Patrington are three wins away from Lord’s, the East Yorkshire side the only club from God’s Own County left in the draw of this summer’s Voneus Broadband Village Cup.
An East Riding club in the second tier of the Yorkshire Premier League North structure, they are sixth in the Championship East division and travel to Cheshire side Stayley in Round Six on July 2.
On Sunday just gone, they beat four-time National Village champions Woodhouse Grange by 133 runs, their second win having earlier beaten Carlton Towers.
“We had two teams concede against us before beating Carlton, who are a good side,” said second-team captain Glenn Ratcliffe.
If you look on the Play Cricket results website, it actually lists Patrington Seconds as the team currently playing in the Village Cup: “I think that’s a clerical error,” said Ratcliffe.
“It’s not far off our full strength first team.”
First-team captain Ashley McKinley is skippering a side in which Ratcliffe is featuring.
“I’ve gone down to the second team to captain this year,” he explained. “But I still play in this competition, and I really enjoy it.
“I played my first Village Cup campaign in 1995. We’ve been in it for the last five or six years, and two years ago we got to the same stage as we were in on Sunday. We got beat by Folkton and Flixton.
“But this is the furthest we’ve got.
“We’re a good and strong side, and we’re reasonably confident we can go further.
“We have to win three games to get to Lord’s, which would be very special.
“Woodhouse Grange, who we’ve just beaten, have won it many times before, and Carlton got to the semi-finals last year or the year before.
“There’s a lot of teams in our area who’ve won it in the past – Folkton and Flixton are another – so getting out of our area is almost the hardest part of it.
“If you get to this stage, you fancy yourselves.
“For a village of our size – we’re a small village – it would be massive.
“But we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves because there’s some very good teams out there still in it.”
Picture by Will Palmer/SWpix.com. Lords.
Patrington, who play at the Picturesque Southside ground nestled close to Hedon, Hull and Withernsea, have won five of nine league matches in the Championship East Division to sit sixth. It’s the first season the second tier has been split into two regional East and West divisions.
In their last league match on Saturday, they racked up 355-5 in 50 overs at home to Cottingham, winning by 200 runs.
“We bat deep, we’re aggressive. We don’t tap it about,” said Ratcliffe.
“If you look at the stats, we have the second leading run-scorer (Ashley McKinley 503 runs) in all of the leagues in our structure and the joint leading wicket-taker (Grant Van Es, 28 wickets).
“Our first team, if we can finish top six, that would be the aim because there are rumours the Championship is going back to one division next year instead of East and West. But I don’t see any reason why they can’t be third or fourth.
“There’s a lot of McKinleys at our club, and they’re brilliant cricketers.
“Ashley and Connor play in the first team. There’s a couple more in the seconds, and their grandfather and father played. Ashley and Connor are brothers, and Jason is their uncle. Jamie also plays.
“There’s a lot of father-sons who play for us.”
And it seems there’s plenty more where that came from as well for a club who have never employed a professional.
“We have a good junior set-up, 40 or 50 at Under 11s and Under 13s and such,” added Ratcliffe.
“Our main coach Andy Guy has been at the club for 30 years. He’s an absolute legend. A lot of the lads in the first team have been brought on by him.
“We have Under 11s, Under 13s and the All Stars as well.
“We don’t have a women’s set-up, but we do have two or three very good girls in the Under 11s.”
Ok, those juniors may not play at Lord’s if Patrington got there. But what a source of inspiration it would be to take a trip down to the Home of Cricket on September 3.
It could set the club up for the brightest of futures.
