Gloucestershire

It's all about money - Glos don't have any and they don't spend what they have very well.

I was a member 2007-2010.  In that time I watched a decent side get put together which should have been able to get Glos into Div 1 and compete for one day trophies.  It had Gidman, Marshall, North, and an in form Kadeer Ali (who was named player of the year).  Chris Taylor was an excellent number 5 and they had a decent set of revolving youngsters to fill the 6th batting slot.  Porterfield, Hodnett etc.  Adshead was the keeper and was reasonable.  The bowling attack was built around Kirby and Lewis but also had Anthony Ireland and Gemal Hussein (plucked from obscurity by Jack Russell).  That side was decent but underachieved.

But you realised that Glos were in trouble not when they lost people like Kirby to Somerset but when they couldn't even afford to hold on to Ireland and Porterfield who at that stage in their career only really had potential - they hadn't achieved very much yet Glos still couldn't stump up the cash to keep them.

So that was just soul crushing for me.  What was the point if they couldn't even keep the building blocks of a team together? Bracewell's a perfectly good coach but he's operating with hands tied behind his back.

If any of the Glos youngsters show potential then they'll be off because Glos can't afford to keep them.  You'd like to think that might change with the ground redevelopment but I have my doubtys; it didn't help Glamogan much who have exactly the same problem.  It is a bit depressing really.  Although this game looks like a failure, in general I think Glos have done quite well in the Championship this year.  They've competed much better than in the last couple.  I think their best bet is the new 50 Over tournament starting in July; it suits the balance of their squad.  I could see them getting a Quarter Final Place if they can get good home advantage.

Good prediction sir! With regards to money, the club have said the new pavilion is a success and is making money but the club will not see the benefits for a few years. It's a shame Will Gidman will be at Notts next season. I just hope more money is available to Bracewell soon and we can keep the promising youngsters like Roderick, Tavare and Miles, then we can hopefully build a squad which can stay together and be successful once more

You're right about the home draw, could see us beating anyone at Bristol on our day. Its gonna be difficult on friday, but we have won up at Yorkshire so you never know. 
Definately cant blame Gidman for going, cricketers dont get paid much and I really hopes he succeeds at Notts. My dad's a life member at Glos and goes all around the country, but he has got annoyed at our lack of progress this year and the financial situation, coupled with BRFC it's not been a good year! Let's hope for a Glos BRFC double on friday and saturday to cheer us up

Yes probably.  But I just think it's a bit of a shame after all the hard work they couldn't quite secure home tie in the end.

I think that Darren Stevens is the best non-international one day player in the country, Key has tons of experience and they have a lot of very handy batsman a long way down.  They won't have Tredwell though I suppose - that's a bonus.  Not saying Glos don't have a chance, just that it's a bit of a tough ask.

Good news on Tavare - and I see Payne also signed a 3 year deal.  Nice to see them do that immediately after losing Will Gidman, it sends a good message to fans.

i would imagine they have offered him a lot more money than he is getting at the "shire".
Only had a benefit a couple of years ago in days gone by a little bit of loyalty may of
been expected but its a different world nowadays.

Still I would think that will maybe allow Glos to get a couple of players in as that will
be a large portion of the wage bill freed up.I would imagine only Klinger would be on more
money.

In the post tonight its said that he is only in the first year of a three year contract.
Does that mean Worcs have to pay some form of compensation ?

I agree - while A.Gidman and Marshall have been the mainstays of the Gloucester batting for the better part of the last 10 years they've achieved comparatively little.  I've always thought Gidman particularly fails to deliver when you need him to.  So, last week was a classic example, he banged up a massive score on a dead wicket in a meaningless game but if it's 20-3, the ball's doing a bit and you're still in with an outside shot of promotion he doesn't seem to show up.  I wouldn't go quite so far as to call him a flattrack bully but he's never been the match winner his talent suggests he could have been.  He's getting on a bit, doesn't fit with Gloucester's youth movement and probably fancies a shot at the Championship big time and a bit more money.  I don't think this is a catastrophe - I don't think he's ever been the player a lot of Gloucs though/wished he was.  Having said that he's still probably better than anything they currently have and another 'name' to depart - so they lose another reason people might turnup to watch.  Although I don't think anyone really went 'I'm going to go down to Nevil Road and watch Gidman' I do think the average cricket fan looks at Gloucester's line up and think 'who the hell are these guys?'  That's a problem.  Even Klinger is hardly an eye catching name - good though I think he is.

I've never really forgiven Marshall and Gidman for failing to deliver the goods in the year when Gloucs had Kirby, Lewis and Gemal Hussein firing on all cylinders. Should have gotten promotion that year had the batting even been mediocre - instead it was shocking and they wasted the best championship bowling attack they've had since Walsh retired.

As for going to Worcester.  The fact is that right now Worcester are a better run and wealthier club than Gloucs.  They've just gone back up to Division 1 and I'm sure they can offer more money than Gloucs currently can.  I'd say County Cricket is split into a few groups right now that looks something like this;

Rich and Well run
Yorkshire (though it could be argued they have some financial issues their size kind of seems to mitigate against real problems).
Notts (Probably the best run and most progressive county over the last 15 years).
Warwickshire (Always a top county).
Somerset (Somerset are much better backed than people realise - while not quite in the same league as the other 3 in this group they don't quite fit the image of small underdog rural county image they sometimes try to project; hasn't been like that for 35 years).

Rich/Potentially Rich but badly run
Lancs (Sleeping giant but have financial problems at the moment which are restricting them).
Surrey (Have the money, the clout, steal everyone's best players and still can't get their act together; long may it continue).

Middling finances but well run.
Middlesex (People forget that although Middlesex play at Lords and have a big catchment area they don't own the ground and therefore their income is always a bit dicey but they run a tight ship on the whole).
Sussex (Off the pitch probably the best run smaller county of the last 20 years - lessons for Gloucs to be drawn there I think).

Yo-Yo Clubs (As in somewhere between Div 1 and Div 2)
Worcestershire (Very impressively run considering the challenges of having a ground flooded every few years.  They're definitely underdogs and a yo-yo club but they get good crowds and are always competitive - also seem to be able to hold onto their better players on the whole.  Definitely the best of this bunch at the moment).
Hampshire (Badly burnt by Rose Bowl dealings and sugar daddy scaled back investments but they seem to be slowly bouncing back).
Kent (Have had a disastrous couple of years off the field but still seem to put a reasonably competitive team on the pitch).
Northamptonshire (Seem to have elevated themselves into this group in the last few years - good youth system seems to produce consistent talent though they have no money and struggle to hold onto them).
Essex (Massive underachievers on paper but always competitive).

The Also rans
Derbyshire (Bit harsh because they had a good season 2 years ago but don't seem to have sustained it.  Very similar to Northants in that they're the clubs that have done the most to break the cycle of decline in recent years but still face an up hill struggle).
Glamorgan (Were in financial trouble and threw all their eggs into the Stadium basket which hasn't really worked.  A mess on and off the pitch).
Gloucestershire (Kind of ditto really though at least we still have the potential of waiting to see what the revenue from the new developments allows them to do - we know it was a total failure on the other side of the seven bridge though).
Leicestershire (Pretty much just a minor county at this stage.  Just failed to hold onto their best prospect, Shiv Thakor, who has hardly played a game and the club they lost him to was Derbyshire so they can't even compete with the stragglers).

So Gloucestershire are pretty much bottom of the pecking order right now (with the exception of the utterly woeful Leicestershire) and right now it looks like they're more likely to go more towards Leicestershire than push up into that yo-yo section group.  The good news is that I think it's a lot easier to jump up the hierarchy in cricket and you don't need that much money to do it but it's getting harder and harder.  Those bottom 6 have been pretty consistently the bottom 6 in the Championship (with a few exceptions) for most of the last decade.

Oh yes - whoops! Durham would be at the very top of the middling finances but very well run category these days.  They don't have the money they used to and are reliant on their brilliant youth system to see them through.  Again, until last year you'd say they were the standout well run county in the country but there is a question mark now over their financial model and if the Test Matches they are paying for themselves.  On the pitch though they are absolutely outstanding and every county should be looking at what they do on the youth side of things - they just have a production line of young talent there.

I think Sussex is probably the more realistic model for Glos to follow although I have to be honest and say I don't actually know a huge amount about them - although I was briefly coached by Peter Moores at Arundal back in the early days of the Sussex revival and I remember being struck by how innovative and new the attitudes of everyone there seemed to be compared with what I'd seen at Gloucestershire and Somerset back then.  15 years ago that was though so I can't really comment on now. Hard to copy Durham - they do have certain innate advantages; a massive catchment area and a strong history of connecting with youth and club cricket which is just woefully lacking in the Westcountry.  The disconnect between the County sides and the club structure is just utterly ridiculous and holds back the ability to properly develop players (and to build support for the county among natural cricket fans).

I'm always amazed playing cricket in Bristol how few people I meet who actually have any interest at all in Gloucestershire (a bit more tend to in Somerset) but these are the hardcore cricket fans and they're apathetic at best in the main.  But playing up here in Manchester everyone follows Lancs and cares about them because Lancs people are regularly active in their clubs.  Their scouts attend youth team matches and sometimes 1st XI games, they send coaches to clubs in the summer; people feel a direct connection.  Nothing like that happens at Glos or Somerset - their links with the recreational game are weak, their youth system revolves around the private schools and there is no hierarchy that allows a promising player to come up through the system; it is absolutely a case of who you know not what you know.  In Manchester my club can send promising youngsters up to 18 to go and play for the Manchester representative team who play other bits of Greater Manchester and Lancs; from the pool of players at that standard a Sub-Regional Lancashire squad is put together and they play and train together and from that they can get into the county squad.  It's competitive but it's basically meritocratic.  Nothing like that exists properly in the South West youth system.  I ran youth teams for 5 years at a high standard and I never saw a county scout at a game.  I helped out coaching at Brislington (my old school) one year and the team got to the semi-final of the Bristol Schools cup against QEH and there were 5 county scouts watching the game; the standard was far, far below what was going on at club level.  They don't have a clue where their potential players are and they invest in the wrong people in my view.  It's just one aspect but it always depresses me.

I agree completely on the ODI/Test model being ridiculous; counties are fighting like cats in a sack over who gets the games and they don't even seem to raise enough revenue to be worth it.  Durham's stadium was part of a long term vision of when first cricket went there and, as you point out, is different from the rest but even there they have gotten into trouble because subsequent developments were costed on the basis of revenue from international cricket which was nowhere near at the expected level or frequency.  The Stadium in Cardiff was supposed to push Glamorgan into elite county status and if anything they've actually gone backwards.  I don't have a problem with Gloucester developing the ground because they needed to improve 365 days a year income from it but to pin its financial future on internationals when the market is already saturated seems dangerous.  Plus they knocked down the Jessop Stand - I liked the Jessop Stand!  Just like I liked the old stand at Taunton with the theatre seats in it.  I haven't actually been to the ground since the development has been completed (I was there in April) so looking forward to seeing it but I'm not at all convinced it's going to be the answer to Glos's problems.  You're absolutely right about soulless grounds as well.

Well it's just one perspective really but I do think Glos are particularly poor at tapping into what I would generally consider to be the 'cricket community'.

I think in the Cricket world most people would think of Gloucestershire as dull and somewhat lacking identity more than anything else and it's hard to argue with that.  Why a rich City like Bristol has struggled to produce a successful side in the last decade is a bit baffling really.  But then I think one of Glos problems is that they've always been a bit ambiguous about their relationship with the City.  They never seem to be quite sure whether they want to market themselves in a similar way to Somerset as almost as kind of vision of rural cricket or as metropolitans.  The result is I don't really think they appeal naturally to anyone very much and lose potential supporters to Somerset and to apathy.  So I don't see this as a small problem really.  When I went to watch Championship cricket at Bristol I was always struck by how few people were there compared with Taunton and Worcester.

I think Bracewell's done OK - I wouldn't put too much blame at his door given the circumstances he's working under.  I think the issue there is that he's a bit of a victim of his own success in the sense that all the things he did to be successful first time everybody now does so it's tougher for him to have that edge compared with the young coach who was genuinely innovative and actually changed the way the one day game was played the World over.  Marshall has always under achieved with Glos - looks a million dollars when going but rarely seems to get runs when it matters.  I'd file him in the same place as Gidman but he is essential for Glos these days as he's the only name they have.

I actually think they have the right strategy right now but it is dependent on whether they can hold on to the youngster they are bringing through - that will be the test.  I mean I throw my hands up in the air when they lost Ireland and Porterfield.  I just questioned what the point of it all was if Glos couldn't even afford to hold on to young unproven players anymore.  So I hope they can hold on to Roderick, Tavare, Norwell etc.