Matthew Maynard has completed his third season as Glamorgan coach
Matthew Maynard has challenged his glum Glamorgan players to hit back from their final-day promotion dejection by winning Division Two next season.
The Welsh county were once 37 points clear as Glam looked set for promotion back to the County Championship's top-flight after a five-year absence.
But Glamorgan were held to their third draw in a row by Derbyshire and a four-game winless run at the wrong time.
"We know we can go out there and win it," said director of cricket Maynard.
"And that will be the target now. It will be disappointing playing second division cricket next season but there is a toughness and belief to this team that certainly wasn't here three years ago."
The Daffodil county have not won a division two game since early August, suffering a defeat to Middlesex before drawing their concluding three four-days fixtures of the season to Sussex, Surrey and finally Derbyshire.
Glamorgan have been in transition since before Maynard took over in 2007 as the the county struggled to recover from a host of high-profile and experienced players such as Steve James, Adrian Dale, Steve Watkin and Maynard himself who were part of Glamorgan's golden era.
The 1997 County Championship champions - who won one-day titles in 2002 and 2004 - were relegated to division two in 2005 but a dip in form on the final stretch cost Glam as Worcestershire shocked champions Sussex with a final-day four-wicket win to win promotion.
Glamorgan enjoyed seven championship wins for the first since lifting the title 13 years ago and Maynard cited some "fine" individual performances.
Australian batsman Mark Cosgrove smashed 1,000 championship runs, all-rounder Jim Allenby took an impressive 40 wickets while he also scored in excess of 900 runs.
Spinner Dean Cosker and young seamer James Harris also caught the eye as they each took over 50 apiece.
But ultimately Glamorgan missed out on promotion in the four-day game after failing to impress in the money-spinning one-day and Twenty20 competitions - tournaments that Glamorgan's board had demanded success to lure the lucrative corporate market.
"How the season is viewed is up to the board as it is them I am answerable to.
"And it will be interesting to get there views - and one committee man blanked me and Jamie earlier so that suggests that they're not to happy."
Captain Jamie Dalrymple was clearly disappointed that his Glamorgan team failed to achieve promotion despite being so far clear at one stage during the season.
"The final table does not represent the effort and performances of the boys here have put in," said Dalrymple.
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
Bookmark with:
What are these?