Guiseley Cricket Club Practice Nets Appeal

Aim

Supporting playing activities of the club we need to replace the ageing playing nets with a more suitable and useable solution for all ages

About our club

Guiseley Cricket Club is located 10 miles north of Leeds in West Yorkshire along the A65 main road surrounded by the rolling hills in the lower Wharfedale valley. We are a family oriented club and one of the founder members of the Aire-Wharfe Senior & Junior Cricket League (https://awscl.play-cricket.com). 

We have a long and proud tradition within the Aire-Wharfe senior and junior cricket league being one of the founding members. We have 250 members and over 100 playing members across our senior and junior teams (we have 3 senior teams and 7 junior sections). We also run a Friday fun cricket evening for 5-7 year olds which has 50 places for children to get their first taster of cricket at Guiseley.

Why are we doing this?

As with many sports clubs up and down the country COVID-19 has hit our finances hard, with cricket events severely disrupted, social events not being allowed to take place and bar takings significantly down on previous years. This reduced income has left us struggling to fund our core cricket activities let alone invest in our facilities or training equipment. We need support from the community to help us invest in facilities and equipment to benefit all our cricketing sections and local community that benefit from our facilities and ground.

With over 100 active playing members and 200 social members, the need to have useable playing facilities is essential especially with the increasingly unpredictable British summers where access to our grass wickets is not always possible for all age groups. We need to improve our artificial training facilities which are now very old (20 years since they were put in) and essential for our junior section to have practice facilities to sustain the number of teams we run each year. We also need to improve our facilities which are used by the local community for a wide range of activities and as an openspace for exercise.

The Guiseley cricket ground is open and we frequently suffer with vandalism and damage to our facilities and nets which is a constant repair cost we have to pay out each year. We currently have multiple large tears in our nets and we have resorted to temporary patching to ensure the facilities are safe for all concerned.

 Due to the poor state of the artificial turf and drainage around the nets the bowler run ups frequently flood and leave a muddy residue behind which makes the facilities dangerous for older age groups who risk injury from slipping on the surface. When we have a moderate to heavy rainfall the nets are prone to flooding as the water does not escape from the nets surface or surrounding area.

What we are Looking to Fund:

We have 3 main aims for the fundraising:

1) Improve the ground by making it more accessible for the local community and safe to use. We would like to open the ground to new community groups or other sporting clubs if possible more often.

2) Improving equipment and qualified coaching availability to our junior sections to ensure we can off a more inclusive programme of events for club members and the local community. Increase the number of qualified coaches and actively recruit new coaches. Encourage further coaching qualifications and support juniors with access to professional coaching.

3) Improve the practice net surfaces. We are wanting to encourage more use of the net facilities by upgrading the current 2 lane nets facilities to a 3 lane artificial surface so juniors and seniors can train together when needed which is not possible today). 

We would like to replace our current net facilities with a 3 lane artificial facility with a modern layout and materials. We also need a high fence to secure the area to prevent vandalism

Please Help Us!

Guiseley Cricket club needs your help to raise the required funds to start work on our aims and to deliver the facilities needed by our club and the local community to play sport and use as an open space.

 We are working hard to raise as much as possible and your help would really be appreciated to give us that extra push to transform our open space, equipment and practice facilities.

Please donate as much as you can and help us deliver this project as soon as possible. This crowdfunding campaign will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to get back on track, and if we can reach our £30,000 target over the coming weeks, Sport England may consider us for an additional pledge towards our cause.

Thank You!

This project successfully funded on 7th August 2021