Bailey's Bay 188

Somerset 192-9

Somerset coach Winston Reid believes that getting relegated is the best thing that could have ever happened to his team.

The West End club beat Bailey's Bay for the second time this season yesterday, but will still be playing First Division cricket next year after Devonshire Rec beat PHC to ensure their survival.

And for Reid the fact that there was to be no last-gasp reprieve will be of long-term benefit to the club if it leads to a clear out of some of the senior members of the team, and a change in the culture of failure surrounding the side.

"I don't think it (relegation) is the worst thing in the World," said Reid. "We have a lot of youngsters in the team, and we have some older players, we need to filter the youngsters in. And going down is not the worst thing, it might be, probably, the best thing, because we definitely need to include the youngsters in our team."

While the drop will be just as painful for Reid as for everybody else, the Somerset coach believes it is the best way for the club to re-build.

"No one likes to go down, but to build a team, I don't have a problem with us being relegated, some people might disagree with me, but we need to start developing the youngsters," said Reid. "And developing the youngsters in the Premier Division is a bit hard.

"But if we are going to go down, and play the same team, it doesn't make sense. We have been playing the same team for the last five years and getting the same result, it don't make sense doing the same thing over and over again to get the same results.

"We need to make changes and we have some nice youngsters in the squad."

Yesterday Somerset didn't look like a team that was struggling at the bottom of the table. They skittled Bay out for 188, with spinner Joshua Gilbert taking three wickets, and then Ricky Hoyte (60) and Wendell Dutton (65*), saw them to a narrow one-wicket win.

That though was the exception, rather than the rule, of their season, and Reid said his side could have no complaints about their fate. And he laid the blame squarely at the feet of a number of his senior players, who he accused of sulking after not being picked for Cup Match.

"The season wasn't the best, but we have done it to ourselves. We wait until the last game to go out there and try to win. We won today, but we are always waiting till the end, and we should be doing better," he said.

"After Cup Match what happens is that you can't get the senior players to train, the guys that train are the youngsters, the senior players will not come out to train. This is as a result of some guys who feel that they should play Cup Match. But not everybody can play Cup Match.

"But then if you decide you're not training, are you supporting your team? Are you really supporting your team? And the youngsters are coming out Cup Match or no Cup Match, and that is something that has to be addressed. If we can't address that, then come next year we'll do the same thing over and over again.

"And we can't continue like that."