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tips triple aspect nap sandown 325 kiwis + west indies both 2 win 20/20 today. ps tayto dont no bout anyone else but hard to bit yur lip when you owe 40£ bet . + hope we are singing say goodbye to holywood on way home but hard to bet on it .

Hi Peter - take your point but as usual there is a question behind my postings! Grammer schools appear to have the monopoly in this instance and it would appear to be ever thus. Can't help remembering that Adrian McCoubrey wasn't "nominated" and he turned out not too bad. For the life of me I cannot remember who Cambridge House nominated that year or what ever happened to him.

Andy Kennedy,
There is no doubt that young Van de merve is an excellent player, but which school does he go too? I may be wrong in this and someone please feel free to correct me but are the players not nominated by their school teachers for this squad,

interested to see the Ulstar Schools trial sides on the "NEWS". No mention of Jason van der Merwe of Muckamore - playing regularly on 1st team and 174 last wek against Larne 2s.

I would just like to wish Lisburn all the best in the final of the 2008 20/20 after beating us last night.

They certaintly are a different looking Lisburn side than we played against a couple of years ago. The foreign contingent has certainly added some depth to bowling and batting. I can see them continuing their good start to the season

Congrats...

A massive well done to the Irish squad for yet another huge upset !! How many more upsets shall it take until the ICC invest significantly in cricket here instead of pumping more and more cash into Mugabes pockets ??

ballymena beat waringstown in a really tense game at the lawn. needing 2 of the last ball stuart kidd ran in and ballymena ran 2 leg byes thanks to a missfield. really poor fielding by waringstown cost us and some poor bowling. but i'm not going to take anything away from ballymena the tailenders batted very well and they played brilliantly. they were really enthusatic in the field! i'm am annoyed though because we had the game and then lost it! can't wait till next saturday (north county at the lawn) they might hammer us but we could make a special performance!

Dundrum / Cliftonville is off today ( first of many ) , tips EWAY STORYLAND 430 EPSOM / CAPTAIN DUNNE 3OO / IVE BACKED SEA OF STARS ANTEPOST 16/1 TOO WIN THE DERBY SO WILL HAVE SAVER EWAY GAN AMHRAS . GOOD LUCK

"Perhaps you are right Ryan, maybe I am being a little naive, but I am not one for standing still." - tell that to Donald McKee who ran you out in Twenty20 match Rodders! LOL

section 1 is starting to take shape and is looking every bit as tight as last year possibly even tighter. A few interesting results with Laurelvale bouncing back from an early defeat to win two in a row. Muckamore with 2 out fo 4 and derriaghy off the mark last night with what looked like a very convincing victory. Although Lurgan have only played one league game i ave a feeling that if they can get their strongest team out more often than not they will be right up there.

Typical, sunshine all week and now the forecast is terrible for tomorrow

Clarence

Thanks for replying to my post. Some very valid points especially the point about the forum. The more I think about it the more I tend to agree with you regarding not having a forum on the official NCU website.

I do believe, however, that a website offers much more than an information portal; it reflects the professionalism of the union and has all sorts of impact on various issues including revenue generation through sponsorship, attracting top cricketers and coaches to our country, improving chances of grants, building a wider audience and generally improving communication in the cricketing community.

Although we are a minority sport, as Ryan has alluded to, it doesnt mean we should settle for second best. I do understand that websites take a lot of effort to maintain but I know for a fact that if developed correctly the site would run itself if we had the people to contribute.

I am by no means knocking people like Ryan who do a very good (and thankless) job in keeping the site up to date however I am talking more about having an infrastructure / site in place that removes the burden from Ryan and co and runs itself through clearly defined processes such as teams filling in a scorecard.

Perhaps you are right Ryan, maybe I am being a little naive, but I am not one for standing still.

If the NCU came to me for advice on how to achieve such a site then I would be willing to take time to come up with a solution for them.

Websites

I think that we (as cricketers and followers of the game in NI) are well served in terms of web presence. Yes Rodney it would be ideal to have a CRICINFO for NI but be realistic. The guys (cricket nuts who often run the sites at a loss for enjoyment) do a terrific job in what remember remains a minority sport.

Good posting Rodney and I'm sure others will respond in due course as your 'wish-list' would be great in an ideal world. However, it will be difficult to achieve for a variety of reasons not least the time needed from lay people and the costs involved. Also you have to recognize the functionality of websites and the potential risk. For example an NCU forum could disintegrate into a slanging match at the drop of a hat. Why would the NCU officials leave themselves open for such a dialogue? Remember the official union sites are like government so their position and status is very different. Cricket Europe is an excellent commercial site and it is all embracing, fully professional, global, and in a league of its own. Other sites provide functions that are just as important but have restrictions either in budgets/time or in the scope of services they want to offer. The NCU needs to embrace club people like yourself to work out a suitable formula but give them credit as the process has already stated. Also they invite such support and assistance. The Ulster Cricketer website is a magazine-type cricket medium that allows a lot more freedom of expression on its forum and provides a range of information and topical articles of local cricket interest. It exists because it has two self-employed cricket nut-cases who set aside time and resource to make it happen. If it was viewed as a business model it would be dead in the water years ago. However, Peter and I love the game and that's why it survives. Every site has its niche and if we can get the NCU site to include results then that would be a valuable asset but it's a huge task for someone to undertake. However, I agree that it should be done but if you want examples of poor website administration then look around the club sites. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Ryan - I will forward the confirmation e-mail I get from cricket europe when posting scorecards on to you for the NCU site.

I guess the answer to my original question is - there are no plans to link up with cricket europe at this time.

Folks

I have been told that the "OFFICIAL" (non cricketeurope) NCU website has been contracted to a guy in Dublin. I am not sure what the plans are for this site however in my opinion the following requirements should be met.

1) Scorecard upload facility (like cricket europes). This should be used instead of sending hard copies to league secretarys.

2) Designated Authors / Publishers to update the site.

3) Up-to-date statistics originating from score cards.

4) Up-to-date forum that allows people to interact with the site.

5) Polls and other interactive features.

6) A professional look and feel.

In my opinion the only site that should be used is the official NCU website and other sites such as Cricket Europe should approach the official NCU directly to get results rather than clubs having to upload results to the Cricket Europe site. Saying this, the official NCU website does not at present have a facility to upload scorecards and the website in general is not very attractive. It is therefore understandable why people do not use it.

I understand that it takes volunteers to update the Official site however this can be done very easily without too much effort. In todays digital age, the union should invest in building a website that makes people want to be part of it.

As a result of this, I contacted the union a couple of days ago to tell them that I would be interested in creating a fully interactive website that meets the above requirements but as I mentioned they already have someone in place to build a site so hopefully everything gets sorted out in the not too distant future.

In summary, the union need to move with the times but I wonder when it will happen!