Cricket club legend Roger to pitch up for Ash Wednesday
SPORTSMAN and Clifton Cricket Club legend Roger Jones is the man chosen to turn up the Ash Wednesday ball next year.
Born and raised above his parents’ greengrocery shop in Dig Street, Mr Jones has been joining the Up’ards in the river and the fields since he was in his early teens – but it was his passion for sports on Ashbourne’s official pitches that wove a stronger thread through his life.
His love of cricket and rugby developed at Ashbourne’s secondary modern school, and he joined Clifton Cricket Club as a 13-year-old, urged to do so by his teacher Iain Christenson who was a talented Clifton player.
So the fresh-faced teenager borrowed a bicycle and started to become a familiar face at Chapel Lane, grasping the occasional opportunity to join the team on the pitch, at the same time as playing occasionally for Ashbourne Cricket Club, and also turning out for Ashbourne Rugby Club at Osmaston Polo Ground.
Mr Jones worked his way up the ranks at Clifton and moved from the second team to the first team, quickly establishing himself as one of the club’s most successful players.
But it was his efforts off the pitch that will perhaps be the 68-year-old’s biggest legacy, as he was to eventually become the club’s chairman, vice chairman and now president.
All the while raising huge sums of money for the club, and giving up huge amounts of his spare time volunteering.
He explained: “I could see the tremendous effort that went into running a cricket club, and even now some people don’t really appreciate what it takes to run a club like Clifton.
“And I don’t know how old I was when I got on the committee, maybe my late 20s, but think I wanted to give something back, to help the club I’d committed to.
“And by this time of course I was playing for Ashbourne Rugby Club, where I met my late wife Carol, and I was playing rugby during the winter and cricket during the summer. It was pretty full on. We went from one season to the other.”
Mr Jones was also a member of the rugby club committee, and after he and his wife, a keen sportswoman herself, were married, she also gave up her time for both clubs, supporting them as a volunteer.
A captaincy then beckoned for Mr Jones at Clifton but, once again, it was the time he gave up away from the wicket that made the biggest difference to the club.
He threw himself into fundraising, and even volunteered for many years as its groundsmen, attending courses on maintaining the pitches and ensuring it was as good as it could be for his fellow players.
Balancing his job as a site engineer with his work at Chapel Lane was never a problem to his wife, however, as Clifton Cricket Club was a shared passion. “God knows how Carol put up with it,” he joked. “But she did. She loved the club like I did.” Mr Jones has also taken on coaching roles at Clifton, and he still runs practice sessions to encourage new players into the sport.
And as he begun to spend less time on the pitch, steering the club through the various challenges it has faced over the years, he soon found himself steering it through one of its biggest projects.
The ground’s clubhouse and changing rooms had been in dire need of replacement, and with an economic recession leading to cuts in all possible funding, planning a replacement building became a 10-year task.
But in 2018 Mr Jones as the club’s chairman became the frontman of the celebrations,
as a new building costing £250,000 was finally opened. A new jewel in the club’s crown.
The role of chairman has since been handed over to Stuart Blake, but Mr Jones has been made the club’s president. Attendances on the pitch are now few and far between, he admits, but he says he remains ready and willing to step up to the crease if the team is ever short of players.
The work Mr Jones has put into Clifton Cricket Club propelled him to national fame in 2009, when he was shortlisted as an unsung hero in the BBC Sports Personality of
the Year Award. Athlete Rebecca Adlington presented Mr Jones with his award, and he was able to rub shoulders with some of the greatest names in sport, including the overall winner of the year, footballer Ryan Giggs.
But, he says, the honour of being an award-winning sports personality is nothing in comparison to the honour of turning up a Shrovetide ball.
He said: “This is fantastic, it’s such a great honour for me, for my family for the cricket club, the rugby club, and it’s going to be a fantastic day.
“You do get very humbled about being offered something
like that, because as I found out with my little dalliance with Sports Personality of the year, there’s always someone who has done more than you.
“Even just from the cricket club, John Allsop’s thrown it up, past presidents have thrown it up, Mick Pepper’s thrown it up, they’ve all made contributions in their own way.
“But this is so much bigger than the unsung hero award for me. This is the place I was born, the place where I’ve lived my whole life, and where the roots of my family are. This is the biggest honour I’ve ever had. It’s just fantastic.”
This is fantastic, it’s such a great honour for me, for my family for the cricket club, the rugby club...