Dear Member,
Welcome to the start of the 2021 season!
We are delighted that the season gets underway on June 7th with our Men’s 1st team, under the captaincy of Tom Stanton, in action at Balbriggan at 13.00. For our first home match of the season, the 5th’s welcome Laois 1’s to Anglesea Road at 14.00. As per government health guidelines, we can have 100 spectators at the ground. Covid safety still applies, so you will need to sign in and follow the public health advice re social distancing etc. The Clubhouse remains closed, but we are serving food and drink through the hatch.
Due to the uncertainty at the start of the season, we have entered a reduced number of adult men’s teams this season. For the first half of the season, we have 6 men’s teams entered in the T20 competitions. After July 17th we have 5 teams entered in the leagues. Thankfully, our membership has remained at a healthy level, however, this will mean a reduced number of matches for players in the lower teams. To address this, we are arranging offering a reduced subscription to members that only wish to play in the T20 competition. Please let Conor Austin know if this is of interest to you. We are also organising an inter-club competition to increase the number of matches, which will be a competitive and entertaining series of matches.
Our Women’s 1st team, captained by Leah Paul, are at Malahide on June 8th at 18.00. This season we have three women’s teams, and it is great to see the growing strength of this section of the club.
Our Youth section have had a great start to the season with lots of training – the Friday evening sessions have been fun for kids and parents alike. We are now heading into our summer Cricket Academy, which will provide excellent training as well as being great fun for the kids.
Best of luck to all of our teams for the season ahead!
Subscriptions are now due, so if you haven’t yet paid, please do so as soon as possible. The Club’s finances are still in a challenging position given the effects of the lockdowns and your membership subscriptions are vital for the running and upkeep of our great Club. Please contact our membership secretary, Chirag Poddar, if you have any queries at membership@merrioncricketclub.ie
Also, the Finance Committee are actively seeking a new sponsor(s) for the Club. A sponsors’ deck is available with details of the various packages. Your help in connecting or recommending any potential sponsors would be much appreciated. Please contact Siobhan Forkin at chair.finance@merrioncricketclub.ie who would be delighted to take any contacts forward.
The Management Committee has been busy preparing for the season, including finalising our Club Strategy document that sets out our goals for the next few years. Thank you to everyone that contributed to the strategy document through the online focus groups that we held earlier this year. We have taken your feedback on board and the Club Strategy document can be found in the member’s section of the website at the following link https://www.merrioncricketclub.ie/news/ .
If you have been at the ground lately you will have seen that the work on our new practice nets is well underway. We are looking forward to the excellent new training facilities that will benefit all our Youth and Senior players for many seasons to come.
Thank you to all of our members who have volunteered around the Club – it has made a huge difference in getting everything ready for the season! We really need more volunteers to help out on various aspects so please consider getting involved if you can. We need volunteers to help with match scoring, managing the live streaming, and help managing Bird Avenue. If you are able to help, please contact Conor Austin on conoraustin2@gmail.com Don’t worry if you haven’t done this before, as we will provide training.
There is also plenty to do around the clubhouse and ground, this includes gardening and painting, and other odd jobs – if you have an hour to spare, please contact Paddy Byrne on patrickjbyrne67@gmail.com
In other news, we are aiming to hold our long overdue AGM in July as soon as government guidelines allow. One item proposed for the agenda will be amend our Rules to allow for virtual meetings for a limited period.
Stay well, and I hope to see you at Anglesea Road soon.
Kind regards,
Andrew Kay
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Andrew Kay
President
Merrion Cricket Club
7th June 2021