We’re stumped, says Teesdale

A FRUSTRATED Teesdale claims it is being “pushed out of the league” as it fights to play a higher standard of cricket.

Roos president Leigh Campbell said his members felt “shunned” by the GCA after the club’s controversial dumping to a substandard hardwicket competition.

Campbell’s comments come after rivals Bannockburn lashed the GCA for its failed restructure, in which country clubs were thrown in a lopsided Synthetic 3 competition to play against the third XI teams of GCA2 clubs.

“It just feels like they don’t really care,” Campbell said. “They haven’t taken into consideration just how good country clubs are and the focus seems to be on the so-called ‘founder clubs’. That’s how it feels to us.

“They haven’t done their research or got around to the clubs before they did this review to look at the difference in the competitions.

“Where they have put us is no benefit to anyone. It’s not benefiting our guys, because believe it or not, it’s not fun to go out and annihilate teams every week, and it’s not benefiting our opposition.

“We don’t want to be going out there and absolutely destroying kids. Without kids, where’s the future? We don’t like the predicament we’re in and it’s no fault of our opposition.”

Campbell said his players had been forced to bowl slower to junior players to avoid injuring them and upsetting rival clubs.

“Last year, when kids came out to open the batting, they were good enough to play top division cricket and we didn’t hold back,” Campbell explained.

“Now, we’ve got to take our opening bowlers off because these kids are playing thirds to improve their cricket and develop. That’s where they go to learn.

“So we’re in a predicament where we can’t give them everything we’ve got — we don’t want to destroy the kids — but it’s no benefit to our boys either because what’s the point of playing when we can’t give it a red-hot crack.

“So we’ve taken the approach that we have no mercy with the bat. If it’s there to hit, we’ll hit it and make the biggest score we possibly can.

“But when it comes to our bowling, we’ve got to hold back.”

Bannockburn wants an ur- gent restructure and has requested a move to a top-level turf competition, but Teesdale has called for calm.

“I can understand why Bannockburn wants changes, and we’re in the same boat, but realistically it would be a logistical nightmare to change it now,” Campbell said.

“I understand pressure was on from council for turf wickets, and we aren’t in a position to have turf cricket, but I don’t see why GCA3 can’t be a hardwicket and turf competition.

“Especially when you’ve got the likes of Corio and Waurn Ponds. We played them last year in division three and they were still the weaker sides.

“We’ve been taken from that competition to play thirds. We all knew it wasn’t going to be a fair competition.

“We’ve been shunned and it feels like they’re trying to push us out of the competition . . . all because we haven’t got a turf wicket.

“Let us have a voice, that’s all we want. Not once did they (GCA) allow us to express our thoughts and that doesn’t work.”

Campbell said the club could “hold its own” in division one hard-wicket and be competitive in the GCA2 and GCA3 turf competitions..