Padiham want promotion - Clarke

The club’s former captain guided them to the Ribblesdale Cricket League senior play-off final last year but missed out on promotion with a 48-run defeat to Cherry Tree at Preston Old Road.

But Padiham, currently second in the lower tier of the league’s hierarchy, are back on the charge as they bid to make the climb to Section A.

With the Arbories outfit sitting 31 points behind leaders Barnoldswick, Clarke said:

“We want promotion first and foremost. We are second in Section B at the moment, behind Barnoldswick, so we just need to keep this going and improving each week.

“We don’t want to finish second. We want to win the league.

“Barnoldswick have started well but there are still 15 games to go so we’re confident that we can put a decent run together and stay in the top two promotion places.”

He added: “We just want to keep building the momentum. We’ve played teams from the tier above and we’ve won three of the eight games so we’ve done okay.

“The league has split now so we play the teams from our tier so it should all start to take a truer reflection.”

That switch begins tomorrow when they travel to the War Memorial Ground to take on Feniscowles, who have yet to win this term.

“Feniscowles haven’t won yet,” said Clarke. “We beat them at our place (in the Ramsbottom Cup) earlier in the season but it wasn’t an easy game.

“They’ve got some good players but we’ll go in to the fixture with confidence due to the form that we’re in.”

Meanwhile, Read will be hoping to push back in to the division’s top four and close the gap on Clitheroe when they host the leafue leaders at Whalley Road this weekend.

Joey Marshall’s men are currently 26 points behind the defending champions.