Welcome to The Rey: A fresh future for independent coverage of Surrey

It offers comment, opinion, features, interviews, pictures and news. The site aims, as its starting point, to fill a damaging gap in the media landscape left open by the sad demise of local and regional newspaper coverage.

In time, however, it will surely evolve into so much more.

Journalists Mark Church, Richard Spiller and Mark Baldwin make up the main team behind The Rey.

But the voices of Surrey's players - men and women - and the club's coaches and administrators will also be regularly heard in the written, audio and video content posted up on these pages during every week of the year.

You can read about both the men's and women's professional teams representing Surrey and also the grass roots game within the county. There will be historical articles, too, and regular dips into nostalgia.

New content will be posted up regularly during our two 'launch' months of February and March, adding to what is already on the site, and particularly in the weeks before the new season starts in early April.

And then, once the men's and women's domestic campaigns are up and running, expect to read in-depth analysis and reaction to every match and also listen in to our regular audio posts featuring interviews with players and management.

BBC Radio London commentator Church has been the 'voice of Surrey cricket' for more than two decades, Spiller was a long-standing sports editor of the Surrey Advertiser and Baldwin - a former cricket correspondent of the Press Association - has written on the county's fortunes for many years in The Times and other publications.

They, and the many guest contributors who will feature on these pages, all hope you enjoy the site and its new and independent coverage of all things Surrey. Come on The Rey!