the Cambs & Hunts Prem, Keith Coburn to confirm his resignation from Castor and essentially explain what had happened. All the signs pointed to Castor having to withdraw from the Cambs & Hunts Prem due to a lack of players with enough ability for that level. Keith said 'when Castor resign, why not take their place?'
We had assumed this would not be possible, no team has entered our pyramid so high up before. It was agreed that so we don't take anyones place, we would start in Cambs & Hunts Prem 2, with the team finishing second bottom (wayward hayward's club) not being relegated to fill the space left by Castor.
Castor's committee dragged their heels for 2 weeks, at one point declaring they would enter a side in the Cambs & Hunts Prem 1 (the second team didn't manage to get out of Hunts 3, which is 5 divisions below) but eventually they fell on their sword and resigned.
This week we were finally able to sign off on things with Ketton, their committee voting unanimously to buy into our project. The new club (including the Sunday side) will be known as Ketton Lions CC ( vitas crickets lion logo being a nice tie in
) and we will have a side in the Cambs & Hunts Prem 2 and a side in Rutland 3; the league Castor won this season. All games will of course be at Ketton, and luckily the Ketton boys already have a fair bit of pink in their kit.
In 2015 we hope to have second teams on Saturdays and Sundays. If we can, we will get a second team into a league this season, but it is tight with league AGM's coming up.
So there we have it. This has been my life for the past month. From to-ing and fro-ing in 4 hour long meetings with dinosaurs stuck in the past, to finally having our dream project set in stone. We have always struggled to attract quality to Castor due to the facilities. We always play hard (and mostly fair) and have enjoyed a decent amount of success, but most importantly we are the most fun loving club around in my opinion. Fantastic social scene (ask Simmy for comments on our tour to Leeds and Wakefield this Summer) and as a result, we have team spirit that cannot be matched. Now we have the deck and clubhouse to back all this up, the sky is the limit. For the first time ever, we have had people apporaching us looking to sign up.
Please follow @KettonLionsCC on twitter (and @VitasCricket if you don't already) to keep in the loop with our club as we take our first steps over the Winter. I've hyperlinked the text for you, so just click the twitter handles to go to the relevant pages.
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Topic: Ketton Lions CC (a brand new club) (Read 41657 times)