I watched my youngest playing junior footy this weekend. The pitch was an absolute quagmire. I talked to the opo manager who said that they had to use this poor draining, public access pitch because the local schools wanted £31 for a pitch. This is for U11 7-a-side, in an area of Scunthorpe where half of the dads are unemployed.
My son's team is lucky in that whilst there's a kid from the village in the team they can use our village ground for free (they have to do their own marking out). The senior team has to pay, but the committee decided it particularly wanted to encourage junior sport.
In these cash-strapped times, what is the going rate around you to hire pitches for football and cricket (I want to know the latter to find out whether I'm undercharging our tennent team. For 45 over games we charged £35 last year and were planning on £40 this. Grass track and use of hall inclusive.)
The ciderman rolls
10 Dec 2008 by vid Last edited 10 Dec 2008
Jon I cant speak for football but the cricket you are undercharging by about half. if it was just the pitch most clubs would expect now to be paying £50 +for a full 45 overs match, but with the clubhouse included we were charging £75 6 years ago and the team was so happy to get the venue they would drive 40 miles every weekend to play, the outfield was a badly drained rugby pitch and not that good either!! How much would they have to pay to have their own facility, how much does it cost in your time (irrelevant of the fact you may be doing it for free), how much should their share of the upkeep of facilities be. The most they should be expecting is a game per team at home every 2 weeks, that means currently they are paying about £1.50/head per home game for the facility, how much would they pay for a squash court or tennis court for just 1 hour, or a round of golf. I reckon a wicket and outfield take a minimum of 8 hours a week to prepare and repair and on top of that end of season work overwinter maintenance watering etc has to be paid for. If this resident team pays for 25 games that is little over a grand for the pitch, we as contractors would charge more than that just for the renovation!!
With Junior footballers I agree that there should be as much support for them locally as possible and one would hope that no more than £1/head per match would be all they would have to pay, again their home games would then happily yield £14, which considering 3 junior pitches will fit on one senior pitch shoul be adequate return.
Senior players who have a facility for the entire day should expect to pay for it - a cricket pitch has to make @ £120/match by some means to be able to maintain any sort of standard of play, this can also come from the bar and catering, membership fees and sponsorship as well as volunteer labour, but it should all be costed in order that the books balance and everyone involved is completely aware how the club is surviving.
I get the impression Jon that you do a lot of your cricket work for free - who do you want to see benefit from your labours - the club itself or the tennant cricketers
£2700 for cricket club - pitch maintenance also funded by the club.
£750ish for football club - although all but one age group left to find pitches cheaper elsewhere so that may have been reduced.
Parish council rates - at least Dick Turpin wore a mask.....
10 Dec 2008 by vid
To be honest Anon they are probably just trying to balance their books! Funding varies so much from place to place, some, in fact most, seem to be happy to subsidise sport from other operations. You seem to have one that either doesnt or cant. If you sat down and did the sums with them I doubt you would find them making much money out of those amounts even with some of the maintenance thrown in - have you asked them?
Jon, Vid as usual makes some usefull common sense suggestions, I will try and add to these. I am assuming that you as the host team play alternate weeks with the team you hire out to, in which case they need to pay a minimum of half the costs of maintanance and preferabley they should be subsidising your own clubs cricket. Lets as vid says assume that you spend 8 hours a week at the ground at lets say £15 an hour (your not fleecing anybody at that), then they should pay at least half of that, thats £60 straight away, lets say you have 8 strips, then thats 8 bag of loam per strip @£4, half of that is 32 bags so theres £128, plus half a bag of seed per pitch @60 per bag, thats 2 bags so another £120. So if we say that they play 12 games at home, then thats £248/12=£20.66 + the £60 per week labour then you have £80 per game and thats without the use of the pavilion. I realise you may do the maintanance voluntarily and thats fine if you are doing it for you and your team mates enjoyment, but if the club are hiring out the ground then they should certainly offer you something.
Cheap and muddy Jon. If you want better you pay more. Local unemployment does not reduce the cost of grass cutting and maintenance, it just means that less of it gets done, hence unfit muddy pitches.
One of the reasons why many of us on here get so frustrated. We hopefully know our job, but sometimes get very cross because we can rarely practise what we preach. We either do not have the machinery, the budget or the manpower required to do a good job, then joe soap public critisise the groundsman for the state of the pitch or poor conditions.
10 Dec 2008 by vid
Well said Bath - I wonder how many of those unemployed dads come down and help divot the pitch and fork over wet areas after the game, not many I should think.
10 Dec 2008 by pacman75cricket Last edited 10 Dec 2008
I echo what bath and vid have said, as a volunteer also I put in numerous hour preparing a pitch that we use ourself or is hired out to others i am sure that these people if push come to shove would cough up extra money rather than put in the hard work it takes to prepare a pitch.
My cricket club will be charging £90-100 in 2009.
Vid,
I saw the books, they made a £3k profit last year. £7k of that went to resurfacing the car park in october which everyone including residents thought was unneeded and unnecessary - it seems their mercedes' didn't like the bumpy surface when parking to use the tennis courts.
I personally think there is a responsibility for any kind of council to encourage improvement of facilities and membership of sports clubs who are struggling to make ends meet. Particularly in this day and age where there is such a focus on getting kids / adults in better shape
12 Dec 2008 by vid
Sadly Anon it doesnt look like football is top of their agenda, As an independant point of view can I advise you to try to stay positive and not become antagonistic due to the views of others, the Mercedes slant is understandable but if further exacerbated will just drive them further away. The only way with a lot of comittees is to get under their skin by always patiently stating your case as reasonably and as often as possible until they do something just to shut you up. Sad I know but confrontation of any sort definitely wont work unless you have leverage
Jon
Owmby cc charge £1350 a season for one of the louth teams to use the ground on a saturday,hopes this helps.
Thanks Martyn - a very useful insight as it's very local. But that's surely very expensive around here? I'll see how Simon H reacts to that figure tomorrow at junior nets!
The ciderman rolls
it was 1000 last year but this year with the extra work the crowe have to do on the ground and the new 5k outfield mower to pay for is why there has been an increase
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