Frohliche Weihnachten

posted by John Winn

As the days begin to lengthen, I hope you are not wasting those extra seconds, the pcw can tick off various sign posts that point towards next season. We have had time to digest the county fixtures published on December 1st and no doubt many have begun to sketch out their plans for travel and accommodation and try to fit in awkward things like work into their schedules. Of course the blog does not confine itself to the county scene and last week the draw was published for the 2016 Royal London Club Championship.

First round matches will be played on Sunday April 24th with the teams divided into sixteen regional groups. Last year's winners, Blackheath are in group 16 and have received a bye and their first game will be against the winners of Bexley and Preston Nomads. Northern, emphatically defeated by Blackheath in last year's final start next season's campaign with a short trip to Wigan outfit Highfield CC. 

Groups one and two comprise clubs from the North East and Yorkshire. Amongst the more intriguing fixtures here are NYSD champions Richmondshire v Clifton Alliance, Brandon v York, Benwell Hill v Sheriff Hutton Bridge and Driffield v South Northumberland. Full details are available by putting Royal London Club Championship 2106 in a search engine.

Another set of fixtures published very recently are those for the newly formed Pennine League, the emergence of which has been covered on the blog. Action starts on Saturday April 23rd with an inaugural friendly fixture between Norden and Saddleworth and the league programme begins the next day. In the Premier Division two of the four former Saddleworth clubs face each other, Austerlands v Greenfield while Glodwick entertain Littleborough and Saddleworth have Rochdale as visitors. Full details at the impressive new website penninecricket.co.uk.

As this may be my last posting of 2015 may I wish all our readers the compliments of the season. The blog continues to attract plenty of hits, averaging 88 a day over the last month, thank you for your interest and please continue logging on in 2016. Just in case you are a little puzzled by the title of today's posting suffice to say that in recent days a majority of our readers have been from Germany, Danke.