This afternoon saw great progress in our attempts to relay turf in the net run ups. Perky supplied us with two big tractor type vehicles to make our job a lot easier - and more importantly, cheaper. I will post all of the photo's in the gallery when i can be bothered to. They are already on our facebook site.

The turn out was very good this morning with many members from both senior and junior sections attending at some point or another. Thank you to all of you who were able to attend and also thank you to those who let us know that they were unable to attend. It makes life a lot easier for those organising these types of things if they know how many are likely to turn up.

The job is still nowhere near finished. We will need to not only complete laying the turf when it arrives but also begin to repair the mess at the white house end of the outfield as it will need as much time to regrow before our first games. Keep your diaries free for the next couple of saturdays!

As i have said before, the bar will be fully stocked with bottles for the Darts night next weekend. Even better news is that the drinks available will be different to the usual stuff that we are getting bored of.

As a taster for what we will be getting when the season starts in April, The Fox is going to be stocking the bar with beers from local brewers Purity. We will have a selection of their three fine ales, UBU, Gold and Mad Goose. There will also be a selection of their imported lagers and probably a few of your standard (Zzzzzz) brand lagers to satisfy the lager swillers.

As mentioned, the beer in the clubhouse will be changing next season. There was a committee meeting last night and plans to make major improvements to our existing beer keeping facilities were approved. This will allow us to keep beers at a cooler temperature and should theoretically make a massive improvement to the quality of the beers that we serve. Those of you familiar with Purity and their products will be excited at the prospect of having a high quality ale on our doorstep. Those of you unfamiliar with them should come down to sample them on Friday at the Darts Tournament.

Saturday 28th February 10am

Your help is required Saturday at the ground we have 14 tones of topsoil that need to be placed on the net run ups and then turf laid over the top. Perky has played a blinder and manage to get a digger to take the topsoil to the nets. Just need volunteers with there rakes to rake out the soil and lay the turf.

This is to all our benefits so please support on Saturday the sooner its done the sooner we get to use the nets.

Training is now 2pm till 4pm at Hagley Catholic High School every Sunday for the next few weeks.

We have taken another step into bettering our communications to our members. We have set up a Facebook account in order to allow our online members the chance to receive all of the latest news from ABCC. Obviously, this website will continue to operate how it always has done, but the facebook account allows us to get any messages out to members more effectively.

Myself and Brindy will keep it up to date with any relevant news when we have any. I have tried to add as many people as possible as 'friends' on there but if you haven't been added then just search for astwood bank cricket club and add us.

Our first event of the year took place on Friday night and saw a very good turnout from members along with families and friends. I'm not sure exactly how many people were there but i would guess around 70 odd, which is pretty good.

This year we played slightly differently with everyone having two lots of three attempts. The person with the total number of skittles knocked down in the six goes being the winner. With so many people taking part it was going to need a hefty score to take the title this year. Last years champion Harry Prew couldn't make it to the event, so we were going to see a new champion crowned. That new champion was Baz who threw magically to achieve a score of 35 (Thats an average of nearly 6 per go apparently! Zzzzz).

We then had a break when the food arrived, which i thought was very good again, although the chips were scoldingly hot.

After the break we had a game of killer and after most of the incompetent skittlers were whittled out fairly quickly, a competitive final was contested between Jenni Haslam and Sammy Thomas. The deciding throw was done left handed so that we werent there till midnight and Jenni emerged victorious bagging a box of celebrations and a cheap bottle of cabernet souvignon for her efforts.

I can now confirm that the kit order will be going ahead this week as planned. I have met minimum order requirements for all items now, so will be ordering on Monday. If you are one of the people who has not ordered or who have not yet paid then you must do so by Sunday evening. If i have received your order but you have not paid then i will not order your items!

Thank you to all who have got their orders in on time, it makes my life a lot easier.

Dont forget that our first event of 2009 is this friday (20th Feb). If you haven't already booked a ticket, dont panic as you can turn up on the evening. We do already have a lot of names down for the night but we would still like to see as many people there as we can as it is a good social occasion. Remember, it all kicks off at 7:30. If you remember back to last year, we were slightly rushed for time because there were a lot of people arriving late.

I can confirm that we have booked Hagley for this Sunday (22nd Feb). The session will be from 4pm till 6pm. Richard will be there to provide the coaching assistance as per usual. We hope to see you all there.

I have got rid of the 'continue reading tags off this section of the site because a few people have said that it is pointless. I agree, it was. Hope this is better.

Tuesday nights are changing to Sunday afternoons...

Tuesday's session at Hagley was the last of the sessions on a tuesday. The plan originally was to start to use the outdoor nets as soon as we could but due to the obvious weather problems we have been unable to relay the run up areas so far.

We now plan to hire out Hagley for a few more weeks until the outdoor nets are ready. The new time at Hagley will be on sunday afternoons. I am waiting for Brindy to confirm the dates and exact times but i will post them on here as soon as i have the information.

The new deadline is Sat 21st Feb...

I was unable to attend junior practice this morning so i have decided to give you all an additional week to hand in kit orders.

Don't forget that training starts this week...

Junior training begins this Saturday (7th Feb) at Alcester Grammar School. They run from 7th Feb until 4th April.

The times for each age group are the following:

• 9:00 - 10:00 should be U10's, 11's and 12's.
• 10:00 - 11:00 should be U13's and Girls.
• 11:00 - 12:00 should be U14's, 15's and 16's.

The nine sessions of indoor practice can be paid for in two ways; £20 cost for all nine sessions (cheques payable to Astwood Bank Cricket Club – or a payment of £3 per week.

I have now, hopefully, finished site updates...

After believing that i had pretty much finished the site and how i wanted it to look last week, a number of people told me that the site wasn't working properly.

I have spent most of my time over the past week or so trying to find out what was wrong with the site. I didn't find a resolution, so started again from scratch. Hopefully, the coding used on this site is easier for any 'slowish' computers to read and should therefore load pages quicker.

If anyone still has any problems in viewing the site or certain features or if the pages look a bit weird then please get in touch with me because i will find a way of fixing it for you.

Cheers.

Trianing is back on...

Training will go ahead as planned tonight. We have spoken with the school and with richard and we will go ahead with training as normal. See you there.

Tonights training is cancelled...

Richard has been in touch to say that training is off due to the school being closed because of the snow.

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