WERRINGTON Cricket Club held its annual general meeting at Werrington Park on Monday, November 7.

The evening was quite a straightforward affair with all four captains, Adam Hodgson, Mark Hodgson, Richard Stanbury and Nick Wills all re-elected to their respective roles for the 2017 season.

Off the field there was only one small change with Paul Hicks stepping up to vice-president to assist Andrew Smeeth with Linda Cobbledick taking on the club secretary’s job.

Commenting on the evening, chairman Richard Jenkin said: “All the captains were re-elected unopposed and it’s important for the club as it gives us plenty of continuity which is what we want. It takes time for captains and players to learn what each other want so the longer captains stay in the job the better we think it is.

“Our first team captain Adam Hodgson has only been in the job for 12 months and he has put a lot of hard work into it off the field and now we’re hoping to see us back challenging where we hope to be, which is fighting at the top end of the Premier League.

“We’ve already made a couple of big signings and hope to get a few more and that will have a positive impact on the seconds and thirds as it also increases their playing squads too.

“With the seconds, Mark has done a really good job in getting us promoted and then last year managing to keep us up and we’re hoping that he’ll be able to lead us to a nice mid-table finish next season while continuing to help players prepare for first-team cricket.

“With the third and fourth teams they play at a high level compared to most other club’s thirds and fourths but we want to try and help them be competitive in each of their division’s and not be just looking to stay up all the time.

“The real point of the thirds and fourths are to develop the juniors and bridge that gap between youth team and adult cricket so that they can continue to get better and work their way up through the club.”

While there are ambitious plans on the field, things most certainly don’t stand still over the winter months at Ladycross.

In recent months a sub-committee has been set-up to oversee a ten-year plan where they focus on expenditure, player budgets, improvements to be made within the club and other matters.

As well as that there is also plans for some pavilion extension work ahead of the 2017 season.

Richard said: “We’re looking into extending the clubhouse a bit. We hold catering functions now throughout the summer, so we need a bigger bar area.

“The catering helps the club bring in a fair bit of money so we need to look into that and hope to have something done by next spring.”

As you would expect with a club who are looking to progress all the time, the youth section is a vital component.

And that is one area Richard wants to see the club improve.

“That is one area I’m not very happy with at the moment. We’re hoping that Nick Ward who is already involved in the juniors will oversee the whole of the youth section and get it to where it needs to be.

“If you look at most of our first and second teams at the moment, a vast majority of them came up through the Werrington junior set-up.

“In five to ten years, the juniors should be looking to break into those teams.

“I want to get more first and second team players involved so that they can offer advice and help them improve further.

“We need to offer more to ensure the next generation of cricketers come through and that is a big challenge for us over the winter.”

See next week’s Post for further reaction from the club on their new star signings, Matt Robins and James Turpin.