REGAN READY FOR CRUNCH WEEKEND

Date: 27th August 2010

Ack. to Daily Post

Fleetwood Hesketh captain Paul Regan reckons that this weekend's fixtures are the most important his team has played since the Marshside club entered the Bridging Finance Solutions Liverpool Competition in 1999. The Sea Cop club go into tomorrow's home game against Skelmersdale and Monday's derby at Southport and Birkdale 44 points adrift at the bottom of the First Division. If that situation isn't rectified, Fleetwood Hesketh will suffer back to back relegations and 32-year-old Regan has little doubt where the blame lies. "We just haven't scored the runs we needed this season," he said. "The batting has let us down, particularly the top order, and people would have to stupid not to realise it.The buck stops with those batsmen and it also stops with me. The team's in a hole and it's obviously the players who have put us in that position, so it's up to us to scrap and get us out of it. If we win two out of two, we've got a chance."

Regan's task may be easier against bottom-placed Skelmersdale than it will against Fleetwood Hesketh's rivals from across town on Monday. Tomorrow's game is one which neither side can really afford to draw, so there may even be a knock-out flavour to the encounter, whereas S&B's three-wicket victory over Formby last Saturday probably means that they are safe. Rimmer, though, refuses even the hypothetical offer of 35 points from the Bank Holiday games and focuses on his own team's tactics. "We won't be adopting a different strategy on Monday because we can't afford to," he said. "We know what we want to do and how we must play both matches."

As to the future of cricket in Southport, Regan believes that there are too many Liverpool Competition clubs in the town but he recognises that neither mergers nor withdrawals from the league are remotely likely. "The situation's worse because a lot of players from Southport have gone to other clubs," he said. "It just makes it that much more important that every club works with its junor members."