News

Cav's Merge with OA's

Move to Woollams / Merge With OAs [OA Sports Website]

14/11/08 - Article To Follow

Afternoon gents

So, last night Firms and I met up with the OAs to chat about a potential merger, and I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that we all agreed it was a great idea and decided to proceed.

Essentially, the Cavaliers will pretty much remain autonomous, and play as ‘The Cavaliers’ on Sundays with Woollams as our home pitch. We will organise our own fixtures (although they have already offered us four fixtures against some Sunday sides who like to play home and away on the same day; the OA Sunday 1s and the Cavaliers will play the oppo’s 1st and 2nd XIs respectively.) Their Sunday side plays about 9 league game and a smattering of friendlies; when they are not at home and we are, we’ll be on the main square in front of the pavilion, which I’ve heard is a belting wicket. (No more Out Hit Weed!)

The main concession that we will need to make is that we will all need to become official members of OA Cricket. Fortunately, they seem to have a very sensible tiered system that means you pay according to how much you play, with further incremental payments due when you play your 5th/10th match:

· Up-front fee £22.50 – maximum of 4 matches

· A further £22.50 is payable on playing ones 5th match

· A further £45 is payable on paying a 10th match.

Any Cavs tour matches won’t count for these, so based on previous experience, few of us will pay the full £90 and indeed we may be able to negotiate on this if our fixture list only has a dozen or games. This membership fee, which is initially due at the end of Feb also covers us to play for OAs in the league on Saturdays or on Sunday’s when we don’t have fixtures. This might appeal to some of us (Bainesy, Muddy, Bestie, Flimmsy, LBC-ey, Bunbers?) and OAs would be delighted to have you on board.

Talking of the tour, P Wise has volunteered to organise the Cavaliers 10th Anniversary Tour. Timings, location and duration to be discussed – your input would be much valued I’m sure.

Match tax, home or away, will be £10. Granted, it’s more than we have paid to date, but teas, match balls and of course the pitch are all paid for so we have no cause for complaint!

They do indoor cricket at Redbourn from late January, and we would be able to attend this (although we might prefer to have our own session at Bogeyville if Muddy can swing it) and could attend their outdoor nets in the summer, 6.30-8.30pm on a Thursday, where as members of the OAs we would also benefit from their coaching.

We don’t need to change our kit, logo or colours, although JB it might be worth coming up with a revised logo that doesn’t have Harpenden on it (Cavaliers CC, est.1999 maybe?) which we could use in the fixture card, where we will be listed alongside their fixtures.

We’ll then review this time next year and decide whether to get more entrenched or to withdraw from it.

So, that’s the update – hopefully you’ll agree that this represents a real step forward for the Cavs, and is very timely after a tough season last time out. What we do need is a volunteer to be fixture secretary (which should hopefully be a much less arduous task because we won’t need to worry about whether or not there is pitch available, cos there will be!), and someone to captain the side and be the main link-man with the OAs. We can discuss this at…..