WIGAN: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CLADDING

Date: 9th February 2013

A Paul Edwards copyright exclusive for L&DCC Official Website.

Some captains spend large portions of their winters hunched over their laptops wondering how much dosh they will have to spend on an overseas player; others boost the profits of mobile phone companies by trying to tempt their rivals' best cricketers to make a change and sign on the dotted line. Wigan's Mark Rowe falls into neither category. Well, not this year, at least, and probably not next close season either.

Instead, Rowe has been joining his fellow officials at Bull Hey in drawing up plans to deal with his club's pressing need for pavilion refurbishment and new drainage. It isn't the sexiest way to spend your winter but it has proved to be worthwhile. A week or so ago Wigan Sports Club was granted £50,000 by Sport England under the Inspired Facilities programme, and to this the club is throwing in another £31,000 to ensure that much needed repairs to the changing rooms, corridors and timber cladding can be carried out, and a disability ramp installed. The kitchen will be refurbished too. "We need to improve our teas," said Rowe.

Even this work is something of a stop-gap measure. Rowe reckons that something like £650-750,000 would be needed to replace the current building but at least the current expenditure will make the present facilities last. The club also had little option but to spend a few quid. Building repairs to patch up the pavilion have cost £15,000 in each of the last three years and the annual utilities bill is around ten grand. Then there's the drains to deal with.

Last summer's deluges were far from uniform in their impact. Some teams played the vast majority of their programme; others were hammered. Wigan had five games abandoned, but possibly just as significantly for their attempts to get away from the bottom of the First Division, all but one of their home matches were either washed out completely or lost more than an hour to the weather. Victory at Sefton Park on the last day of the season ensured that Rowe's men stayed up. No one at Bull Hey underestimates the importance of having an ex-New Zealand Test cricketer living a few hits away. Aaron Redmond scored 937 runs in 2012.

But the Kiwi's talents do not extend to drainage engineering. For that Wigan needed to call in other professionals and hopes are high at the club that they will be able to replace the broken drainage and add two new runs. The further aspiration is that in time these measures will form part of a bigger solution. Of course, after all this work - and Wigan is by no means alone in having to undertake such repairs - grounds in the Bridging Finance Solutions Liverpool Competition may resemble parts of the Atacama Desert this summer. But just in case they don't....

This is not a hard luck story; rather, it is a good news piece. Wigan have faced problems and they have dealt with them. None of their players have left, the club's members have stuck together and people like the indefatigable Steve Martlew have made the difficult things happen. "Some people have said that this has been a very successful year, even though we've never finished lower in the league in our recent history," said Rowe.

God alone knows what 2013 has in store for Wigan or any of the other clubs who have had to battle hard to keep things going recently. But at least Mark Rowe and his friends know that if further squalls - literal or metaphorical - hit them, they have the determination and belief to stand up and face them - together.