Sheffield United Cricket Club (SUCC) are looking for extra funding to put towards a brand new scoreboard amongst other facilities.
Dating their roots back to the 1850’s, SUCC were the first ever sports club or association in England to have the word ‘United’ feature in their name. Up until 1973, the Cricket Club still played their matches at the football stadium Bramall Lane.
During their early years, SUCC played matches against another cricket side called ‘The Wednesday’ , who would later go on to form the modern day Sheffield Wednesday F.C.
Playing now at Sheffield Hallam University Sports Park in the South Yorkshire Cricket League, the once historic Cricket Club needs funds to put towards its facilities.
Malcolm Clench, junior co-ordinator of SUCC, started volunteering with the club when his sons got involved in the sport.
He said: “I got involved, as you do, when my sons started playing. So, they started playing when one was eight and one was seven.
We’re talking twelve or thirteen years ago. You get roped in initially as scorer, then it was running a team and scorer, then it was running the whole junior section and scorer!”
Mr Clench is just one of many volunteers helping SUCC keep functioning with many other selfless individuals getting involved.
Without a functional scoreboard, the club will be unable to host academy level cricket matches which will impact the predominantly South Asian community who play regularly at the sports park.
For Mr Clench, new funding is integral to give this sector of society a place to play cricket on their doorstep.
He said: “There’s an interesting social mix that doesn’t quite happen in many environments.
“Providing that social mix and those facilities to that community is an important part of what we do.”
A new GoFundMe is looking to raise £8000 to contribute towards a new scoreboard, improving facilities and ultimately lessening the workload for the volunteers helping out.
The fundraiser stands at £230 so far, and Mr Clench is still optimistic for the near future of the cricket club as a community-driven organisation.
He said: “We’ve accepted the changes that have happened, Sheffield United Cricket Club has changed from being thought of as an elite club to being a community club.
We’re looking at running all these junior teams, doing the outreach work, our coaches go out into schools. We still aspire to play at a higher level but that’s chicken and egg. We need to improve the funding situation before we even think of that.”
If you wish to donate money to Sheffield United Cricket Club’s GoFundMe, the link is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/sheffield-united-cricket-club-scoreboard
