PARK PRESIDENT TURNER GLAD TO BE BACK IN THE COMP

Date: 7th November 2014

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

Birkenhead pleased with their lot.

It was always something of an education to play against a side captained by Dave Turner and it is no less rewarding to have a chat with him. Birkenhead Park’s President may radiate a little more gravitas these days but he remains an astute observer of local cricket, his shrewdness only sharpened by Park’s spell in the Cheshire County League.

Now, though, the Wirral club are back in the Med Imaging Liverpool Competition and they are pleased to have returned. “It’s been fantastic to come back to the Comp,” said Turner. “The good thing is that a lot of older players have come back to us now that the travelling is so much reduced. Apart from Colwyn Bay and Lytham we have very reasonable away trips.”

Of course, Park have almost every reason to be pleased with life at the moment. They finished seventh in the 2014 ECB Premier League and some may see them as an exemplar for others. The single piece of negative news for their supporters broke in October when former captain Chris Stenhouse told the club that he would be playing his cricket at Firwood Bootle next year. Turner, though, while obviously sad at Stenhouse’s departure, stressed that the parting itself was cordial.

“There’s no animosity at all between Chris and ourselves,” he said. “He’s done a fantastic job for us and he still wants to be a member here and have a drink with us. He will be very welcome to do so. He had already told us that he would be stepping down as skipper and Chris Davies, who was very keen to take over, has been appointed as his successor.”

These, then, are good days at Birkenhead Park, but the Competition has changed since the club bade its temporary farewell in 1997. Specifically, Turner has noticed that there are fewer one-club cricketers than there used to be, which increases his satisfaction that the other members of Birkenhead Park’s first team squad have said they are staying put.

“The league is supposed to be amateur but it’s becoming more and more semi-professional,” he said. “People are offering small salaries to players and clubs like ourselves can’t compete. It’s one of the major issues with the Competition at the moment. We’d lost Chris before the whites had been put away for the winter.”