only2garners

Josh Buttler missing as well Gumboots, although he hasn't really performed in the games he did play this season. Lending Mahmood and Parkinson to England worked well the other day as they virtually won the game by themselves with 6 wickets. I was there - I have a Blast season ticket, and it was every bit as comprehensive as it sounds. They might need to win their last two home games next weekend to qualify though. The Government needs to get its finger out and decide whether Lancs can increase their crowd from 25% for the Roses game next Saturday - still no decision. As a ST holder I'm alright although I have had to book a new seat in case the crowd limit remains. There are presumably thousands who still have no idea whether they can go or not. It seems bizarre that there can be 31,000 at Lords today and 65,000 at Wembley tomorrow and yet they can't decide whether a few more can be let into Old Trafford.

Whilst it was very frustrating to see Lancashire deprived of the services of Matt Parkinson for the last day of the game against Kent on a turning wicket and the game ending in a draw, they have qualified for the top group in the second stage today anyway. And whilst Lancs are now behind Yorkshire in the table by 2 points, when they move into the next stage they will take half the points in the Roses matches with them. After winning the first they are 22-1 ahead. Even losing the second Roses game should see them start slightly ahead unless they get really thumped.

Bugger - just got the notification this had been posted before I had a chance to watch the 7pm highlights programme!

I always felt a particular connection to Tony Field. Whilst Rovers were always my first team, growing up in West Lancs and Southport playing on Friday nights I often went with mates. Then he moved to Rovers and then to Sheffield at the time I moved there to university (although Wednesday were always my team there). Then I got to see him in New York when visiting my brother-in-law.

I can claim to have seen Tony Field play for 4 different clubs - Southport, Rovers, Sheffield United and New York Cosmos.

What a day for British sport yesterday and nothing to do with the football. This year’s Tour de France has had an eventful first 4 days with lots of crashes, one caused by a stupid “spectator” but most of the others rider error caused by the pressure of needing to at the front of the peloton. G has got his customary crash out of the way early but maybe he won’t be fit enough now to be competitive. I think I would struggle with a three week bike ride after dislocating my shoulder even if I had someone to push it back into place straightaway. Then yesterday the seemingly impossible happened. A week ago Mark Cavendish wasn’t planning to ride with his team and no one believed he could now add to his 30 tour stage wins. Then Sam Bennett got injured and a place in the team opened up. Then he won his 31st stage yesterday and cue buckets of tears. I think even Christian Prudhomme was struggling to hold them back. Cavendish himself could hardly speak on the podium.

I understand he knows the Spanish for oatcake.

So is there then a connection with how his Mum now finds herself in Stoke, the pottery capital of the UK?

I’ll take a modicum of credit for that Herbie. The journalist emailed me a couple of days ago (my email is on the club website) and I pointed him in the direction of brfcs for some comments from fans about his debut.

Another great night out last night watching Lancashire win again. Apart from Finn Allen's excellent knock the batting performance wasn't great, with a good few players getting in and out quickly, but 172 seemed a par total at the interval. But Lancashire do what they do best, controlling and squeezing a chasing team and Leicestershire were never quite in it at any time and definitely once the 3 spinners got going. Hartley was the pick of them this time although Parkinson picked up aother couple of wickets.

It was a joy to get back to Old Trafford today for the first Blast game. I suspect that the crowd was about the same as they would have got in more normal times given it was a Wednesday afternoon, although obviously well spread out. Finn Allen's cameo 29 from 13 balls was also impressive - he was really annoyed to have got out. If he can continue in that vein he will get a lot of runs in the Blast.

I wasn’t suggesting it was right, just that’s how both teams are looking at the games.

In truth these two games are not a big priority for either side. England have rested their IPL players and are using the games to try out a few fringe players. Their priorities are the series against India and then the Ashes. New Zealand are using these games as warm-ups for the world Test Championship game against India later this month.

Sadly Yorkshire just beat Sussex and are now only 4 points behind Lancs with Northants another 12 behind. One advantage Lancs have is that Yorks and Northants play each other next whilst Lancs have Kent at home. If Lancs win that they should qualify even if they lose to Yorks in the last game at Scarborough. I would imagine Yorks at Scarborough will be tougher than they they were at OT. They had Malan, Ballance and Wiley in the side this week who didn’t play last week. Mind you none of them are Yorkshiremen.

Fair enough. I had only heard that points carried over and I was assuming it was all of them but that makes more sense. I guess maybe then Lancs won't play whoever else qualifies in the next round? Northants are very much still in the hunt too and they would be good for Lancs as we beat them once and the other game was rained off.

I'm not quite sure why Yorkshire would be better than anyone else to go through with us to Div 1? Except that it would give us another Roses game later in the Summer. As I understand it the top 2 from each group go through to Div 1, the next 2 to Div 2 and the bottom 2 to Div 3, but you carry your points over. So scoring as many points as possible is what you want to do and that's why today's loss wasn't great. Every other team has lost at least one game so it's not that surprising. Lancs are still in a strong position. The plan is to revert to the 2 division model but there's lots of chatter including on TMS the other day that staying with what we have this year might be better, so i don't think it's a done deal yet.

Updated already.

The Fans Forum minutes from the May meeting which went live at the weekend have disappeared too. I'm sure it's just a teething error.

Partly I think that we don't really get any seriously confidential information. But also it's partly because everyone on the Forum accepts that they don't talk publicly about anything they hear at Forum meetings unless and until it appears in the minutes or elsewhere publicly. There have been a couple of times when someone has revealed something that was said at a meeting that they shouldn't have but by and large the system works well.

Well it's not confidential then is it, if it's published in the minutes. If that was the case then all that would happen is that they wouldn't tell us anything that they wanted kept confidential. As it stands now it sometimes makes sense to have an off the record chat about something to get a feel for the fans' views before they make a final decision on something. Hearing things that I couldn't put in the minutes was much more prevalent in John Williams's time. He could spend lots os time in a meeting and then say don't put that in the minutes. When he set up the Forum he would also not allow any discussion about on the field matters but that was changed after he left, although I can't remember who it was that changed it - it was before Waggott. On the bit I mentioned about the replacement for iFollow it was simply stated in January when we were discussing it's future that it would be replaced for next season, they couldn't say anything more at that time and they therefore wanted that info not to be in the minutes. The Fans Consultation meeting is designed to be the session that everything is on the record. They haven't had them this season as they didn't think it was practicable to do them on Zoom with so many people, but they will be back as soon as they can. We hope that our next Forum in July will be face to face too. Well yes he does in that he reads them and makes any changes he thinks appropriate. It's just that I have enough understanding with him that the vast majority of what I write he doesn't change. For others asking for more info about the discussion there was plenty of robust debate about the team's performances this last season and the manager's position from a number of Forum members. Maybe I could have put a bit more of that in the minutes but I'm conscious that I don't want them to be pages and pages long.

The way the Forum works is that I take the minutes as Secretary and then submit them to the club for approval - that's the way consultation works and it wouldn't work if I just wrote them and published them, any more than if the club wrote them. I've been doing this for years now and the amount of changes the club makes to my drafts have been minimal and usually additions for greater clarity, occasionally removing a small detail that they wanted to keep confidential. I can only remember two occasions when I went back to them and we negotiated further and they were both not under the current management team. The club changed the May minutes to add one word to my draft - on item 9 the word full was added before embargo. Otherwise what you see is what I wrote. Crimpshine - you're overthinking my ability or desire to be devious - it was clear at the meeting that the decision on the manager's position had been made by the owners. Of course with any set of minutes they are a summary of the conversation and not a verbatim record - there was plenty of discussion around most of the points. Finally most of the discussion above has been about the answers given - don't shoot the messengers.

The minutes should be on the site some time tomorrow.

Whilst I would agree that this would seem to be a sensible move and it should give the club more freedom, my understanding regarding match streams was that they already got 100% of the fee for any streams they sold? We were told that the club gets £8.33 for every stream sold I.e. £10 less VAT.

Apologies for having the temerity for going away for a few days after writing the minutes. And anyway anything mentioned in confidence won’t be in the minutes will they?

This has been planned for some months. I think it was first mentioned in confidence at the January Fans Forum.