Northern Counties Cricket club are confident of future at Northern Meeting Park in Inverness
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Northern Counties believe cricket will continue to be played at the Northern Meeting Park in Inverness, despite the on-going multi-million pound restoration project at the venue.
The Inverness Courier had previously revealed that the Meeting Park had been deemed "not fit for use" in a feasibility study, and Highland Council had won a bid to the UK government's Levelling Up Fund totalling over £5 million for refurbishments.
While good news for future use and sustainability of the venue, it did raise questions over Northern Counties future at the park.
Currently, the 158-year-old club are the main users of the Meeting Park facility, but discussions have taken place for years – even before the latest plan for investment – over expanding the use of the pitch to other sports and community groups on a more regular basis.
On the pitch, it has been an exciting time for Counties, who have seen great success in their junior programmes.
So while there is no concrete plan in place from any side, the club believes that will only help ensure cricket continues to be played at the Meeting Park in some capacity over the long run.
"I know we'll have somewhere to play cricket – that's never going to be a problem," club captain Will Ford stressed.
"How much cricket is able to be played and when we'll be able to play could be a different thing.
"With all the work that's going on, there's a chance we will be out of there for a season, but that's likely to be a temporary thing.
"It's just a case of working with the council and High Life Highland, and they have been fantastic with keeping us in the loop and being honest with us in regards to everything that is going on.
"Cricket is starting to get bigger up here, especially with all the work we're doing with juniors, so if we can keep doing good things on the field it puts a bit of pressure on them because we need somewhere to play cricket.
"I don't think that's going to be a problem, we might just have to move about until things settle down again. It might be a different level, we might not be the main users, but we will still be users."
There has been plenty of chat within the North of Scotland cricket community over the future of Northern Counties.
Ford believes the speculation over where they would play does nobody any good, especially when the parties involved may not know all the facts.
"We have to be careful of filling in the blanks with speculation," he explained.
"It's very easy, and the club's relationship with the council historically hasn't always been great, but that's something we've worked really hard on to fix.
"We've tried to make it a healthier and better working relationship, and we have close contacts with all the teams who play football on the Meeting Park. Shinty has been played on it while we've had cricket training, so it's an area that needs to be used for all sports and all events.
"There's no reason why it can't be used for everything and everybody gets something out of it.
"There have been talk on the Nosca website saying it's the end of cricket at the Northern Meeting Park, but I don't think we're there yet. It's just a case of people filling in the gaps with gossip.
"As far as we're concerned, we're not going to be chucked out of the park. It looks like there probably will be a brief period of time where we'll have to find somewhere else to play cricket whilst the renovations are getting done, but after that there won't be any issues with us going back to play cricket there."
