The closest event is at Kidmore  End cricket club on a Saturday afternoon, I am met at the door by Avril who gives me a sticky label to write my name on and stick on.

Having had a look at the BCOA website I see some of the faces in the room that are on the website, I didn’t know it the time but these were the very people who were going to be giving me a lot of time and encouragement.

First to speak is the then Chairman of BCOA, Sue Jones, Sue welcomes every one to the meeting and introduced  John Golding, the Education Officer and his partner in crime Eddie Lunn.

John and Eddie are both dressed to umpire, they ask their audience some questions:

1) What might I find in my pockets ?
Having already been reading Tom Smiths I can answer so I stick my hand up and thankfully don’t make a fool of my self and give some good answers.

2) Eddie signals a four and asked what does this mean ?
Plenty of people know this one .

They then give us a piece of paper with a question written on it thankfully my question is one that can happen a lot in cricket.
3) You are strikers end umpire, your colleague calls and signals wide ball and the batsman attempts a run, the wicket keeper puts the wicket down with the batsman out of his ground what’s your decision?
Sadly we are not asked to answer in front of every one but just to read the question out.

We are then asked to tell the meeting a bit about ourselves, I say that I used to stand for Nettlebed in the Berkshire Cricket League until the league  team collapsed in 2005 and had recently stood in  some games for Woodcote and had decided to get back in to umpiring. Eddie then tells me of plans to get a panel of trained umpires in the premier division of the Berkshire league.

Dennis Prior is next to speak, he is the BCOA Appointments Officer.
Dennis talks about a recent move to using a computer program to appoint umpires to games called “Who’s the Umpire” and he uses some slides to show us how it works.

It seems relatively simple we click the box on days we are available and if there is a game to our grade you may get appointed to that game.

Next to speak is Roy Kinner who is the BCOA County Performance officer, Roy explains that a football referee has 17 laws of the game to understand, we have 42 laws of the game to understand, he says its not a five minute job and will take time and effort, he also says whatever your umpiring ambitions whether it is just to umpire your clubs or children’s game or to umpire in the Home Counties Premier League and beyond, he and his team will support us and help us get there.

He also shows us the ECB ACO pathway. Level 1,1A local league level 2 premier league level 3 multi day and level 4 professional.
Roy then takes some questions from the floor before Sue ends the presentation.

At the end I talk to Dennis about the new Berkshire Cricket League panel and we agree that it’s well overdue.