Aussies welcome in our city

EACH weekend The Chronicle sport team looks at pressing issues on the Saturday Soapbox.

Q: With Australia’s best cricketers unemployed at the moment, who should Toowoomba cricket clubs try to attract to play for them here in summer?

Ben Drewe: FIRST off, forget about Peter Siddle.

If he is going to be lured to country cricket by a club it will be in north Queensland with its banana industry.

A savvy Toowoomba Cricket club might be able to make a play for damaging opening batsman Aaron Finch if they could get him a job at the Ruthven St cafe sharing his surname.

Usman Khawaja also posted a photo of his job search to see who was seeking a cover driver on flat tracks.

There is a bit of construction work going with the second range crossing so a club up here could try and get him some work on a road during the week before he wields the willow on the weekend.

We are also the Garden City, so perhaps Big Bash League regular Clive Rose might be at home in Toowoomba.

Anton Rose: I DOUBT a few of them would even get a run out here.

For starters, there’s no way

Usman Khawaja would get a look in at Wests ahead of Brian May and I would like to see Chadd Sayers take a five-for at Heritage Oval on a scorching Sunday afternoon.

The best thing to come out of this would be an Australia A tour of Toowoomba where the Aussies get a crack at the likes of Northern Brothers Diggers and Highfields Railways – forget South Africa.

Glen McCullough: Given they are currently out of work, perhaps all players could make career moves to Toowoomba.

No money-haggling worries to see here. Everyone is on the same lolly.

But each player will need to prove they are here not just for the flowers and the night life so they should be prepared to put in the hard yards to work their way up from D grade.

There will be a couple of notable exceptions who will have a walk-up start in A grade.

No names here, but I think you know who I’m talking about.

And while we’re on a roll, why don’t we host the first Ashes Test between England and our Australian women’s team here in Toowoomba at Heritage Oval.

Of course we jest, but the current stand-off between the players and Cricket Australia is a disaster in the making which will change the way a lot of fans view our current crop of players.

The players may well have valid reasons for their ongoing stand.

But Australian sport lovers just want their cricket played as it should be, not as a backdrop to a “civil war”.

Q: Who wins the State of Origin decider and why?

Ben Drewe: THIS is hard to say.

The bookies have New South Wales as $1.77 favourites and Queensland at $2.10 but surely the decider is much more even.

Johnathan Thurston missing is a big blow for the Maroons as they have a weaker record without him in the team.

The Blues have their own injury concerns though and are chasing a second win at Suncorp Stadium in the same series which will be hard to come by.

Both games so far this series have been won by the away team and you have to go back to 1998 for the last time all three games were won by the away team.

Surely a home team has to win this series.

As a New South Welshman, I would love to see the Blues get the job done at Suncorp Stadium but I can see it going either way, with very little between the two teams.

Anton Rose: THE Maroons are not a one man team.

Thurston may be gone but I think the experience in the starting line-up will prove to be the difference over New South Wales this time around.

There are more than enough wise heads there to get the job done, I think the shock of losing game one sparked them back into life. Glen McCullough: After my Clifford Park and Manny Pacquiao tipping efforts last Sunday, you’re asking me?

It will come as no surprise to hear I have no idea.

Whoever I plonk for should make the other mob certainties.

The home ground is the only advantage I can find for either team so it’s the Maroons for mine.