Full steam ahead

Friday 14 March 2008 | Richard Cordingley

Posted in NatWest CricketForce 2008

I must start by reporting back on the club NatWest CricketForce presentation meeting held at the back end of last month.

Despite the fact that we had a good response from our phone-around and email barrage, I still arrived with the concern that we may only have a handful of people in attendance. How wrong could I be???

After dashing back from work I found the pavilion brimming with people. It was 'standing room only' in certain parts. A turnout of almost 100 members was recorded. There was a good selection of the club there too – vice presidents; players; committee members, plus a great showing from the colts and their parents.

Following on from the meeting, in which Dave from the ECB and Richard from our club gave well received presentations (outlining both the ethos of CricketForce and the plans that we have for the club), we have had great responses from sources we didn’t even know we had!

For instance, we discovered that we had about three potential sources of new kitchen units! Tesco Direct have also come on board as a direct result of the meeting, along with several other hopefully fruitful avenues of support.

The meeting was a great opportunity to gauge how we were geared up for the CricketForce event. The fact that it went so well was very reassuring for those of us involved from a steering committee.

It is quite amazing how that despite some of our scepticism at our original meeting with Dave, everything seems to be following the pattern that he outlined; this has ranged from the turnout at the meeting, to the willingness of local and national organisations to get involved.

Tonight I shall be attending our weekly steering committee meeting and I shall be back soon to report on progress as we enter the most important stage of the event.