28 – Working on a Dream
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In truth, we ended the 1990s not that much further ahead than when this story really began some twenty years ago…which is not the date of the picture here although some believe that Haighy and Browny were both members of the 1925 team.
With the fag perched in his mouth there are rumours that the umpire to the right could have been a young Charlie Dalton; who will ever know?
The old changing rooms built after the second world war had been replaced towards the end of the 1980s and the practice facilities were about to be revamped with our one and only successful bid at Sport England money who provided around 40% of the project cost; the rest being raised by our own efforts.
We were about to enter a new era with fresh challenges, the main one being our admission to the Airedale-Wharfedale League; frankly, we were nowhere near ready.
On the field we were competent at best, off it we were a shambles. The bar had, over the best part of twenty years, brought more than it’s fair share of problems not unique to our club in any sense and similar to those up and down the country.
Because it did, and still does, rely on volunteers, goodwill and honesty, it was open to abuse from those shameless enough to indulge; sadly for a long while we had more than our fair share of light-fingered members.
Dale Farm Clubhouse
As a result, after nearly twenty years with a busy bar, the club had no money and a clubhouse that refugees would have declined a stopover in; as to where all the money had gone, perhaps we were all culpable.
Those of us that had seen the start of the eighties begin with such optimism arguably had taken our eye off the ball and allowed a hard core of shameless, dishonest so-called members to almost run us into insolvency by their greed, ignorance and stupidity.
We reached the nadir one winter when at a meeting of the committee and following another recent break-in via the now colander like walls of our tatty pre-fab, having found little of value to steal, the local druggies had smashed all the light fittings for kicks and stolen the payphone from the wall.
As the members treated the payphone like the bar there was no money in that either but we needed to replace this and the treasurer approached me for the £120 replacement cost from the Junior account. We were literally that broke.
The Cayman Islands Account
Several years earlier we had started what became known as our “offshore account” – aka the Cayman Islands account – designed to ring fence the junior fund raising from the general anarchy that prevailed at the time in the bar. Knowing that we had this money the treasurer approached me for a “loan”.
We had no choice but to help, after all this was the cricket club’s money, but if this was how bad things were then how much longer could we go on? Amongst the very few of us there was a recognition that things should and could be a lot better.
So, at our lowest point we decided that we were going to replace the clubhouse. Borne out of madness, wild optimism, sheer desperation or pure blind hope – take your pick – the clubhouse project was conceived.
Much has been made over the last decade or so about the power and good of lottery funding administered, as far as grass roots sport is concerned, by Sport England. Surely it was there to help clubs like ours that were not seeking simply a handout, more so a proportionate level of assistance?
Let me tell you, unequivocally and from bitter experience, Sport England and lottery funding is the biggest sham and wasted opportunity that I have ever seen. Administered largely by idiots attempting to work with them was impossible. Blinded by political correctness and only interested in headline grabbing projects they wasted our time shamelessly.
How Many Sexually Diverse, Ethnic Minority Disabled Teams Does A Club Need For A Grant?
We actually put together two detailed bids encouraged all the way by their salaried, track-suited, clipboard-wielding half-wits, only to be refused twice but for entirely different reasons. Now I accept that the monkeys are far removed from the organ grinder but it was a farce and a huge waste of our time and effort; we were not alone as well speaking to many other clubs.
Having started a project with quoted prices of between £120-150k we had been hoping for a sum equal to around half the cost, way below the normal level of support “offered” which was around 65-70% of a project’s cost. However, it soon became very clear that we were on our own.
The basic problem with this type of funding is that the parameters are driven down by central government which allocates the funding to bloated bodies like Sport England. Initially the gravy train then starts to initially fritter away a portion of this on staff, administration and more new tracksuits, before then allocating it to another, equally bloated body.
In our case this was the ECB which does exactly the same thing, but with the added condition that for a club to receive a grant it must turn itself into some form of socially and politically correct Utopia.
If you could convince the idiots in charge of the asylum that you were capable of developing and running several teams consisting of a perfect mix of bisexual, ethnically representative, disabled and socially excluded from society (on account of them being psychopaths), then you were quids in.
As most of us were struggling to get the fat lads away from the Nintendo’s in the government directed non-competitive environment then we decided to go it alone and leave the box ticking to somebody else with a more acceptable postcode.
Arkwright
Although we had no major grant support available we did, on reflection, have Lady Luck on our side in many forms throughout the project. By this time we had shed ourselves of most of the light-fingered brigade, having at first attempted to shame them and latterly simply by watching them like hawks.
Some of them simply vanished for pastures new and the odd one dropped off the perch, doubtless weighed down by their illicit pieces of eight.
It still goes on without a doubt but our little cricket club will never change human nature. The club’s finances were now controlled by Juli Pargeter, daughter-in-law of the bar manager, Alan, seemingly in his position of birthright since we opened and fittingly known as Arkwright.
He got his nickname many years ago from the Ronnie Barker television show Open All Hours. Now Arkwright has always enjoyed a pint no matter what rubbish we have served over the years from Greenall’s Local, Websters, Worthingtons and now John Smiths.
If it’s brown, fizzy and in a glass then Arkwright, having lovingly tended it seventeen hours a day, seven days a week at the club, is never happier than with tankard in hand. Imagine his sheer joy all those years ago when we announced we were opening a bar, fifty yards from his garden gate.
Although he cops a fair bit of stick, Arkwright has been a key figure at the club for the best part of thirty years and it’s hard to imagine how we would have got on without him.
True he has eccentricities, and his lovingly called “state of the nation” address, where he holds court at the committee meeting before he goes away on holiday and details all the duties required of his stand-ins, remains one of the highlights of the committee season.
Financial Control At Last
Juli was a revelation for the troubled position of Treasurer. Just when we needed one most she actually volunteered and, even better, she was a real accountant and actually turned up to meetings able to tell us what we had or did not have; for a while the latter was more relevant.
Throughout the whole project she worked tirelessly and without her support and extraordinary diligence we would not have completed the project within our ridiculously naïve budget of circa fifty thousand.
The Man Who Made It Happen
However, the man that really made the new clubhouse a possibility was Derrick Armitage, a club member and builder by trade who turned college lecturer after a horrific on site accident.
In some perverse way this was to turn out fortuitous for us, if not Derrick, as he not only provided the technical know how but also gave us an idea of how we could achieve what we did for around a third of the quoted cost and had the contacts we needed to get the job done.
True it did mean employing a tag wearing, hashish smoking brickie and a couple of “chippies” that kept us all entertained but he had so many contacts and so much knowledge it actually would not have been possible to do this without him.
Plus he remained patient and restrained when the idiot minority post-completion made ridiculous suggestions that this had been an “earner” for him. How on Earth they thought we could pay anybody, from a budget as limited as ours, summed up the narrow-minded approach of a tiny, ungrateful minority.
Derrick was simply invaluable and the club owes him a great debt. Sadly, Derrick passed away after a long illness in 2013 and the clubhouse remains a testimony to him. Rest in peace D.
The Real Big Society
There are other people very deserving of a mention here even though they never sought a public thanks. Our architect was Robert Rhodes of Janus Architects in Idle who gave his time and limitless enthusiasm completely free and you just cannot thank someone enough for this type of selfless generosity.
He even had the patience to tolerate Browny who turned up one morning, having had no involvement with the project at all, to demand a site meeting to knock down the toilet walls because they were not big enough. So we stood there freezing cold, listening to Browny still trying to rearrange things – I think he still hankered after those underground squash courts – and Robert just smiled.
Steve Feeley was our long suffering plumber again pushed to the limit by the endless visitors and suggestions made as he worked his nuts off for “Kosovan” wages as he put it; neither of us suspected that we had so many world experts on the art of plumbing.
The site had so many visitors each weekend we must have rivalled the local theme parks. In they rolled, strolled around and wandered off after generally leaving yet more idiotic suggestions as to what we should and should not do.
Had we charged them an entrance fee maybe we could have afforded to put some of their suggestions into practice.
Joe Lawrence Does Hard Labour – The First And Last Time
Fortunately, other members did get stuck in and one other small bit of good fortune was twofold. The project was always constrained by the narrow entrance drive to the club and relations were sometimes strained with a certain neighbour who, at one point- and I digress here- tried to land us with a claim for a new wall, allegedly the result of a skip wagon “crashing” into it.
Amazingly he claimed we had disturbed a 20-foot stretch which would have involved taking out his gate. When we were trying so hard to improve our lot this cynical, greedy and dumb attempt at opportunism really stuck in the throat.
Now it was clear to anyone that the conifers he had alongside the wall were the main reason it was falling down – pity he didn’t get the non-growing variety that Browny bought all those years ago – then he wouldn’t have had to send his dopey wife to complain to us.
Anyway, back to the story, one piece of good fortune was the day of the delivery of the roof trusses. As kind as ever, Billy Stockdale, who has always stuck his hand in his pocket to help out with any fund raising, allowed us to march them through his garden.
Good fortune number two was that it was the school holidays so Sam and Joe Lawrence plus mates were around. And actually there was a third bit of luck as Rick actually managed to get Joe out of bed, something that took some considerable effort in those days.
True Community Spirit
As always Donald helped us throughout the whole project with generous donations in private and simple hard work and patience working with machinery on the ground that we all knew we wanted to replace but simply could not afford to.
Chiz too brokered a deal with a local window supplier and also with a great couple of brothers, Mick and Albert Dunn, who had that all important JCB bringing a great deal of expertise to the project and at pricing rates you would deem to be from the “community” tariff.
In addition, several customers of mine at the time simply provided goods free of charge or at a sizeable discount. They all rightfully take their place on the plaque by the bar and the club’s debt is enormous.
Finally, from the minute Mick’s JCB crashed into the old pre-fab there was one guy that I could always count on no matter how tough it got. He was last to leave that numbing first day as we pulled apart the old place and never flinched whatever the task.
One Saturday afternoon spent with our hands up the freezing waste pipe to the main toilets was perhaps the afternoon that tested us both trying to locate the join to save yet a few more quid but Our Kid was simply magnificent.
Buddy Can You Spare Us Fifty Grand?
How on Earth though, did we manage to raise fifty grand from a standing start in broadly four years especially having effectively run a registered charity since opening and giving new meaning to the term Free House?
Well, we tried all the usual things: sponsored this, that and everything else. Twice Molly and I walked – supported by our pal and friend to the club, Nigel Winckles, from Gargrave to Apperley Bridge, a 26-mile haul. I wore a strappy blue dress and Molly (as mentioned earlier) a Matron’s uniform and hobnail boots and it was no wonder the swans attacked him two years running.
Nigel declined the dress and on the second walk he was fortunate to have the Marsdens accompany him to offset his cross-dressing mates. We were grateful for the company as it is fair to say the majority of the members simply preferred to look the other way – and I’m not talking about the sight of Molly in a matron’s outfit.
The Good Face Of Banking
The big push behind the fund raising was the support I was able to muster from the Barclays Community Team and two fabulous girls, Jeannette and Kendra, who helped me maximise every project we had backed by the bank’s community programme.
I know the banks are public enemy number one at the moment but without the support we got from Barclays in that five-year period we would never have got close to replacing the clubhouse.
And so on Saturday, 10th February, 2007, we opened our doors on the day the first snows of winter landed with a cruel and heavy vengeance. Doors were still being fitted and the memorabilia (painstakingly researched and provided free of charge by Brent) was still being hung on the walls.
Earlier in the day – 7a.m, to be precise – we had started a losing battle to clear the snow and lay gravel but never mind, we were open for business.
So, when one of the locals came up to me and grunted that “it wasn’t finished” I would have had good reason to stove his head in with a shovel had I had the strength to lift it.
We got there, with a lot of luck, a lot of friends and in spite of all the apathy and lack of interest from those best placed and most able to help us. And it was ours.
It took us until November to actually formally open the place largely because the work continued and the onset of the new season took precedence. Our guest at the opening night was non other than Harry Gration from BBC Look North who agreed to do this for a nominal fee on the basis of a cheeky email I sent via Christa, alluding to all sorts of cruelty inflicted on us kids years ago by her big brother Brian.
Harry was a true gent driving from switching the Christmas lights on at Meadowhall up to the Villas and managing to fit us in en route to South Africa with the great Sir Geoffrey Boycott.
He was funny, extremely courteous, put up with Haighy and Browny, and rounded off a very good night for all those that attended.
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