Farnham Royal Cricket Club Covid Survival

Aim

FRCC is 132 years old and many generations have enjoyed this great facility, with your help we can secure cricket for many more generations.

Farnham Royal Cricket Club Covid Survival 

Our goal is to raise £20,000 through Crowdfunding before the season commences in order to mitigate the damage that the Covid lockdowns have had on the club to ensure that we have financial stability to continue as a club in 2021 and beyond. The club is 132 years old and many generations have enjoyed this great facility.  With your help we can secure the future of Farnham Royal Cricket Club for many more generations to come.

 Our club

Founded in 1889, we have enjoyed 132 years of cricket on this site. The club has continually changed with the times, from not being able to play on the Sabbath as we are on church land, to closing during the Wars, moving to league cricket right up to the modern day, we aspire to being an inclusive club that is there for the local community to enjoy.

From humble beginnings

Up to today

Cricket

During the Cricket Season, our ground is used every day of the week be that for league matches, training or social cricket.

FRCC have 2 adult teams playing in the Morrant Thames Valley League on Saturday and an active team who play every Sunday as well as a youth section, who play in all the various Berkshire Youth leagues.  We provide an important place for the young community of Slough and the Farnhams to come and join in training sessions as well as matches throughout the summer. We run both ECB Allstars and Dynamos groups for children between the ages of 6 and 17 and these are run by professional coaches which the club invests.  Some of our Youths have gone on to play County Cricket and we have a great player pathway in place to support young players from their initial Allstars sessions through to playing for their Country.

This year, funds permitting, we are aiming to launch a girls and womens section to help bridge the diversity gap between men and women in competitive sport.

In addition to the above we also let other teams regularly use our ground every year.   It is always a privilege to host the Berkshire Stags, the county’s Visually Impaired team for a few of their games as well as Bucks Over 50’s and over 60’s.

From the above hopefully it is apparent that our focus is on inclusion, if you like cricket, then from the age of 6/7 to 67, irrespective of your gender, race or ability there will be opportunities for you to play cricket at the club.  Our strategy is to focus on developing talent and not paying players and most importantly for all sides to enjoy their cricket playing in the right spirit. 

Covid and its impact on club finances

As mentioned in the introduction, our income stream has been significantly impacted since November and this is on top of the impact of being closed during lockdown in March 2020

 To emphasise this, for the period November 2020 to today our income is down £56,000 compared to the same period a year ago.

We have been supported by the Government during the lockdown this has helped us but we have eaten into our bank balance. Not only has our income flow reduced, we still have outgoings such as rent, insurance and electric as well as water, waste disposal, security and phone bills.

 Our cash reserves are severely diminished and the clubs future is at risk without further financial support.

One of the benefits of going with Crowd funding at the time is their association with Sport England and we hope to gain some additional funding from Sport England which generously supports similar fundraising campaigns.

 The Projects you are funding

If through the generosity of yourselves we achieve our target then we have capital projects that we would like to carry out, these include 

• investing in the outfield for the third year running to repair the damage from the hot summer three years ago. The picture above labelled “up to today” shows how bad the outfield was.
• installing a water reservoir to collect rain water from the clubhouse roof and reduce water bills.
• Repair the clubhouse roof to stop leaking into the bar area
• Re-furbish the scorers hut and stop it being an eye sore.
• Build a patio area in front of the clubhouse

The Club and our involvement with the local community

The club is at the centre of our community.  For the past ten years one of our long time member has raised funds for the Children’s ward at Wexham Park Hospital. Over £2000 was raised in the run up to Christmas 2019 (pre-Covid).

 In June 2020 we actively took part in the Ruth Strauss Foundations Red for Ruth Day supporting this worthy charity which supports families facing the death of a parent from cancer and drives the need for more research into non-smoking lung cancers.  Our fundraising efforts have earned us a visit from Andrew Strauss himself.

Pre-pandemic we also sought to integrate more with our community by running an Annual Family Fun day where we celebrate together in a safe and friendly environment.  This proved to be hugely popular with in excess of 600 people attending.

Each year (when we can!) we host a fireworks night where we invite local schools to sell tickets to the event.  In return they keep 30% of whatever they sell. We can have more than 600 people attending!

 FRCC are also proud sponsors of Hedgerley Football club which enables them to hire their pitches each year, we are also one of the sponsors of Slough Town football club. 

The club is a focal point for the local community in other ways

For non-cricketers we provide an active social hub throughout the year, with a well-stocked bar and kitchen.  We have 5 darts teams, both men and ladies, and crib teams which play throughout the winter.  We also provide a local facility for people to hold private functions, including wakes, parties and weddings.  With several local pubs having closed we find ourselves one of the few venues remaining in the village.

Full house for a race night (pre pandemic)

Thoughts of Chairman Ben Nicholas

Please support us so your sons, brothers, fathers and from this year daughters, sisters and mums can play cricket from 7 year old colts, to first team competitive league players or just for fun socially in a friendly inclusive environment.  The risk of the club not being an integral part of the village is an awful thought as so many people have found so much joy at FRCC over the years watching and playing.  The club has been important to me for over 30 years, many of my oldest friends are from here, and seeing my sons now growing up in the positive environment makes me so proud of them and the club so please if you can spare some money to help us secure our future it will be spent wisely to ensure the club is here for many more years to come to provide others with the opportunities, fun and memories we have all enjoyed so much.

What do we need you to do?

To ensure that our club can continue to play cricket and fulfil its role in the community we need an urgent cash injection to guarantee our survival.   Please actively support FRCC’s Covid Survival. Support, pledge and get involved in our project to ensure we are here for future generations. If you cannot pledge please get the word out to your friends and colleagues using social media. THANK YOU - We appreciate these are difficult times for everyone and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that supports Farnham Royal Cricket Club Covid Survival.

 We would like to offer our thanks to all the following who have helped us put our rewards package together :

Carlsberg & Marstons brewery plus Rebellion brewery.

The following golf clubs, Burnham Beeches, Farnham Park, Huntswood, Maidenhead, Richings Park and The Caversham.

All the following local businesses, Future Legends, Brilliant signs, Princess parties, Piped Flower Bouquets and Sam Porter, window & gutter cleaning, the local public house Fox & Pheasant and the makers of Cricketers Gin.

Finally thank you to Slough Town Football Club for their generous donation and reward and a big thank you to all our members who have donated time to make this come together and hopefully guarantee the future of FRCC.

This project successfully funded on 26th April 2021