Ground Improvements at Greenside Cricket Club

Aim

To improve our practice area to support our growing junior, seniors and ladies team - including practice nets and a new outfield cutter.

Who are we?

Greenside Cricket Club has been part of the community since 1864. The club has always represented more to local people than simply a venue for watching or playing cricket; it is a social hub, regularly hosting non-cricket events for the good of the wider community. 

We are a non-profit village club with new women's teams and a thriving juniors' section as well as a long-established competitive men's section. The club has undergone a massive transition during recent years but is growing from strength to strength with two men's senior teams.

Why are we crowdfunding?

Following Covid-19 we have to undertake a huge rebuild the cricket club. The years when little or no cricket took place meant the club lost out on a large amount of revenue. We were unable to earn money through subscriptions or revenue on the match days, all of which meant that we had to use any savings which we had to keep the club operational – paying bills and rent. This has meant that we have had to realigned our priorities as we rebuild of the junior section and senior squads but also the facilities have suffered over the years as we were unable to allocate as much money towards the improvements we wanted to make around the ground.

Our practice nets are currently grassed and are unsafe as they currently stand and need to be brought to a higher standard with an artificial surface to allow more use throughout the year. . We have a plan to replace these with a more up to date 2 lane open facility with an artificial surface in line with our strategy to continue to grow the club's capacity to train players of all abilities.

Maintaining a high-quality facility is also vital to our goal of continuing to attract young people into the club and will support us in increasing the number of teams who can use our ground at any one time. 

In addition, we are looking to replace our outfield cutter which is currently over 15 years old. This cutter has been repaired on many occasions and is currently running on second if not third hand parts and takes a large number of volunteer hours to keep it running. 

These are our current nets which have a grassed floor area, they are often unusable and at times unsafe, as shown in the image below. In addition we have a sight screen which was damaged during storms over the previous year.

We would like to replace them with artificial nets which would look something like the ones displayed below - these will bring this area back into use safely for our junior and senior teams. It also means that the ground can accommodate more players practicing at one time in a safe and constructive manner. 

How we’ll spend the money raised

Any donation you make will be ring-fenced for this project and will contribute directly to our ability to sustain our offer of cricket training for all as we grow in the future.

We also plan to take advantage of opportunities from funding bodies  as we drive towards our overall target, to include the delivery of an all-weather match playing surface for our junior and senior teams.

These are just some of the teams which we have competing at Greenside who would benefit from the project:

Some of our Under 9s and Under 11s junior players:

Some of our Under 13s and Under 15s junior players:

Newly formed ladies team:

Community impact

We have a long history of hosting free-to-attend community events. Generations of locals have grown-up with the cricket club as part of their lives, either because they were introduced to the game through the junior section, or because of social events which have been hosted down the decades. 

We are always looking for new players, members and volunteers and pride ourselves on our inclusivity. We are excited by the addition of our junior girls team and our ladies team both of which are new of the 2023 season.

New visitors will be able to use the new nets as a taster session, before, we hope, considering starting to play the game and joining our club.

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

This project successfully funded on 22nd July 2023