Chris’s idea of happiness: S&B winning the lot!
“WHAT was that like, then?” Over the past ten cricket seasons my weekly chat with Chris Firth has often begun with that bland journalistic enquiry. Regardless of whether I had watched Southport and Birkdale’s first-team match the previous weekend I was interested in what the captain thought of it.
The replies have been in their turn exultant, dejected, hopeful, despondent, objective, one-eyed. They have never been dull.
But those conversations are going to stop. Or at least, their number is going to be drastically reduced. After a decade as skipper Chris is stepping down. He does so with his principal objectives achieved. Both S&B’s first and second teams will be playing in their Premier Leagues next season. The job of keeping the first team there will fall to someone else and his task may be all the harder given the news that after two excellent years at Trafalgar Road Gary Keedy is retiring from cricket.
But S&B officials can think about all that next week. Today and at tomorrow evening’s Annual Dinner we should pay proper tribute to Chris and consider his ten years as captain.
Maybe I am reasonably wellplaced to do this. One of the advantages of being a member of a club for 38 years is that you see skippers come and go.
But none have understood better than Chris Firth that S&B is about more than one team; none have given more time to the club; none have been more careful to give younger players their chance at the correct time; and none have cared as much.
The result has been some entertaining conversations. Chris’s devotion to S&B has governed much of his life. So there have been one or two moments when he has displayed all the broad-minded tolerance of a Democratic Unionist in full sail. And he has occasionally been almost blind to the skills of cricketers from other clubs. I still cherish the conversation after a defeat in which an opponent had taken nine wickets. “He didn’t bowl very well, you know,” Chris began. As I recall, my piece suggested the bowler in question might have got one or two balls in the right place.
Of course there is a tendency at times like this to write about Chris as though he were leaving Southport or joining a monastery. (The latter would be a particularly bad idea, although I suspect the residents would enjoy the trips to Premier League darts matches.)
In fact Chris is staying at S&B and the club will need his huge experience and sound judgement. It is right that he steps down but it would be even more wrong for him to walk away altogether. The encouraging thing is that Trafalgar Road now boasts a range of people with diverse talents, all of them committed to developing cricket at the club. But Chris has sold sponsorship, recruited players, worked on the ground, organised net sessions and sat on countless committees. He’s taken the odd wicket, too. His input will be price less and his successor must use it.
Chris could have joined another club years ago. He might well have won a medal or two and would even have made a few bob. But he is not one of those sad cricketers who flit from club to club each season, all for the sake of a tenner or two in the back pockets.
Instead he stayed at S&B and has built something very admirable and slightly moving. Of course his captaincy has not been perfect. We have had our differences and I suspect we’ll have plenty more. But one thing we have never disagreed about was what the overall direction of the club should be.
There are those who think S&B should be about the County Match. They are wrong; a Lancashire game is cream on the top of the season. There are those who think a club should be judged on the trophies it wins; they are wrong, too. If they were right, the vast majority of clubs in the Liverpool Competition would be failures.
No, a club should be judged on its capacity to provide a rewarding game of cricket to players of all abilities and – this above all – to offer a safe environment in which young cricketers can learn about the incomparable game and be encouraged to stick with it. It is about passing things on.
Isaac Lea was eight years old when Chris Firth was appointed first-team skipper at Trafalgar Rd. He is now one of the best batsmen in the league. And there are others: Carneys, Greens, the odd Hennessy and generations of young players still to rock up at the place.
When the latter do so, they will find many people prepared to offer coaching and help them out. One of them will be the club’s longestserving skipper in modern times; someone whose idea of happiness is all S&B’s terms winning on the same weekend.
Yes, I will miss those chats with Chris, although one thing we never mentioned in any of them was how much we loved S&B. Then again, we didn’t need to. Paul Edwards