Hello everyone, after our recent AGM, you’ve not had much of an update on the big outcomes from this so it’s time to let you know what we have in mind for the club going forward. After the chairman provided his dour and miserable summary, there’s a lot to be positive about!
A big thanks to those who stood for positions for the 2023 season and have now stood down, Andrew as Secretary, Chris as 1st X1 captain, Speedy as 2nd X1 captain and Phil as a committee member.
We are pleased to announce our new team leaders for the coming year! The 1st X1 captain will be Lee Whitfield with Daniel Pyke remaining as vice-captain. A new look leadership team for the 2nd X1 as Ste Gray takes the reins with Dan O’Sullivan as deputy. On a Sunday, one slight change will see Harry remain at the helm but depending on availability, Speedy will be aiming to assist and offer some experience in nurturing our future talent while also adding depth to a sometimes fragile batting unit, just the tonic after the retirement of Aka.
We were also delighted to see uptake from volunteers who wish to assist in the running of the club too! A big welcome (or welcome back) to the fold to; Mark Roe, Ewan McCabe, Alex Rawle, Stephen Marshall, Nikki Wilkinson and David Calland.
This year, we are going to trial a new system for our management committee. This is going to see the major parts of the club divided up into sub divisions with someone at the helm of each. These heads will each report back at management meetings to the chair of the club and hopefully will see us become more productive in our endeavours as well as lightening the load for those who are involved. By assigning small numbers of tasks to certain groups, we hope that this will be far less overwhelming than the enormous ‘To Do’ list we are faced with most months.
The separate areas for this will be; Child Protection which will be headed by Ste Turnbull, Junior Development headed by Stuart Graham, Secretary - a role still to be filled, Treasurer headed by David Williamson, Fundraising and Sponsorship, Buildings and Grounds, Bar and Social lead by Ian Cox and finally Playing Matters lead by Stuart in connection with team captains. If you think you can offer anything to any of these, then it would be great if you could commit in some way and offer fresh ideas, us cricket focussed folk sometimes get a bit stale with our ideas and need an alternative perspective on things as we’ve been known to miss the obvious on occasion…. Please get in touch with any of our committee members if you think you could spare some time or expertise, we plan to finalise this trial structure at our December meeting and push forward with positive progress!
We have also finalised our winter training schedule. This has proven quite a challenge due to Stanley Louise Centre being out of use during refurbishment works but we’ve got there in the end.
Senior nets will take place at Emmanuel College this year. These will run from Saturday 17th February and run until Saturday 23rd March inclusive. The sessions are booked from 2-4pm and cost £5 to cover the cost of the hire. We also have development nets for our younger senior playing members which also take place at Emmanuel College starting Friday 24th November and running on 1st December, 8th December, 15th December and 5th January. These take place from 7.30pm -9.30pm and are an ideal chance for some one to one coaching and individual improvement plans. Again these sessions are £5.
Our junior sessions will take place at Consett Sports Centre and get started in January. The U9’s and U11 Girls will run from Sunday 21st January until Sunday 11th February 10.30am until 12.00pm.
For our U11, U13 and U15’s, they too will be 10.30am-12.00pm and run from Sunday 18th February until Sunday 24th March. All junior sessions are £3 which is to help with the cost of hall hire, coaching is included in the price of annual subscriptions which means our outdoor sessions will have no additional charge once the sun comes out in April.
Senior subscriptions were set at the AGM and remain the same as 2023. These are £70 but if they are paid before 30th April, there is a discounted price of £60. Match day fees will also remain unchanged for 2024. The 1st X1 skipper is leading by example and was the first to pay his after the AGM, let’s hope that the chair and treasurer can avoid the annual hassle of chasing people at the last minute. Don’t forget that if you’re not paid, you’re not insured and therefore can’t be selected. If anyone wishes to pay these in instalments before the April deadline, please get in contact with Ian or David to sort this out.
The club are always looking for ways to raise money in order to keep progressing our improvements to facilities and equipment and there are lots of ways you can all help us. We run a monthly bonus ball and a weekly 100 club draw. The bonus ball has a maximum monthly prize of £200 while the weekly 100 club draw pays out £75. We have spaces available on both of these with numbers being £5 per month on either of these options. We do ask that these are paid by standing order on a monthly basis to reduce the admin and ensure that full prizes can be paid out of course. If you’d like to get involved in either of these then please drop Ian a message so that he can get you set up and involved. He will be doing a review of the 100 club at the weekend to find out who still hasn’t set up standing orders and making these numbers available to newcomers. You can drop him an e-mail - colonel_cox@live.co.uk or a text to 07932653732 - Ian no longer runs the social media so please don’t try to reach him via these channels or Mrs Graham will soon regret her decision to take on the task of managing these!
We also have the club signed up to Easyfundraising. This is completely free to sign up to and in the modern day of online shopping, all you have to do is sign up and enable to the donation tool and when you shop online, over 8000 retailers offer rewards as a % of your online shop and give these to the club as ‘cash back’ on a quarterly basis. You can get involved with this by visiting https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/consettcricketclub and following the simple instructions.
A lot to take in but a lot happening despite the time of year! We will do our best to keep you posted with both on and off-field activities so keep an eye on our socials and websites all of which can be found via the Linktree link on this e-mail. We look forward to seeing you all soon :)