League shuffle on hold

Hard-wicket woes

THE GCA has baulked at a move to rejig its controversial hard-wicket competitions midseason, amid criticism over the lopsided nature of matches. GCA president Barry McFarlane yesterday conceded the board of management had “made a mistake” by pitting first XI clubs Bannockburn, Teesdale and Lethbridge against third XI sides, but ruled out tearing several competitions apart in a bid to bump the country clubs into turf competitions, such as GCA2 and GCA3. Under a radical move proposed at a meeting on Wednesday night, Bannockburn would join the GCA2 turf competition before Christmas, possibly taking the points it earned in the Synthetic 4 grade. Teesdale and Lethbridge were also potentially on the move to a higher level after dispatching third XI teams with ease in the early rounds. But the GCA postponed the restructure, at least until next season. “We’ve had a few problems in the hardwicket grades but we’ll continue with the current structure,” McFarlane said yesterday. “It’s obvious that Bannockburn and Teesdale are a bit stronger than the other sides in the competition, so we looked at ways to resolve the situation.

“But being a third of the way through the season, we thought we’d upset a lot of other structures as well.

“So we made a decision to see it through to the end of the season and have a good review of where we go from there to make it more meaningful and competitive for the likes of Bannockburn and Teesdale.”

The country clubs were strongly opposed to the GCA’s off-season restructure of turf and hard-wicket competitions, with Little River, Inverleigh and Winchelsea walking out and joining the BPCA.

“Losing those other three clubs has really make it difficult,” McFarlane said.

“But I honestly thought it would be a better competition than it is, but I got it wrong.

“It wasn’t just my decision, but I thought the other sides would be reasonably competitive but a lot of clubs are struggling against first XI teams.

“There’s a lot of issues that we talked about but it was going to affect other sections and cause problems, so we’ll see it through.”

McFarlane admitted the board of management considered placing Bannockburn in GCA3 turf.

“But you’ve got to consult other clubs in that division, and we think we’ve got GCA3 in good shape at the minute, and we’ve put those clubs through hell in the last 12 months or so and we didn’t want to upset them again,” he said.

“Introducing another couple of clubs into that competition didn’t seem right.”