Firstly, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. Secondly, some good news and bad news. Bad news: subscriptions for 2018 are now due. Full membership of the OCC is EUR 170. Good news: there is an ‘early bird’ discount of EUR 40, i.e. EUR 130, if you pay before 1st April. For ease of reference, our club’s payment details at the BCEE are as follows:
LU31 0019 1000 4983 8000, Ref: “OCC subscription + [your name]”.
Fixtures
Graham Cope is still beavering away with the draft fixtures list and continues to report his progress back to The Committee. As every year, the Belgian League Fixtures remain open and we await the outcome of the BCF League’s deliberations. We may only hear by the end of March exactly how many teams will be in the second division (long story), which will of course affect our fixtures. Unfortunately, as long as the BCF fixtures are not set, it is difficult to communicate exactly how many days the Walferdange ground is available to the Lux Cricket Federation, so that they can organise their competition for 2018. In the meantime, some fixed dates for your diary:
- 7th & 8th April – Ground prep weekend
- Saturday 14th April – Traditional Captain’s XI vs Chairman’s XI match
- Saturday 21st April – Walferdange Televie Charity Event
- Tuesday May 1st – Optimists Golf Day
- 14th & 15th July – Sixes Tournament
- 17th to 21st July – Juniors Academy
- 15th August – Lagaan Cup
- 18th & 19th August – Over 40’s tournament in Margate (UK)
- Saturday 25th August – Cricket in Pink Charity Match
Second Team
We are pleased to announce that the second team’s application to the BCF League has been accepted and the team will re-start its campaign in the current fourth Division.
Club kit
We have sourced a good provider and have already received some pretty good draft designs for our club colors. Further news as we can.
Match management
We have revamped the match management guide. This is a very useful piece to help you plan and execute a successful weekend of cricket at the ground. It can be found under ‘Match Manager Duties’ on the left hand menu of our homepage, or here: https://optimistsluxembourg.secure-club.com/pages/page_20960/Match-Manager-Duties.aspx. If you have any questions in relation to this, please contact Joost Mees, who has kindly volunteered to be the point man for all matters match management related.
Ground
The Pavilion project is ongoing. We have been slightly delayed by a few months by a change of regime at the Walferdange Commune, i.e. the decision takers. However, the project team of Tony Whiteman, Optimists ex-chairman Robert Deed and yours truly are on top of things and aim to meet with the Commune early this year.
Re. the new artificial wicket is on order and will be delivered to Luxembourg early April. The only problem is when to lay it. Currently the ground resembles more a rice field. I don’t believe we have had such a wet January since the floods of the early nineties. Our plan A would be to lay the new wicket early April, before the start of the season, but the weather may not allow us to get heavy machinery on the outfield. Plan B would be to carry it out, say, in May, just to be relatively sure of having a dry outfield. This may require moving/cancelling a fixture, but we will just have to see.
Awards Dinner
The awards dinner date has been fixed for Saturday 10th March. It will take place at our good friend Raju’s restaurant, New Dehli in Gasperich. More information will come from our events manager, Tim Andrews, in due course.
Televie
Last but certainly not least, we have been approached by the Walferdange Commune in relation to this year’s Televie fund raising. For those of you who are not familiar with Televie, or who only know it from the 24h charity relay race at De Coque on Kirchberg, Televie is a large movement of solidarity, begun in 1989, for the benefit of the F.R.S. – FNRS (Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium), and organised by RTL Belgium. The operation is a means of gathering funds to aid scientific research in its fight against cancer and leukaemia, in children and adults. Walferdange is one of a half-dozen 'special' communes who have been asked to do as much as possible to raise funds for Televie 2018. The Walfer Commune, in turn, has asked every single organisation in its commune to find ways of raising money for the movement, through its members, special events, etc. And the Optimists CC is no exception. We have already participated in two coordination meetings since the beginning of the year, with more to come.
This initiative is a worthy one in its own right. However, in a time when the OCC is looking to progress with the pavilion project and relies heavily on the commune to do so, it is The Committee’s view that The Club needs to pull out all the stops to contribute to this initiative, at commune level. We will be approaching you with a specific communication in very shortly, however, I would urge you to be as generous as possible with any donation. We would be very grateful if you could channel it via the club, so that we can then present the largest possible consolidated sum on 21st April, the grand finale of fund raising at the Walfer Commune.
We will be in touch once again very soon.
William Heath
Chairman