Wallabies ready to jump
WALLINGTON has called for the adoption of an East-West conference in the Bellarine Peninsula Cricket Association to cope with the likely growth of the A-grade competition.
The Wallabies have signalled their interest in returning to the BPCA’s top grade, which could look drastically different in 2017-18 with the possible inclusion of three sides from the GCA.
St Leonards is also under- stood to be eyeing a move to A- grade, while reigning Bgrade champion Newcomb is also believed to be weighing up its options.
Wallington president Sean Boland revealed the club was eager to field an A-grade side after a number of years in the wilderness.
“It was our aspirations to play A-grade last year as well,” Boland said.
“We’re looking at building what we created last year.
“Daniel Harrison is our new coach and he’s doing the ringaround and talking to a few players, and at the moment we have interest from a number of players that could come across.
“At the delegates meeting, I said that we were leaning towards putting an A-grade side in, however we don’t want to jump the gun and bring the club back to the situation it was in a few years ago.”
Boland said Wallington was left reeling in recent years when it committed to playing in Agrade, only for a host of recruits to turn their back on the club on the eve of the season.
“They essentially pulled the pin and we went through the season where we had teams in A, B and D-grade,” he said.
“We had to push guys in Bgrade to A-grade and that probably weren’t ready for that step, and we had to push guys from D-grade into B-grade.
“Then we had to do the mad, crazy ring-around on Thursday nights, Fridays and Saturday mornings until an hour before the game started to scramble together a D-grade side.
“A-grade were getting flogged, B-grade were getting flogged and D-grade were getting flogged because it was full of people who had never really played the game.
“It wasn’t a good year for morale at the club. And being a small club that’s not associated with a football club, we struggled.”
The following season, the Wallabies made another effort to win promotion but took a cautious approach when they failed to attract enough talent.
“And we just didn’t want to go through that again because we thought we’d definitely lose players,” Boland said.
“We lost but we had a really good team and, in hindsight, we could have been competitive with sides lower down the ladder in A-grade.”
Should the Wallabies make the jump to A-grade, Boland has called on the BPCA to consider the East-West conference method, which was raised at a recent delegates meeting.
“I know speaking to a lot of the clubs, they struggle to field teams in the lower grades, and by introducing more travel you are going to put a line through a lot of clubs early,” he said.
“But I’d like to see the idea developed further and all proposals put on the table.”