Newton le Willows Cricket Club - What's the Score

Aim

We are aiming to raise enough funds to enhance our facilities with the primary focus being to establish a new scoreboard for our juniors.

Who are we?

The club is called Newton-le-Willows Cricket Club and is affiliated to the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB). The aims and objectives of the club are: to offer coaching and competitive opportunities in cricket, to promote the club within the local community, to ensure a duty of care to all members of the club, to ensure the welfare and protection of children and young people through the adoption of policies and procedures in accordance with ECB requirements, to provide all its services in a way that is fair to everyone and to ensure that all present and future members receive fair and equal treatment.

Membership

Membership of the club is open to all persons irrespective of age, gender, cultural or political background. The inability to pay fees and subscriptions does not exclude anyone from actively participating in cricket, cricket coaching and other activities, which may include purely spectating.

What do we offer

The club is the only outdoor cricket facility in the town and is available for use by all the local primary schools as well as the 2 secondary schools. This coming summer we will, in addition to our own fixtures, be hosting a Lancashire County U16 match, County age group girls cricket (matches and practices) and on the 3rd May the St Helens School Cricket Festival.  We have also had a further request from Lancashire County Cricket Club to hold a further game. 

In 2023 we will have 4 open age teams playing on a weekend in addition to the ladies team, which makes 5 teams of mixed abilities and genders. This is an increase on the teams we had in 2022 and is purely as a result of the increase in numbers and visitors to the club which has been seen in the last few years.

Our Juniors (Under 18's)

We have 6 junior teams ranging from U9's through to U18's plus 50 children aged 5-11 who last year attended the club during the course of last summer on a Friday night to begin learning the game of cricket. Friday nights also enabled the parents to visit the club and enjoy the social environment which the club offers.

Why are we crowdfunding?

The Problem

When our juniors begin their matches, it is difficult, due to security issues to access the main scoreboard and as such our juniors and ladies use a small manually operated black and white flip over chart. This board is an outdated manual scoring mechanism, which is small in size and is difficult to see from all parts of the ground.

The Solution

Due to the increased numbers we as a club have seen in recent years (post COVID), there are now more games being played and with the establishment of a 4th senior team in 2023 and where our juniors will play matches, we need a more modern electronic scoring mechanism, which can be used without waiting for the opening of the main club which is managed by The Newton Sports Club i.e. the scoreboard can be used during the day time.

We also wish to create a Newton Cricket Television Station whereby the clubs adult games can be streamed live and used to promote local businesses. This will enable people who are not able to travel to the ground e.g. health reasons to take in the cricket and keep abreast of what the teams are doing. This will be a free service and once the initial installation work has been completed, the Club will maintain any annual subscription costs. 

Our 3rd aim and to make the full cricket experience more environmentally friendly is for new protective fencing to support the hedge on Crow Lane East. This new fencing will prevent balls going into the road and to protect any wildlife which resides in the hedge during the summer months.  

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 and promote you on Newton Cricket TV!!!

4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, 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!

How we’ll spend the money raised

• We will spend the money on a new scoreboard facility - see image below. This will cost in the region of £3,000.
• The establishment of Newton Cricket TV. The initial set up costs - cameras etc are estimated to be £1,000.
• New fencing on the side of the ground - Crow Lane East. We already have part of the ground fenced, but we are looking to raise £2,000 to undertake more fencing, which as well as improving the full ground, it will prevent balls becoming lost in the picket hedge which separates the ground from the main road.  

Community impact

We are a friendly, warm and community focussed club. We are run solely by hard-working volunteers who give time, energy and knowledge to ensure the club is run smoothly. We are passionate about the community and of course cricket. Our aim is to continue to grow as a club and make it accessible for as many members of the community as we can. 

We have 10 qualified coaches, all of whom give their time voluntarily to help run and coach the children and players who visit the club. In 2023 over 100 children have accessed the club's coaching programmes and played in matches. These children are both girls and boys. We work with local schools as a feed into our club, to strengthening our local community groups and aid in the health and wellbeing of our local community by offering fun based cricket activities along with competitive match situations. In 2022 the numbers in our ladies section doubled in size.

Everyone in the community is welcome to take part even without becoming a fully signed up member. Not only is cricket a great game for all ages and genders, it enables participants to keep fit and socialise with people from other backgrounds and abilities. The club is a free to enter establishment and even if people do not wish to participate the club offers an environment whereby social isolation can be reduced and especially in the summer months the local community can walk their dogs around the ground, enjoy the wide open surroundings and take in the outside air. 

Summary

The Cricket Club is situated in the heart of Newton le Willows and we can trace our history back to 1858 when our club was formed. Cricket is still being played at the same venue.

We have a brilliantly diverse membership spanning the ages (11 teams in total) and we are immensely proud that over the last 5 years we have introduced over 300 families to the game of cricket through the English & Wales Cricket Boards (ECB) All Stars & Dynamos initiative, in turn also welcoming these families into our wider sporting community. 

Through our membership we can boast of families which have played at Newton through the generations We take our responsibilities as custodians of our historic site seriously, whilst we continually strive to improve our facilities for the enjoyment and wellbeing of all we are sympathetic to the original building and pavilion which is still recognisable as the photographs from almost 160 years ago show.  

This project successfully funded on 30th March 2023