Help Catford Wanderers rebuild junior cricket

Hi I'm the treasurer for the Catford Wanderers Sports Club cricket section. It’s been more than 7 years since our once very successful junior cricket section disappeared and in the last 3 years we have been working hard to rejuvenate it. In order to support this we are trying to raise funding to rebuild the outdoor cricket nets at the ground so that we can provide good quality cricket coaching and development for local children.

 

The club has been around since 1906, providing a sporting home for the local community, which has a diverse mix of backgrounds. The club is based in an underpriviledged area of south-east London, in Catford in the borough of Lewisham. This borough has one of the highest proportion of children living below the poverty line across the country, almost 40% according to the End Child Poverty Coalition. We therefore feel morally bound as a local sports club to provide the infrastructure for local kids to get into sports, develop their skills and feel part of a team.

 

Due to a lack of funding our loved cricket facilities have degraded over the years and with this we also lost our junior section and women’s teams several years back. Without these teams, the long term sustainability of the cricket club in the area is at risk. We are passionately focused to turn this around and provide cricket coaching for local children to occupy their time, burn their energy and stimulate them mentally and physically throughout the spring and summer. We are enrolled to provide the ECB backed All Stars and Dynamos cricket courses, which has been a success over the last 3 years. This program aims to get youngsters into cricket at the grass roots level, however we need to develop the infrastructure to move the kids beyond this into junior hardball cricket. It's the most common question we hear from parents around what can we offer next in the development of cricket for their children.

 

 

 

 

Our aim is to develop junior teams throughout the young person age groups from 7 years old up to adult cricket, teaching them new skills, leadership and potentially discovering hidden natural talent to become the country's future sports stars. There is a local boy that started his cricket life out at Catford Wanderers aged 7. We are very proud that he went on to represent Kent county and England at various levels, signing a professional contract with Kent in 2010. His name is Daniel Bell Drummond. Daniel or’DBD’ as many know him, is a regular visitor back to the club which was his original home for cricket and where he has many friends.

 

 

 

We would therefore like to raise money to rebuild the junior section and to do this we need new cricket nets. Having these cricket facilities attracts families to the club and provides a safe area to progress young children from soft-ball cricket to hardball cricket. The club did have nets a long time ago but were not useable for the last 7 years due to degradation and health and safety concerns. They were fully dismantled in 2020 to be sold for scrap metal and nature took it’s course on the ground surface. 

We do not have access to the funding needed to rebuild these facilities and this is where we need your help. We have been quoted £40,000 to fully rebuild the surface and cage/netting structure. We have the quote from a very well respected installer of synthetic surface ECB approved cricket facilities with more than 30 years experience. They have installed similar facilities at prestigious sporting places such as Dulwich College, Eltham College and Lord’s. The work will include excavation of existing concrete, laying a 100mm sub-base in the ground, a 50mm intermediate base layer, non-turf durable all weather surfaces and double lane steel cage and netting facility. All components are non-degradable and made of the highest quality which will last for decades. The work and components all comes with long warranty periods.

Below are examples of what it will look like:

 

 

 

We really hope with the generosity of the public we can make this happen and move forward to provide an excellent standard cricket facility again for this underpriviledged area of London. Most importantly we want to be able to provide children a local community hub and opportunity to play cricket and develop the sporting aspirations they deserve and who knows, maybe discover the next shining superstar.

 

We really appreciate any amount you can provide to help us on this journey. 

All money raised is going to Catford Wanderers Sports Club account until we have hit the fund raise target and can commence the work. Thank you.