Rotherham Town future in doubt after controversial vote

Rotherham Town Cricket Club have withdrawn their two senior teams from the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League after an Extraordinary Members’ Meeting (EGM).

The late withdrawal means that there can be no fixture reshuffle and so sides who were due to face Rotherham Town will have blank weekends across the summer in Divisions 1 and 5.

The club’s first team finished fifth in Division 1 in 2024 while their seconds escaped relegation in ninth.

The troubled cricket club have repeatedly appealed for financial help in recent months. I was alerted to this development by a Facebook post doing the rounds from Luke Staveley who is on the cricket club committee as Fixtures Secretary (and many other hats).

Luke said: “Financially, the club has struggled for a number of years due to a number of factors including historic debt, ageing facilities, machinery and payments to players.”

Enough money had been pledged to keep the club going for the 2025 season so it was a shock when the result of the EGM vote was revealed.

On Facebook, he said: “New strategies were in place around communication, ground support and ensuring everyone pays their way. The effort had been incredible. Everyone here voted to keep cricket going.”

“Unfortunately, we were completed blindsided by members of our own committee who signed up new members (77 in total) who didn’t even have the audacity to turn up to the meeting but instead voted by proxy that cricket would not be played by Rotherham Town this year. Not to fold the club but to immediately withdraw our teams.”

New members controversy

A catch-up with Luke on Zoom reveals that these new members had joined the club in the last month or two and their first act was to vote to withdraw all teams from league cricket.

Fishy? They have joined legitimately but no-one at the EGM seemed to know who they were. It contrasted with those at the meeting in person; almost all of whom voted to continue involvement in league cricket.

Without wanting to distil this down too much because there will be many views and nuances, there is the background dispute that pits cricket versus rugby.

Rumbles with rugby

A longstanding rollercoaster of a relationship between Rotherham Titans Rugby Club and Rotherham Town Cricket Club who share the same ground. It is owned by Rotherham Athletic Company who lease it to both clubs.

Luke tells me: “Traditionally, the committees of both clubs have always been at loggerheads over the ground.”

With a view to more collaboration, the cricket club welcomed John Whaling, Commercial Director for the Titans, as Rotherham Town’s Honorary Secretary and Martin Jenkinson, another Titans director as RTCC’s Honorary Treasurer.

Luke acknowledges that support from the Titans, including their main sponsor, kept the cricket club afloat in recent years. The Titans Community Foundation (TCF) have also helped with grant applications.

The way Luke tells it, those from the rugby side argued for cricket to be wrapped up this year on account of the fact that it was no longer commercially viable.

Who decides the future?

The controversial vote does raise a point that has percolated in my head for some time: Namely, on such an important issue as the survival of a cricket club, or any EGM vote for that matter, should you have to attend to have your say and contribute?

At the very least, you should be a member for a certain length of time before having the not inconsiderable power to make such a seismic decision.

The potential expiry of a club founded in 1846 will raise some eyebrows and headlines but it is far from the only one in Yorkshire having a crisis. It has been a long, lingering decline, punctuated by a fierce determination from those committed to keep RTCC afloat.

It ought to be stressed that a lack of senior cricket doesn’t necessarily end a cricket club. Rotherham Town are down but not yet out.

Although online headlines refer to the senior teams being pulled out of the YCSPL, actually, it is all teams from all leagues. They have U11 and U13 teams who were due to play in the Ben Jessop Sheffield & District Junior League this season and, according to Luke, that’s not going to happen either.

As you’d imagine, the situation is fluid and feeling raw right now and the fixtures were still showing on Play-Cricket.

The blunt result of the EGM throws up more questions than answers. The pertinent one is: Where does this leave Rotherham Town Cricket Club?

If their (mainly new) members have voted to withdraw all teams then will the club decide to fold, otherwise what’s its purpose?

The clock is tick-tick-ticking. Players will understandably seek new opportunities elsewhere and so the EGM, whatever its true purpose, has achieved instability and its timing just before the season has caused maximum fallout.

I understand the Yorkshire Cricket Board (YCB) are in touch with Rotherham Town Cricket Club and Luke is seeking clarity from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) on if or how this can be contested.

With a case like this, there are many threads. Safeguarding the club’s existence is forefront but if that becomes untenable then maintaining the ground so it can still be used for cricket is a close second.

Grounds for concern

There will be those in South Yorkshire, some of you reading this right now, who can count how many cricket grounds have been lost in not so many years. Will Clifton Lane become another?

When we talk about the history of a cricket club, we really mean its people and shared experiences. Luke, looking more than a little crestfallen by retelling this bombshell, drives that home better than anyone could.

“The first time I went down to the ground, I was two weeks old. My dad’s 62 this year and he’s played there since he was 14 and is still heavily involved.”

“It’s been heartbreaking, to be honest. I’ve only ever played cricket for one club. To me, the club is everything. I’ve had my 18th, 21st and 30th birthday there. My kids have grown up there. My mum and wife have both scored and done the teas.”

Luke, his brother, dad and cousins have all represented Rotherham Town CC over the years and have come to symbolise the club as families so often do. I’m told there are the Fletchers at Whitley Hall, the Tingles at Mexborough and the Staveleys at Rotherham Town. Similar stories abound in other leagues.

So, will Luke play somewhere else?

He puffs out his cheeks: “I’ve had 13 offers from clubs. I’m not trying to be big-headed about that. I’m not the best player in the world. I’m not the worst. For me at the minute, I would find it very hard to step onto a cricket pitch right now for a different club.”

One date remains in the diary though. He’s part of a group called the Sheffield Squirrels who go on cricket tour every year in August to Norfolk.

I don’t want to act as if the final rites have been given but with such a long history for “the builders” as they’re known, there’s no-one better to cast their mind back and reflect than Luke.

As someone who has a long history of playing in what was the old Solly Sports Yorkshire ECB County Premier Cricket League, he recalls facing Tim Bresnan and Adil Rashid who were with Yorkshire Academy.

One of Luke’s heroes is Lesroy Weekes; the Leeward Islands allrounder who was at Rotherham Town and made quite an impression on an eight-year-old Staveley; eyes agog at this tall, mystical West Indian running the juniors.

Joe Root even turned out for Rotherham Town when Sheffield Collegiate didn’t have an under-eleven team with his grandad Don a member of RTCC for years.

Others to get a glorious mention include Afaq Raheem who scored 1,000 runs two seasons running, Gurman Randhawa, Stuart and Simon Guy and Gerhard Rudolph.

To return you to more recent times, in the past five years, someone has poured sand in the fuel compartments of the machinery used to maintain the cricket ground. There’s also been weedkiller spread on the square twice to try to kill it.

Rotherham Town Cricket Club have stayed stoic throughout many a drama but they appear to have voted for their own endgame.