Well, after a rather sunny weekend (which didn't last long!!) the reality that the cricket season is only 7 1/2 weeks away is dawning on me and I'm sure I speak on behalf of many of you when I say I can't wait! As you'll have hopefully read and seen, it's been one of the busiest "off-seasons" we've had for many a year and that is evident at Winter nets for both the juniors and seniors. I've managed to get down to watch most of the sessions and you can see week on week the improvements that are happening as the players look to get themselves ready come the middle of April. The enthusiasm shown has been tremendous, and the seniors have even added an extra night to their training schedule to get even more practise in. As if that wasn't impressive enough, there has even been rumours (with sightings) of the lesser spotted Andy Beacher doing a bit of running around the outfield on a Saturday afternoon! On a serious note, whilst it's great to see the 'regular' faces down at nets, there's been quite a few new members come down who will no doubt be looking forward to their first season with us. I won't say much more here about that, but in the next week or so there'll be an article on the website explaining who's who.

Sunday afternoon's continue to be well supported, largely thanks to the sterling work Paul Radcliffe (and Archie) do in opening up, not to mention the provision of home baked bread every week - keep up the good work Paul, thank you. It was on a Sunday I had one of those conversations where you walk away with a real sense of pride when one of the members (and I won't name them!) was telling me how much they loved the club and felt a real sense of belonging and of it being "their" club. This I may add was from somebody who doesn't play cricket, nor ever has played cricket but just enjoys what we have to offer. A fantastic testimony to our great club.

Like most months, there's been the usual flurry of meetings which take up my time and the fruits of one such meeting are starting to bear now as we have officially communicated the new subscription model for juniors. We debated long and hard over this, but after consultation with a good number of parents we felt the change to move away from weekly collections the right model to adopt and I'm sure you'll support this for the benefits it brings. I know as a parent I can see the benefits, if nothing house, trying to find 'change' every week to pay for my girls is a pain! Another such meeting which I'm sure will move us in the right direction is one I had with Steve & Callum McCormick where we explored ways in which we can make our PR & communications better. Lots of really good ideas to work on, so hopefully we will see a wider coverage of UCC in various different media's over the coming months.

For once, I'm going to keep this relatively brief and bid you all well and look forward to catching up with as many of you as possible on 16th March at the Family Bar Games Night