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Proactive Treasurers will come and do this... |
Throughout
the land, from North to South and from Canterbury to Taunton and beyond, there
are a group of people who are the scourge of club treasurers. In fact, you
could even go as far as saying that the relationship between the Club Treasurer
and the Subs Dodger is like Eubank and Benn, Sheringham and Cole, Prost and
Senna, Gatting and Shakoor Rana or Ferguson and Wenger as their constant game
of cat and mouse is a feature of the summer. On one hand you have people who
come up with a plethora of excuses how not to pay, whilst on the other the
cricketing equivalent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is aiming to make them
pay their way. To say that Gary Barlow and Lewis Hamilton offer to pay their
taxes more readily than these people is an understatement.
The Subs
Dodgers needs to be split into two sections. Those that dodge their annual
subscription and those that run up a few week’s worth of match fees.
Let’s start
with the Annuals. A cricket club subscription isn’t huge. At our club it is
£100 if paid by June 1st. That’s right; rules have been written into
the constitution to make these tightwads pay. After June 1st it goes
up to £140. Our Treasurer has even brought in Direct Debits so that people can
pay two quid a week to make life easier. It’s really not a lot of money. Compared
to Golf Clubs where I believe some annual memberships cost around £1000 upwards
this is small fry. Yet trying to get an annual sub is almost impossible. A
Treasurer asking a player this question can be met with looks of incredulity as
if someone has just asked his sister for an Alabama Crab Dangle (you Google it,
I’ve done enough research for this book. Oh and preferably not at work, hey?).
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The relations between the Treasurer and Subs Dodger can end up like this |
I know of
one cricket club where the Chairman confided to me that they have £30,000 worth
of debt, who have numerous individuals in their first eleven who do not pay an
annual subscription. The experts, whoever they may be, say that running a
cricket club is like running a business but surely this is a flawed model even
by Carillion standards? If you allow these people to get away with it year
after year, then your cricket club is running on a false pretence. It is
hollow, it is fake – a straw man, a paper tiger, an Allen Stanford. Your club
becomes a Ponzi scheme.
Most cricket
clubs do the right thing though and kick these people out. Most individuals are
decent people and pay up after the nagging from the Treasurer that makes that
from the Mrs seem like a gentle nudge after playing cricket for all three days
over a Bank Holiday weekend but occasionally some individuals do get their P45
from clubs.
However,
there are certain individuals that flit from club to club in the area, like a
club cricketing Peter Stringfellow. In the Saracens Hertfordshire Cricket
League now, the club that a player has left now has to sign a form to say that
the player owes no money and he can go and play for his new club, thus living
happily ever after. However, if you owe a hundred quid or so to your previous
club then the chances of this being signed off are negligible to say the least.
This can only be a good thing and stops the merry go round of the annual subs
dodger.
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Dravid...tight margins |
The second
category is the weekly match fee dodger.
In this day
and age with card machines in most cricket club bars, online banking and being
able to transfer money off a mobile phone, these individuals should be as
extinct as the dodo, the phoenix and the woolly mammoth, yet they still exist.
How you can
turn up for a game of cricket, having played for five, ten or twenty years and
not bring any cash with you is bordering on fraud?
The match
fee at our club is £11. I think for six or seven hours worth of entertainment
this represents excellent value if you compare it to watching a football match
for ninety minutes or going to the cinema. Plus you get fed for this – no extras
like the cinema where a box of popcorn costs a fiver or a carbonated drink will
be close to four quid. This is also fraud but I digress. The eleven quid is
split into various sections – a club has to pay for match balls from the league
(close to fraud but I won’t get litigious), an umpires fee which is forty notes
and a scorer. Throw in a tea which is 40 quid to feed thirteen with your
players and a scorer and the gap or margin to work with, is tighter than Rahul
Dravid’s bat and pad when he plays a forward defensive.
Again a
player who says he is skint, can often negotiate to pay towards the end of the
month with an agreement from the Treasurer but you have some who try and dodge
this integral part of the summer Saturday. To see the club captain’s face as a
young player claims poverty, yet takes a call from his mates saying how he is
lined up for a big Saturday night out can often replicate the look on his face
as those who drop out on him at 11am on a Saturday morning.
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Don't make your Treasurer do this |
A Club
Captain will hear every excuse under the sun. He will have players in their
forties and fifties claiming to be students and thus qualifying for a reduced
sub and numerous who claim to be unemployed. The creative excuses of those in
cricket clubs with unemployment is the antitheses of the government statistics.
Figures may well be manipulated to hide those in zero hours contracts or part
time work so that the unemployment rates are shown to be better than they
actually are. These have been done by a host of different governments but the
opposite applies to club cricket. If those in cricket clubs were to be
believed, the national unemployment rate would be near 30%.
Our club
captain had a scenario last year with five or six individuals who hadn’t paid
at an away game. Having collected £55 in match fees, this gentleman paid the
umpire and the scorer and then had to pay the opposition the tea money of £45
out of his own pocket. This left him with not enough money to buy a post match
drink, leaving him slightly irate on a thirty degree day. Filling out the match
day forms with “To Pay” next to a host of his players meant he had more
“Toupees” than Bruce Forsyth, Terry Wogan and Paul Daniels combined.
The cunning
match fee dodger will work his way around the rules at every opportunity. With
clubs such as mine, implementing rules that anyone who owes three weeks worth
of match fees shouldn’t be available for selection, weak captains who are
desperate at times like the last weekend of July when the school holidays kick
in are forced to pick them so that they can turn out a side. This is how the
predatory instinct of the match fee dodger kicks in and how they make life
difficult for clubs up and down the country.
Not paying
is basically nicking money from your club. As well as making your skipper and
Treasurer pull their hair out, it is pure and simply, theft. Why should your
team mates all pay and this person doesn’t? Cricket clubs up and down the
country survive on tight margins. They have a number of volunteers working
behind the scenes trying to make the place better for all concerned. Those who
don’t pay are ruining the tireless efforts of the volunteers and like rodents,
if left untreated they will make the house fall down.
Do yourself,
your club treasurer and your mates a favour and pay up.
£100? Jesus. Rich people only then. Ours is £30.
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