1997-98 Annual Report
Future Directions
The phenomenal growth the club has experienced over the last 5 years doesn't look like stopping in the immediate future, with another bunch of junior members set to progress into the senior section this season. With an experienced senior team looking for another year or two together, we will probably still need to add another 3rd Grade team during the next 2 seasons to cope with the continuing influx of junior members until the current senior members start to retire. This will require us to continue to outfit teams with new shirts and playing equipment, while starting to look at upgrading some of our existing kits. This on-going maintenance of equipment and uniforms is essential to ensure that we are supplying our members with a quality product.
Now that we have positioned ourselves as the No. 1 club in Marlborough and are considered an example for other clubs to follow it is even more important that we continue to offer a quality cricketing experience for our members. It is no longer just a case of entering a team, or teams, charging all players a sub and running a few raffles to cover costs. Now with an increasing emphasis towards user pays for cricket facilities in Marlborough we are going to be faced with increasing costs, with regard to affiliation fees. It is for these reasons that we have to consolidate on the growth of the past few years and benefit from the economies of scale provided by a large club membership and increase our cash reserves. To achieve this consolidation and continuation it is imperative that we strive constantly as a club to provide a welcoming and friendly environment for all members along with a top quality cricketing experience.
A major component of the quality cricketing experience is coaching which can be seen, from the senior team's results, as a major factor influencing a team's success. We now need to expand on this base and employ a coaching co-ordinator who will oversee the whole club's coaching programme. This programme could even expand to include offering personal coaching on a professional basis, for members and non-members alike, with a discount for financial members. By putting our resources into coaching, especially at junior levels, we will be able to provide all members the opportunity to advance to whatever level of cricket they aspire to and follow in the footsteps of our two current stars Carl Bulfin and Jarrod Englefield.
Of course the major underlying factor in the continued development of the club will always be finances. It is for this reason that we need to support our current sponsor, The Springlands Tavern, and look to other avenues of increasing the club's income. One of these avenues could be through developing partnerships with other local businesses, who will support the club. Rather than just looking for handouts we need to develop mutually beneficial relationships with these partners who will pay the club a commission on business generated through the club or will offer members a discount. The additional funds raised will then need to be invested wisely to insure a continuing return to the club, that can be used to offset rises in affiliation fees and also go towards our long term objective of reducing our adult subs to below $100.00, and continuing to offer our junior members the best possible facilities without increasing their subs any further.
Our objective now is to put in place a solid club structure to enable us to meet the challenges of the future and to continue to be the best cricket (& sports) club in Marlborough. However, it is only by members being involved in the club planning process that can we achieve this.
Introduction / Performance / Sponsorship / Player Acheivements / Finances / Club Awards / Future Directions / 1998-99 Recommendations