11/08/2026
Just to clear up a little misinformation circulating regarding the cricket and the £2,500 charge for use of the grounds.
All of this was explained openly to members at the AGM, where the financial position, the costs involved and the reasons behind the decision were discussed.
This wasn’t a decision that was made overnight, nor was it simply a case of the club deciding to charge cricket £2,500.
Over a prolonged period of time, the club had looked carefully at the accounts and what was actually being spent maintaining the outdoor facilities.
By the end, the cricket section had just 7 paying members at £70 (for the whole team) while the club itself was spending in the region of £7,500 per year on specialist costs specifically associated with the cricket facilities and pitch.
Quite simply, the club could no longer afford to continue subsidising that level of loss.
Rather than putting the whole cost onto cricket, despite cricket accounting for the majority of that specialist expenditure, the decision was actually made to spread the cost across ALL of the outdoor sporting teams using the grounds.
There was also another major issue which seems to have been forgotten.
Peter had done a magnificent job maintaining the cricket pitch and grounds for many years. The amount of work he put into it was incredible, often 40+ hours a week during the season to maintain the pitch to the required standard.
Peter had decided to retire from doing this, and unfortunately nobody was willing or able to step forward and take on that level of commitment.
That left the club with two problems: the significant financial cost of maintaining the cricket facilities and the loss of the person who had voluntarily put an enormous number of hours into keeping them going.
Nobody wanted cricket to leave Trimpell. The decision wasn’t about trying to make money from cricket or force anybody out.
It was about facing the financial reality of the situation and trying to make the outdoor sports sustainable for the future.
The club has a responsibility to all of its members and all of its sporting sections, and it simply couldn’t continue spending thousands of pounds every year subsidising one section when the money wasn’t there.
Again, this was all explained to the membership at the AGM. It wasn’t hidden, and the reasons behind the decision were made clear.
And regardless of everything else, Peter deserves enormous credit and thanks for the years of work he put into maintaining the cricket pitch and grounds. Replacing that level of voluntary commitment was always going to be incredibly difficult.
