It is just over week since Anna sent out the information about joining up for the forthcoming season’s training sessions. To those that have already replied thank you all for using the on-line form and website payment facility. Hopefully you, like us, are finding it much easy than completing a 14 page form, writing a cheque and positing it all!

We are expecting healthy numbers for this year’s U9 training sessions and you will be delighted to know we have a good number of enthusiastic coaches trained-up and ready to go.

I would like to take this opportunity to convey a few items of administration:

Club to U9 Parent Communication
The website is key to efficient and timely communication with you. Please take a few moments to familiarise yourself with where to look for information. We will regularly post news here.

The Website - How We Are Organising The U9’s
The club website is designed and hosted by Pitchero. It is a generic design and as such is very good but does not necessarily cater for all our specific needs which means we (Anna and I) have to work out how to cope with some of its idiosyncrasies. To facilitate smooth running of the U9’s on the website (only) we have put all Year 4 children in the website U9 ‘A’ grouping, and all the Year 3 & Under children are in the website U9 ‘B’ grouping. This is purely for admin reasons. If your child is in Year 4 they could play in the ‘A’ or the ‘B’ team, and Year 3 children could play in the ‘B’ or ‘A’ team.

Under 9 ‘A’ and ‘B’ Teams Explained
Having said that, we are expecting a large Year 4 group. It will naturally follow that most of the places in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ will be taken by this larger, older and slightly more experienced age group. Year 3 parents should expect to treat this summer primarily as a training opportunity in preparation for being in the older section of the U9’s next summer when there will naturally be more match playing opportunities. If they get the opportunity for an ‘A’ or a ‘B’ match this year, then that’s great, but please understand we are managing 40-plus children with a maximum of 20 team places available each Sunday. All the coaches know, or will know, the children and will pick the teams accordingly.

If enough Year 3 parents are keen to give their children a match it is possible we could field a third side. We would need at least two parents to volunteer to help for this to be an option.

Fun
Cricket is all about fun. Our aim is to introduce your children to cricket so they may pick up some of the skills, learn the rules and, most importantly, develop a lasting enjoyment of it, and from it.