CLUB IN FOCUS Willoughby Cricket Club

In the lead up the 2021 season we want to focus on the hard work and preparation that has gone on at clubs around the County. We will get an insight from a leading light at a number of clubs as to how plans for the season have gone and what cricket is on offer at their clubs and how they have dealt with challenges.

I joined the club as a player in 1994 and with exception to a four year spell living (and playing) in Australia and New Zealand in the late 90s, I have been here and involved ever since.

In my time at the club I have also been a team captain for our Saturday 2^nd XI, Committee Member and was the club’s Junior and Youth Cricket Manager for 18 years (which included managing several junior teams and running Kwik Cricket for several years..sometimes all at once).

Although I have taken a step back from coaching - and playing - to an extent, I have been running outdoor training for our senior teams last year (which I envisage may happen again this year), plus keeping a mentoring eye on some of our younger coaches as they begin their first steps on the coaching ladder.

I am also currently the club’s Fixture Secretary and am the club’s Press and Media Officer which I have managed now for nearly 25 years.

There has been the usual maintenance and works around the ground where conditions have allowed, but unfortunately, our winter nets had to be cancelled due to lockdown. But the ground and the clubhouse are looking great as always so we are ready to get going!

We expect to have more players than ever this year. We are hoping to run junior teams at Under 11 and Under 13 and at least one if not two teams at Under 15 level. We are also looking forward to running both All Stars Cricket and the new Dynamos Cricket to continue the pathway through to the junior teams and then onto our adult/senior teams.

Our two main Saturday adult/senior teams now play in the Northants County League and have enjoyed good first seasons since joining in 2019. Both finished top of their leagues last season and will be pushing for promotion this year. We also have a Midweek T20 team in the Rugby and District Cricket League which has also been successful in the last few seasons, and we also anticipate fielding a 2^nd XI on a Wednesday evening in 2021 for the first time in many years.

On top of league cricket, Sunday cricket at Willoughby continues to thrive. Our Sunday XI is something of a social/Development squad which plays friendlies every week against other local village clubs and teams…it’s village cricket in its purest form and as popular as ever. From our point of view, it gives a great opportunity for those up and coming youngsters moving through junior cricket to bridge the gap to adult/senior cricket and our league teams.

And we hope our ladies’ team will return to their local league games this year as they missed out last season, perhaps more with the softball tournaments.

We have always been a friendly and welcoming club and in what will be our 120^th year we hope to welcome new players and their families into the club – particularly on the back of All Stars and Dynamos Cricket.

We are in the process of a plan to hopefully raise funds for a new pitch roller, so this should lead to a whole series of events and initiatives to keep people engaged when they are not involved in matches.

With cricket at the ground seven days a week, we are also hoping that our income from the likes of bar takings are going to increase too.

With so much cricket going on – particularly where junior and youth cricket is concerned - we hope to have a couple of young coaches completing their first coaching courses. My lad, Jake, is one of them and he will be running the club’s Under 13 team (perhaps with some help from his Dad!), with a couple of his old junior teammates-now senior teammates also running the Under 11s, All Stars and Dynamos Cricket.

And overall it will just be nice to have a full season of cricket again (hopefully) and be able to welcome everyone back to the club.

Despite the delayed start to the 2020 season and then effectively half a season of action, last summer wasn’t actually too bad.

It was all a bit of a last minute rush when we were given the green light for cricket to start but with all the necessary Covid-safe measures in places, a combination of great weather and lots of people desperate to find some outdoor activities meant we had great interest, if not better than in some previous years.

Losing half a season of matches at all levels and also a large majority of our coaching time for our junior and youth players was disappointing, but considering many of us thought we would not get any cricket at all in 2020, we did a lot better than expected.

Moving into 2021, we haven’t been able to have our usual winter nets and we still have a few potential coaches who haven’t be able to do their initial training because courses were postponed due to Covid. But we’ll get there.

We have close links to a number of schools in Rugby and the surrounding villages, particularly from going into these schools to run lunchtime and after-school sessions in the past.

Our summer holiday coaching programmes over the years have also seen many children from these schools and others come along to get involved, and then join the club afterwards too.

We also work very closely with the village residents and organisations in Willoughby itself and several local businesses. And because we are right on the border between Warwickshire and Northants, we have links into both communities.

We are very active on social media with regular updates on our club website, and its these communications which have been invaluable at times to our players, members and parents during the pandemic. A particular highlight was a collective #passtheball video which saw not only our own players and members get involved but also people from the village contribute from their own back gardens!

We are a traditional village club and only have one ground so we can only manage one match at a time. Therefore we are close to maximum capacity with cricket essentially going on seven days a week during season time.

As always we aim to keep players coming through the junior section into the adult teams and it would be great to see our adult/senior league teams largely consist of 16-21 year olds in a few year’s time; certainly bringing the average age of the teams down!

As well as welcoming more adult level players into the club, maintaining good manageable numbers across all sections of our junior and youth cricket section is always key to our short, medium and long term futures and we hope to keep of number levels with young players on our books and part of the club consistent.

Along with adequate numbers of qualified coaches to manage them, it would be great to see some of the aforementioned �next generation’ of younger coaches-in-training up to at least Level II standard within five years.

I am sure that over the next few years we will also see more women and girls coming through to play for the adult teams too.

There’s always something to do around the ground and the clubhouse. But we have a great bunch of volunteers who often help out. In the past it has tended to be a struggle to get people to volunteer to help on and off-the-field - especially to lead the junior teams even though it can be very rewarding - but it is getting better.

In the adult teams the increase of players coming through from the junior and youth sections in the last few years means there is a balance to be struck between putting out competitive teams, keeping everyone happy with enough cricket as they can and want to play, whilst also nurturing our up and coming talent for the future benefit of our club (and not others).

And as always there is the challenge of bringing income into the club, and generating additional funds to further develop and enhance our facilities.

We like to think we offer a complete package as it were, with the numerous opportunities to play cricket for players of all ages and standards, along with a great social scene off-the-field.

Our junior and youth section stretches back to the mid-1980s and has always been well admired in the local area, with a complete pathway for young cricketers to join, learn and enjoy to play cricket from ages 5 upwards.

Off-the-field, we have plenty going on with regular BBQs, annual presentation evening and annual Bottle Bingo evening just a few events. We even used to have a Boxing Day match and New Year Ramble! Our annual tour (sadly missed last year) is always a bit of a hit. Although our adult teams have not toured for a few years, our older junior teams have been to Somerset, Yorkshire and Norfolk on very successful and enjoyable overnight tours in recent times.

It is hard to single out one person as there are so many volunteers that make the club the success it is. Our Chairman Brian Hall, Treasurer Eric Palmer and Les Kemp who continues to do a lot of unseen work on The Green have all served the club for many decades first as players and then behind the scenes. Eric (who lives literally opposite the club) for example has been Treasurer for 54 years.

In recent times among our newest band of volunteers Becci Fell has contributed a lot. Her husband and sons play for the club and she is always in and around the club on matchdays, looking after the bar, cleaning, decorating (she is an artist) and generally helping out. Last year she managed all the COVID arrangements, making sure we were all safe and sanitised for the season.