Action stations for rep players

FIVE Gold Coast players are heading into a taxing schedule as members of the Queensland side contesting the Australian Country Cricket Championship in Western Australia.

Captain Jimmy Spargo, his Queens clubmates Sam and Harry Winton, Broadbeach Robina veteran Sean Fitzsimmons and Burleigh wicketkeeper Chris Hall will board a flight from Brisbane this morning with the other members of the Queensland side heading to Geraldton for the carnival that runs from Friday until January 13.

The squad will be straight into action tonight with a T20 trial match against WA University in Perth, then back up in a one-dayer against the same opposition tomorrow.

Then it will be onto a bus for the five-hour trip to Geraldton.

It is possible that Spargo, Sam Winton and Atherton keeper Gerard Fox could undertake a punishing schedule of 13 matches in the space of 12 days.

The three are in an Australian Country team to play an ACA Invitational XI in an exhibition T20 match in Thursday night to open the carnival.

Then there are five T20 matches, plus the chance of a final, heading into a rest day on Monday before a series of five one-dayers.

“It’s a hectic schedule and we’re going to be pretty stuffed by the end of it,” Spargo said.

Spargo, a product of the Townsville junior program, is a proud Queensland captain after being vice-captain last year at the carnival when it was played in Wollongong.

“I played some country stuff for North Queensland as a teenager, so it is something special for me to be named captain,” AB Paterson College teacher Spargo said.

The gifted batsman moved to the Gold Coast when he was 21 and played Brisbane Premier Grade for the Dolphins and Valley before signing with Kookaburra Cup club Queens.

The Geraldton carnival will be the 13th for Fitzsimmons in a representative career that kicked off at Mandurah, also in WA, in 2006.

IT’S A HECTIC SCHEDULE AND WE’RE GOING TO BE PRETTY STUFFED BY THE END OF IT

COUNTRY STAR JIMMY SPARGO