The news has hit us hard and our thoughts are with his wife Ann, son Paul and the rest of his family.

Chris has been a tireless worker for the club and had been club secretary since 2005.

During that time he oversaw significant change as we moved from just surviving season to season to the thriving club we are today.  His efforts to secure and maintain Clubmark status have been enormous.  Without that we would have been completely unable to progress to the levels we have attained.   He was club welfare officer.  He organised NatWest Cricket Force every year, generated much needed funds through the weekly lottery bonus ball draw and kept us all on top of the things the club needs doing to run smoothly.

Some will know that Chris had battled cancer over the last few years.  Equally you may not have.  Chris never moaned – he just continued to support us in any way that he could.

He will be sorely missed by all of us.  I’m sure many of you will have memories of Chris, most of them will have been him helping us out in some way or other.

He certainly dug me out of many tight spots, including on more than one occasion dropping everything at a moment’s notice to turn up at junior matches to ensure we had enough adult support for safeguarding.

The image of Chris that sums him up for me came after we’d slaved for 6 weeks to create the AllStars programme 2 years ago.   He had helped us to organise enough adult support, ensured DBS certificates and safeguarding training had been put in place and had set up the registration system to support the recruitment of 50 5-8 year olds.

Having toiled away in the background he popped along to watch one of the sessions.  He was delighted to sit back and watch so many kids enjoying themselves on the ground – that was enough for him.

Thanks Chris for everything you did for the club.  You will remain a club legend.

Right now we should be month into the full season, with two weeks of junior cricket under our belts and our first AllStars Saturday morning having taken place.   Some things are a lot more important than cricket – but it would be so good to be able to get together with everyone.

“There can be no summer in this land without cricket,” wrote the sportswriter Neville Cardus.   So let’s do what we can to make summer happen.  With last week’s government announcement relaxing some of the lockdown regulations we have some hope.

In this update:

• COVID19 Crisis – Managing the impact on the club’s future
• Return to Cricketing Activities
• Membership Update
• Annual Subs

Managing the Impact of the Crisis on the Club

We’re an amateur cricket club and we all pay for the pleasure of playing / taking part.  It’s a really simple model, until there’s no cricket to be played and nothing to pay for.

Getting the facilities ready (and the improvements we made in the closed season) and keeping them ready mean we have ongoing costs.   A saying I’ve heard from club groundsmen is “It can take one year to wreck a square and 3 years to fix it” (the language used was a bit more robust, but the picture’s clear).   Stan has been keeping on top of this admirably.

We did our maths within the Management Committee and calculated what the losses would be without cricketing income for whatever time it’s not available.  It was extremely sobering.

Thankfully we’ve been able to get grant funding in due to one of the many government schemes and that will mean that we will not need to dig deep into the cash reserves we’ve worked so hard to develop over the last 10 years or so.

The ground is looking great – Stan (ably assisted by James Taylor) has been on top of not just the square but the ground in general.  Check out the pictures:

Return to Cricketing Activities

The 10 May announcement from the government of some relaxation of the lockdown rules led to a lot of questions in many sports about what was / wasn’t permitted within the guidelines.

It’s taken a lot of work from the ECB to work out the risks and the permutations and on Friday (15 May) they issued their guidelines: Return to Activity in a Cricket Club Setting

Across Friday and yesterday we’ve gone through them in detail and we’re now ready to open up the club in a limited way for club members wanting to practice.  It’s important that we stick to these – we’ll update them as guidelines develop.

2205 Return to Cricketing Activities Conditions of Use

Make sure that you read them in full, but in short they are:

• We can practice in pairs but must observe social distancing rules at all times
• The ground will be open from 5pm – 8pm daily – but is subject to a strict booking system.
• Wash hands before and if possible bring your own sanitiser to use afterwards.  We will not be opening the pavilion or facilities – outdoor facilities only
• The booking system is laid out on TeamApp – but it starts by texting James Shaw who will coordinate it

Membership Update

These are tough times emotionally and financially for most people. We’ve been doing what we can during lockdown to keep things together.

Every Thursday night we’ve had upwards of 25 households logging into the club quiz night hosted by Jame Shaw.  That’s often been 30+ people pitting their wits against questions like “Who is older Ant or Dec?” or “Which of these is a tennis player: Chestnut Huey, Peanut Louie or Pecan Dewey?”.  Thanks James – these have been an invaluable way of staying in touch.

Another question about Guinness?

We’re aiming to have a big fund-raising quiz in the coming weeks as Jonny and James have sourced some cracking prizes.  Watch this space!

The Juniors have been keeping themselves busy in their daily exercise slots and have put their efforts to good use supporting a great cause.  Peter Herbert organised a video challenge to raise a targeted £400 for Chelwood Food Bank Plus.

The resulting video clips have been compiled below.  It contains thrills, spills, hedges and some outstanding performances.  Enjoy the video.

They’ve smashed their target of £400 – donations currently stand at £525.  If you haven’t already and feel able to support a great cause, donations can be made here: Stockport Trinity CC Junior Video Challenge

Annual Subs

We’ve kept annual subs on hold as everyone has come to terms with what has been going on.

Once it became clear that we’d be able to survive the summer financially the Management Committee agreed that we should cut annual subs to £25 for adults for the 2020 season.   That will allow us to maintain the club and be ready for whatever cricketing activities that social distancing guidelines permit.   Junior donations will remain discretionary.  If you can pay, it all helps.

A number of people had already paid their annual subs in full before we went into lockdown (it’s nice to know some people listen to me and act on Chris’s emails 😉 ).  You’ve got 3 options:

• Have it refunded – Chris Jackson will be more than happy to help
• Have the club keep it as a down-payment on 2021 subs
• Donate the difference (we’ll claim gift aid of 25% on it)

Finally, if you want to keep up to date with everything that is going on – get yourself on TeamApp if you haven’t already.  That’s where all member communications are being updated – including the link to get into the weekly quiz!

We were due to start the season 2 days ago with the First XI making the journey to Port Sunlight and Second XI hosting Macclesfield.   As it stands, nobody knows when we will actually take the field again.

What do we know?

The official line from the English Cricket Board is that all recreational cricket is suspended until further notice.   There has been much conjecture about when this suspension will be lifted, but right now that’s all that it is.

With the government still maintaining ‘social distancing’ it’s impossible to predict what this will mean for organised competitive cricket.   The leagues that we play in have a tough enough job organising games across a 22 week season – trying to organise a meaningful competition for a season of uncertain length and with an unknown start date is an impossibility.    Reading through the ongoing updates it’s clear that everyone wants to get something done.  We receive updates at least weekly from Cheshire Cricket Board and the ECB, and the UK Fast Cheshire Cricket League are also keeping us in touch with their plans.

Junior cricket has been hit particularly hard.  The season gets going in early May and is pretty much done by mid July as everyone goes away for their summer holidays.   That said, every other club that I’ve spoken to is desperate to make something of the summer, so I think we can be sure that if there’s a chance to play there will be no shortage of clubs looking for fixtures.

What’s the impact on the club?

This crisis is having a massive impact on all organisations, a cricket club is no different.    Thankfully, our reliance on volunteers takes some of the pressure off.   We may all be climbing the walls at home but we’re not having to find cash for salaries or navigate the ‘furlough’ scheme.

Due to social distancing, we can’t get on the ground.  Thankfully, one significant volunteer can.  Stan has been keeping himself busy and as the header image and those below show, the ground is in tip-top condition.

Preparing the square and outfield pre-season costs us.  Keeping the outfield and square in condition costs us.  We also have rates bills, utility bills, insurance, etc to cover.  As a Management Committee we did an exercise on calculating the impact and actually we’ll still incur 75% of the annual costs even if we lose half of the season.

Roughly half of our income is comes from annual subs and match-fees.   60% of this goes to covering match-day expenses (balls, teas, etc).

In short, it’s going to cost us money.   If we don’t start playing until mid-July the deficit could be over £6,000 – and every week we don’t play that goes up.

There are some schemes available to us and I’ve submitted applications for grant aid locally and nationally in the last 10 days to two funds that have been put in place to help organisations like ours.  I feel we have a strong case and if either of these comes off we’ll be in a great position, so please keep your fingers crossed.

What have we been up to off the field?

The Committee were unanimous in agreeing that a focus on improving our facilities should be our priority this year.   We put a small project group together to look at what could be done to improve the pavilion within our means before the start of the season.

I think we all agreed that a refurbishment was long overdue, so we have had it cleaned up, fixed up and decorated in pre-season.  Massive thanks to Sarah for putting in the elbow-grease and steam-power in the clean-up and to long-time member and friend of the club Phil Wood for doing the fixing-up.

The pictures below show how good it looks, and it’s ready for us all to come back to.

It’s also going to give us some time to get other things done.  I’m hoping we move from chasing down the lease to some important developments that will lead to an exciting future for the club.   We can also devote some time to filling out this website and making it a hub for the club.

What can we do to help each other?

The social side of the club has always been something we’ve been proud of.   This has continued even whilst we’re having to do it from a distance.

Social media has been a big help.  On Facebook and Twitter we’ve had our own Pheonix from the Flames look back at matches from the past.   We’ve also put TeamApp to good use to keep everybody up to date and in touch.

If you’re not already on TeamApp and would like to keep up to date, here are the links:

Senior Cricket:

Junior Cricket:

We have been able to coordinate support for members in isolation – and still can if required.   An unexpected highlight being James Shaw doing Jonny Reeh’s week’s shopping and obtaining all branded goods within his allocated budget!   This remains in place – with Jonny and James coordinating.

The virtual pub quiz has been a great initiative, with 25+ members interacting via online video conference each week.  8.05pm every Thursday has become a highlight in the calendar whilst we’re all stuck at home.   Thank you James Shaw for putting in the time to pull it together.

What can we do to help the club?

Keep in touch, keep getting involved and keep looking out for each other.

There’s very little we can do right now other than support each other and look out for those who need help.   Once the restrictions on getting together are lifted, then we’ll still have some jobs to do – and I’m sure we’ll be thankful of being able to get out of the house and get together to do them.

The financial impact won’t kill us, but it will hurt.  But we’re all feeling it right now.   Some people have paid annual subs and junior donations, others haven’t.  Now is not the time to be chasing anybody – and once we have a clearer view as to what is happening we’ll let everybody know what we need.

Once we’re all able to then we’ve some ideas coming together for social events where we can enjoy ourselves and generate some much needed funds.   I think we’ll all be ready to enjoy ourselves, so please give them your support.