Original fixture to stay as rain washes out third round for GCA

GEELONG Cricket Association officials insist the current fixtures will remain unchanged, despite heavy rain washing away matches for a third straight week.

Local clubs across the region were peeling back the covers on Thursday morning to provide their turf wickets with a much-needed drink of water after play was abandoned shortly before 9am.

The GCA made the necessary call to cancel all senior turf and hard-wicket matches for Saturday with a call to be made on Sunday’s Barwon Women’s Cricket Competition in the coming hours.

“We were no chance at all,” GCA vice president Sam Hall conceded.

“There’s a few guys on the grounds committee and they’ve all got designated grounds that they have been monitoring and the majority are unplayable right now.

“There’s no way they would be ready to go on Saturday and we’ve still got a heap of rain forecast. I think nearly every ground in Geelong would be unplayable on Saturday.”

The BWCC is also likely to be cancelled.

Hall said he hoped the decision to cancel matches for this weekend would ultimately help turf clubs prepare squares for the following week.

“The squares have been under cover for the last two weeks, so they’re not in great nick. So if the majority of clubs can get the covers off today and give their squares a good drink, it will hopefully help for next week,” he said.

With three matches lost to weather in GCA1, GCA2 and GCA3, as well as the opening two rounds of GCA4 abandoned, GCA officials have been locked in discussions about the fixture. But Hall said no decision had been made to restructure the draw.

“At the moment we’re sticking with the original fixture and there’s no change to that,” he said.

Hall admitted he was disappointed to lose another round of matches to poor weather on the back of successive Covidravaged seasons.

“We started early in November last season and we’ll start in late October this year even without Covid,” Hall said.

“It’s frustrating, but there’s nothing much you can do about the weather. It’s something that we can’t control.”