THE chairman of Whitchurch Cricket Club says he has been ‘blown away’ by the response to the club’s fundraising appeal to make its clubhouse vandal-proof.

The Heath Road club announced on Wednesday that it had secured funding of around £3,000 from the grassroots governing body Sport England.

This would go towards installing shutters and extra CCTV at the club following four incidents of vandalism in the 12 months, provided a fundraising target of £7,500 is met.

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And Iain Marsh, chairman of Whitchurch Cricket Club, said its committee has received a largely positive reaction to its appeal.

“We’ve been really happy with the reaction to this,” he said.

“It’s pleasing because we did the original target for £3,000 but Emma Portas has done loads of work for it all since she joined the committee.

“She managed to get on the radio to talk about it, she’s been active on social media and she’s managed to secure the Sport England funding of £3,000.

“Not a lot of people secure that because of the criteria but it’s the reason that we’ve had to put the target up to £7,500.

“Sport England pays 40 per cent of your target so we had to adjust it to the new one so that we could get all of the Sport England money, which works out at 40 per cent.

“They put that money in on the proviso that we hit our target so if we don’t we don’t get it.”

Iain was particularly thankful for people within the town who had come together to help the club.

“We didn’t think we would get this already,” he said.

“People have responded to it so it shows that Whitchurch continues to be a really giving town.

“That’s what we need to keep – the support from the town has been brilliant,.

“The Vaults offered to do and did a quiz for us raising about 150 and Ruebens have ensured about doing things too.

“It’s all a big help.

“The town has definitely rallied around us – we’ve managed to do this with the help of the town and former players.

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“We thought we wouldn’t be anywhere near the £7,500 but it’s amazing we’ve only got less than £1,000 to go.

“If it was other clubs in the area, we would want to give them as much help as we could too.”

Anyone wishing to help can do by heading to https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/whitchurch-cricket-club/rewards