Forum

"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!

Guys
I’m pretty sure the Union has a policy of not responding to forum postings so I will say this and hopefully not be speaking out of turn.
The fact is that the NCU has an official site, and is reliant on the clubs to support and use it. There has been and only ever will be one official site.
They have no jurisdiction over independent sites such as CricketEurope, just the same as if you started a site it would be yours to do with as you pleased, just like The Ulster Cricketer!
The problem lies with the fact that CricketEurope is run by a number of full/part time staff, while the NCU relies entirely on volunteers and therefore, as stated above, is much more reliant on the member clubs.

NCU Official Website

Ok, I'll try and keep this simple. The official NCU website is on
http://www.irishprovincialcricket.com/NORTHERN/index.shtml
currently we are unable to provide a link for clubs to upload scorecards, similar to the Cricket Europe NCU results section.
The link most clubs have is to upload onto the Cricket Europe NCU results section, and this only publishes results for Division 1.

What I am suggesting, until we provide the same option for clubs, is that results are forwarded to me at ncu.pro@btinternet.com to add.

Some clubs are forwarding the confirmation email that is received when uploading onto Cricket Europe. However all junior clubs would need to give me a summary of results, as this is not available to add to Cricket Europe.

All clubs were sent an email to try to outline this recently - so ask your club secretaty for this information.

Is that any clearer?

I have to agree with judith and i know it is a difficult task for those involved to have the sites kept up to date but the fact that we have to send separate details to two different sites has caused some confusion. Hence both sites tables are completetly different as some results have been sent to oe and not the other. We really need one site to be showing the correct table rather than 2 showing the incorrect ones. realise that submitting the results is down to the respective clubs but the current situation is certainly not making it easy for us

Re NCU Website

The whole website thing is a bit confusing - I posted scorecards as usual, but then couldn't find them on the NCU website. After further investigation I realised they were on the provincial section of the Irish cricket website hosted by cricket europe...not the NCU website.

This disjoint really isn't ideal. I can speculate why this situation has come about....but I wonder are there any plans to 'correct' it - will the NCU and cricket europe link up again?

By the way, I didn't actually make that earlier post asking how Stephen found the article, it looks like someone is using my details to make a post. The important thing is that Armagh CC know they were guilty of no wrongdoing, that a Senior Cup tie was played and that the right winners progressed to the next phase of the tournament.

I didn't Gareth. Called into the garage round the corner from CI after nets at about 9pm and they where sold out unfortunately.

What did the article say?

I most certainly will Gareth, look forward to reading it later.

Re Stephen Hughes.

Given that you represent a club that has more untruth written about them than most, I hope you will see fit to retract your last post when you read todays article.