HOPE ROSES WILL BLOOM AGAIN

Seeing Glen Sands' Lincs Cricket Latest reference yesterday to the Roses ground in Gainsborough leads me to hope they might, one day, be in a position to re-apply to join the North Lindsey League on Sundays.
Many of us down the years have enjoyed games against Chick Barratt and his team; some of us also played hockey against Chick who was a top-notch performer in the winter sport.
Roses CC still play in the Bassetlaw League on Saturdays but team-raising difficulties saw them pull out of the Lindsey League, and they haven't re-applied for 2010.
It's been good to get Morton into the Lincolnshire League (ground-sharing at Roses), and they did pretty well in their first season in division four - more than holding their own, and pulling off that shock 10-wicket George Marshall Trophy victory away to premier division Barton Town, of course. Sorry to keep bringing that up, old friends at Marsh Lane.
Will that ever be bettered as a giant-killing performance?
Hopefully some more teams in the Gainsborough area - a large town by Lincolnshire standards - may wish to apply for Lincs League membership in the years ahead.
The other week I drove over to Retford to meet someone getting off a London train, and while driving through Gainsborough passed over the Trent and glimpsed what I still call Holy Trinity's ground alongside the river (not sure if it's still in use).
I conceded many big sixes over 30-odd years as a slow off-spinner in league cricket, but back in the late 1970s one of the Trinity boys hit me for a really massive one on that ground in a Lindsey fixture.
I did get my own back a few years later on the much smaller Brigg Sugar ground by lifting one over square leg which clipped the top of a caravan parked in the road nearby. But it must have gone only half the distance of that six conceded at their venue.
If any Gainsborough area clubs are interested in trying out the Lincs League, it must be stressed that the rules of the county's biggest Saturday competition state membership is only open to those playing within the old Lincolnshire boundary. And once you cross the Trent it's only a very short distance before the "Welcome to Nottinghamshire" sign is encountered by the roadside.
The Scunthorpe and District Umpires' Association sometimes helps out the Bassetlaw League by sending officials to stand in games in that competition, when they are short of numbers.
On the topic of umpiring, we note our good friend Gordon Turner, who oversees appointments in the Grimsby area and is also a ground inspector for the Lincs League, has now gone online. Being able to email him will make things a lot easier for many clubs, league officials and, no doubt, his fellow umpires.
We haven't got Gordon's permission to post his address, but if he gets in touch and wishes us to put out his email details for 'general consumption' we'll be very happy to do so.
At last week's North Lindsey League AGM it was agreed to start sending all league correspondence by email, rather than post - something the Lincs League has been doing for some time. It speeds things up, particularly in view of the current postal situation, and saves a lot of effort (and expense) printing off loads of sheets and putting them into envelopes.
This struck home the other day when I received a request to print off all the Lincs League draft fixtures for 2010 and post them to someone in the Lincoln area who is without the benefit of email.
Turning back the clock, however, it was always a highlight every winter, as a club secretary, to receive a buff envelope from Jack Swain (Cleethorpes), the long-serving fixture secretary of the Lincs League, and open it to reveal your games for the following season - all neatly typed and displayed in A4 format.
Back then it was considerably easier to format the fixtures, as most Lincs League clubs had only one, or two, teams in the competition and did not play in others.
I seem to recall Jack used the Football Association mathematical model system, which I later used very successfully to format games for the Humberside Alliance (as fixture sec). I also passed the numbers square on to Glen who, I think, uses it today as the starting point for the Lincs League's five divisions.
Basically, you allocate numbers to clubs/teams and the mathematical chart takes account of those who share grounds (eg Scunthorpe Town 1sts and 2nds) to ensure when one is at home (in the premier) the other will be away (in division three).
It also put the fixtures in order - so you would play home, then away against each opponent until the mid-point of the season (early July) when the matches would reverse. The only downside, if you think it one, was that, mid-season, you would play the same opponents twice in successive weeks - at home and then away, or away and then at home.
I was informed about the FA fixture format model by Ken Stones - that magnificent servant to Scunthorpe Saturday League football - who loaned me his official copy received from FA HQ in the 1950s.
In Lincs League terms it's very much more complicated today, of course, as some clubs also have teams in other competitions, or have three sides using one ground, or we have different clubs sharing the same venue.
Plus, in decades gone by, we had the option of full fixture lists on bank holiday Mondays (May and August), which made sorting the programme must easier. These days, with most Lincs League clubs playing in competitive and extensive Sunday competitions, bank holiday Monday dates are generally unpopular. It's also true that many present-day players no longer wish to play Saturday, Sunday and Monday (a bit of wifely pressure?).
Getting Mondays off work is also a factor to consider in these times of recession.
The fixture secretary's task when you are working out games in five divisions, for 50 teams, is certainly not an easy one.
To paraphrase the fittingly-named Abraham Lincoln: You can please some of the cricketers some of the time, but not all of the cricketers all of the time!