Well I'm Gordon Whitehead and this is Glodwick Cricket Club which is situated on the outskirts
of Oldham and 12 years ago this cricket club was in the most minor level of cricket
and it was at that time that we extended the ground.
We reclaimed scrub land and we made the big step to move into the Saddleworth league
and the Saddleworth league ultimately merged with other leagues in the Greater Manchester league
about three years ago, three or four years ago and we have progressed now and we're delighted to say
that this year we're in the premier division of the Greater Manchester cricket league so there's
a lot of pressure on us to have our facilities as good as possible so that's where we're at.
What I do here at Glodwick is for many years I've sort of led the junior side but increasingly as
that diminishes for me I take an interest in the ground maintaining the whole of the property
but with special emphasis for me on the square. So in terms of juniors we have every age group
obviously nines, elevens, thirteens, fifteens and eighteens. We have three senior sides.
In recent years we've had tremendous success with our juniors they've been Lancashire champions
twice in the last five years and the first team as I say has had great success in getting promoted to
the premier division of the Greater Manchester cricket league so yes we're totally committed to
junior cricket and we're totally committed to making this ground the best it can be
and there's lots of things we want to do but I'm sure with this machine we'll be
able to maintain our outfield to a much better standard than we've ever been able to do before.
Well every year it's a battle to raise the funds to keep the club going and we're never quite sure
where the money's all going to come from. We have fundraisers, we have jazz nights, we're
supported by local councillors and other people. This year we've been fortunately able to tap into
one or two grants through the covid crisis but every year it's a great battle for us to raise
the money that we need to keep the club going. We don't have many facilities for raising money
here. We started looking for a new cutter this year because the previous groundsman
has retired well into his 70s and his equipment was not available to us so we had to get a new
cutter . I was advised 'oh you want a triple' but when I looked at triples they were
very sophisticated machinery, big machinery, heavy machinery and I just was a bit intimidated
really. A cylinder mower was something that we're obviously familiar with in maintaining the square
even though this is a much bigger version the mower is still basically a cylinder mower
and I felt much more comfortable with it. I'm delighted to say that we could afford this
machine and it gives a beautiful stripe a good beautiful cut and of course it's used Edgbaston
(the home of Warwickshire) so that was a very good recommendation for us too. So we're hoping very
much and expecting that this machine will greatly improve the appearance of the outfield. More
than that it's more than about appearance we're wanting the quality of grass and we think that
this will this will help us greatly to improve the outfield. It's one area that we need to work
on we've always been planning to work on and this is a major step forward in achieving that.