LYMINGTON FACE SPORTS GROUND BAN UNLESS SAFETY FENCING IS ERECTED

IT WAS a health and safety row that split a town’s sporting community. Cricketers in Lymington faced being booted off their ground of 175 years because the neighbouring tennis club feared their high flying balls were a risk to their members. After a high profile campaign council bosses backed down from moving the club from Lymington Sports Ground to Woodside Park.  [Daily Echo, 20 January 2012]

But now the ECB Southern Electric Premier League club faces a new threat – being banned from using their ground this summer unless higher safety nets are installed. Civic chiefs dropped a bombshell by saying that the club will be unable to play any home games unless the scheme is approved.

The cricketers are again having to lobby Lymington Town Council to save their club. More than 1,000 people backed an Internet campaign to prevent the club being evicted over the tennis club issue, with many of the supporters stressing that no-one had ever been injured by a stray ball.

Following months of heated debate the Conservative-run council agreed to put the Woodside scheme on hold. Now the authority has submitted an application to install new safety netting at the sports ground – and says the cricketers will be barred from using the site if New Forest District Council rejects the scheme. Civic chiefs are seeking consent to install 20 flagpoles from which nets eight metres high will be suspended each season.

The application says: "The new cricket season begins at the end of April, by which time a suitable safety solution must be in place. The alternative would be to ban the cricket club from playing at the ground."

The club, which plays in the Southern Electric Premier League, said it planned to meet the council to discuss the "validity" of the threat. Town clerk Steve Cridland defended the authority’s stance. "If there’s a hazard that we’re unable to address, what are we to do?" he said. No date has been set for the decision, but it is expected within the next two months.