Colin Thomas Groundskeeper of the Year 2024
Previous Winners Groundskeeper of the Year
Colin Thomas - Cornwall Cricket Groundskeeper of the Year for 2024.
In a normal summer Colin Thomas goes flat out to produce the best possible pitches for those who play their cricket at Beacon. No time or effort is spared by this tireless volunteer and former player of distinction in his quest to give back to the game.
This summer however, has not been normal for Colin. For the first time in more than 40 years, savouring the great outdoors, the man affectionately known as ‘Loll’ due to his childhood liking for lollipops, has been confined to home and flat out indoors
Just days before the 2025 season, and a few weeks after he had been feted by Cornwall Cricket Groundskeepers as their 2024 Groundskeeper of the Year, Colin, aged 65, was ordered to pack his pyjamas and report to St Michael’s Hospital, Hayle.
There he underwent a 4-hour operation to reconstruct his disintegrating right ankle - legacy of a football injury sustained long ago playing on the wing for Troon - and have it strengthened with an 8-inch titanium rod kept in place by 4 screws.
To ensure the best possible outcome, he has spent the last 3 months motionless, being looked after by his partner Maria, while trusty lieutenant Karl Turner, assisted by son Jordan, has attended to the all-important groundwork at his beloved Beacon CC.
Judging by the condition of the pitch, square and outfield on Saturday, they and other club volunteers have done a superb job for Beacon CC, maintaining the quality of Colin’s pitches (rated at 81% by panel umpires in 2024 ) in his enforced absence.
For a groundskeeper who admits to being grumpyish” rather than “grumpy”, these have indeed been testing times, but even more so for Maria. She has been on duty 24/7 as his nurse, cook and chauffeur. Colin is indeed a fortunate husband.
Happily, he was sufficiently on the mend to be able to make his first appearance since April on Saturday, 16 August to watch Beacon play Perranporth, and to be presented with the Del Codd Trophy as Cornwall Cricket Groundskeeper of the Year.
Not able to be there was Beacon CC chair and Ist XI stalwart Darren Proctor, who appreciates as much as anyone how vital Colin and his family have been, and continue to be, to Beacon CC. He said: “They have been a huge part of this club for decades.
“His father Ramon was instrumental in the construction of our pavilion in 1978, which a young Colin and his brother Clive ( current club scorer ) helped to construct.
“As one of our leading batters for many years, he played the majority of his cricket at Beacon, with the exception of a couple of seasons at Troon. He represented the Ist XI in 377 league games, scoring more than 6,300 runs.
“After his retirement, Colin returned to the club when his son Jordan ( a Cornwall all-rounder ) signed for Beacon, and he has been our head groundsman since 2017.
“He dedicates an immeasurable amount of hours preparing some of the best pitches we’ve ever seen at Beacon, and that has been demonstrated by our excellent pitch marks over the years.
“He can often be seen bouncing a cricket ball on the square, or with his hands on his hips looking at a pitch, or shaking his head at the damage caused by those pesky birds. He’s amazing.”
Brought up just yards away in Knave-Go-By, a hamlet reputed to owe its name to the uproar surrounding the visits of preacher John Wesley in the 1740’s, Colin attended Beacon Infants School, which overlooked the cricket ground, from the age of 4.
He graduated to Troon Primary School. Rather than waste any of his family’s money on bus fares to school and back, he preferred to run that daily journey and use the pennies instead to buy his lollipops in the village shop at Troon.
Camborne School was his next stop, before joining engineering company Holman’s in 1976 to be trained as a fabricator. Like 2025, this proved to be a very dry, hot, gruelling summer.
As a Holman’s newboy, his first job was to carry buckets of orange squash to over-heating workers, including some well-known cricketers, threatening to walk out.
He stayed at Holman’s until it’s final owners locked the gates in 2003/4. Having once been among a workforce of thousands, primarily making mining machinery for export across the world, Colin was one of the last 12 out.
Since then, he has been employed for 20 years as groundskeeper at Carn Brea Leisure Centre - he hopes to return there in due course - and also tended to Troon’s football turf for 24 years and it’s cricket ground for 10 years before returning to his roots.
As well as the pleasure of being with his friends, Colin loves the challenge of growing and sustaining grass in all conditions and upgrading a hillside playing field which was once mining waste land. Further improvement work is planned for this autumn.
He said: “I like our grass to look good. As soon as a game is over, I am out there with a hose watering and refreshing, and repairing the ends with pre-germinated seed. If you do it right, it takes no time at all for new grass to come through.
“Because we have a smaller square than some clubs, but lots of cricket, it’s essential that we repair our pitches as soon as possible so that we can always have a decent strip available. I love what I do. I never stop learning…. and I’ll be back.”
