Bradninch CC representative Steve Birley attended the Club Roadshow at Heathcoat CC  last Thursday.  Steve a journalist in East and Mid-Devon has written a great report for the members of Bradninch CC.  We felt we should share Steve's write up of the night with rest of county, to provide a good flavour of what the evening was about and also entice further support for this Thursday's Club Roadshow at Plymouth CC starting at 7.30pm. 

  

Bradninch was represented at a very interesting and superbly presented evening by the Devon Cricket Board at the splendid home of Heathcoat CC.  Steve Birley went along on behalf of the club. The meeting lasted for almost two-and-a-half hours (yes, a tad too long perhaps!) but much was taken from the night by our man present.

He said: “It really was a very well presented evening. Sadly the support it got from the clubs was very disappointing. So much so that it was noted by the DCB chairman who spoke of his disappointment that more clubs had not been in attendance and all I can say after hearing what I heard last night: ‘more fool them’. I came back with new ideas for fund raising and learnt a great deal about the fascinating player survey conducted by the ECB in the past year with all the results in, charts and graphs have been drawn up as to why people are either being lost to the game or not playing as much as they used to. All in all it was a most enlightening event and I am very glad I attended.”

The first thing that Birley did upon his return home was register the club for the 2014 Nat West CricketForce event which takes place over the first weekend in April.  By registering it opened up an avenue to the local Jewson’s store and the fact that if the club put £50 into an account with the company then the ECB swell that figure to £400 which will go a long way to helping with the redecoration of the club’s 2014 Regeneration plan prior to the opening of the club as a social centre for the community from April of this year.

There was a fascinating talk from Matt Theedom about the multitude of different fund raising sources you can tap in to. As we found last year with our two successful bids with roller, bow dry and covers, much of this is down to box ticking and things like keeping adults playing cricket, introducing the sport to new people and certainly developing youth systems is considered a MUST as part of any bid for funding.

Steve Birley says: “I think there’s little doubt that the message the DCB was putting across was that they are there (and here) to help and really want to help. There was discussion about the balance between win, win and win again against providing cricket for the masses and that gave food for thought as clearly some clubs want to be part of the win, win brigade and others want to be known as centres for the development and enjoyment of playing the sport of cricket. It was interesting to hear of how much more pots of money are available to clubs which offer more than just cricket – ie clubs who share facilities with other sports. That too gave much food for thought - particularly as in our case we currently work in tandem with the Bradninch Football Club men’s teams.”

There was one other thing Steve was keen to speak about as a result of his trip to Heathcoat: “I saw, for the first time in my life, a cricket club using a log burner as the central source of heating and that certainly had the ‘wow’ factor. Not only did it provide the heat for a large area – the whole (and large) room felt very warm and the setting with the comfy seating and the roaring log burner was something to behold!

I left the presentation keen to explore the various options open to us at BCC with regard to heating, boilers and others utilities. There’s serious money available for clubs looking at these aspects of their operation and I intend to make it a personal mission to look at all this and see what can be done. As I see it there’s plenty of help out there for us, we just need to tap into it and I am going to do my best to make sure we do just that!”