CRICKET: Uncertainty over future home will not faze Northern Counties
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Northern Counties Cricket Club will not let the looming uncertainty of where they will play next year affect the 2023 season, according to club captain Will Ford.
The current campaign has got off to a strong start throughout the club, with the senior team winning their opening cup and league matches and the development side doing exactly the same.
Counties’ youth is thriving too, with burgeoning numbers in both their Wildcats and Bobcats set ups for children – with the former due to face Dornoch this Sunday.
However, in the background the club knows that there are question marks over what will happen next season.
Their Northern Meeting Park home will be unavailable to them for the full year due to renovation plans that will cost over £5 million – including a new pavilion with a function room.
The club have played at the Meeting Park since 1865, just a year after it was built, but face the prospect of finding alternative arrangements for 2024.
Still, spirits are high at Northern Counties, and if early season results are anything to go by it is having no effect on the pitch.
As a result, Ford is confident that the club is more than strong enough to continue excelling through the rest of this season and into next, despite the uncertainty.
“We are only going to keep going from strength to strength,” he said.
“Next year will be a bit turbulent with not having the Meeting Park, but we’re putting everything in place now to make sure people aren’t put off by it.
“We don’t want to have put in all this work to be in a situation where we lose five or six players – things are good, but if that happened it would be difficult again.
“The club is strong enough to survive it – whether we become a roaming team for a year, or whether we just say we’ll play all our games away, we’ve got options.
“I don’t think it will affect us this year. If anything, it has pulled us all together a bit more because we’ve all realised what we enjoy doing.
“The togetherness and the banter about the dressing room and in the squad – even with the lads who are missing out on match days – hasn’t been this good for a long time.”
