Well what an off-season it has been!!!

The current situation has been turned on it’s head and amid lockdown, home schooling, and return to somewhat normality, I thought it would be important to detail what’s been happening behind the scenes in relation to the coming Junior cricket season.

With the restructure of operations at Cricket Victoria over the last couple of months, the resources that have been available to all clubs has gone from around 70 full time staff down to 16 within Cricket Victoria house. This does not really effect us, as we have set up a culture and a club which can look after itself, but our Regional Cricket Manager has been made redundant, and now there is 1 person overseeing the region from the Yarra River all the way to the border to the West.

As the junior football season is still uncertain, AFL Victoria and Cricket Victoria have reached an agreement to delay the start of the cricket season until October 16th. This agreement does not particularly effect the junior cricket season as it will only start 2 weeks later than normal.

With current return to training documents published by Cricket Victoria, and cricket predominantly being a non-contact outdoor sport there will be a couple of changes to the way we undertake things, but we are still planning ahead with the start of the junior pre-season on the first week of September, which is only 8 weeks away.

It has been an interesting time since March this year, with little or no sport being able to be played at all and it can either go a couple of different ways. This season, if it goes ahead as planned, will be bigger than ever due to everyone wanting to get out and get active again, or the continual circumstances surrounding the COVID 19 will detract from the season altogether.

Williamstown Cricket Club is busy planning in line with the growth of our program over the last 7 years to make it bigger than it has been. This is the season to really stamp our brand on to the local sporting scene – so I encourage all of you to engage your networks to join us.

On another note, there have been a couple of developments within our club in regard to council. Over the last 6 months WCC have been working hard with Council to develop a plan to totally renovate the practice facility at Williamstown Cricket Ground. That project is well into concept design phase, and last Tuesday got approved by council to start at the end of the coming cricket season. As a side effect of this unfortunately WCC will not have a senior ground to play on, as Williamstown Cricket Ground will also undergo a playing surface renovation. Our burgeoning Underage Program will be forced to relocate to another venue for the coming season. Not an ideal situation, as being at the main ground each Sunday morning is fantastic, but the end result will mean an even better experience for our Underage program the following year with a playing surface equal to that of the MCG – due to the new surface being upgraded to AFL standard.

With new fee structures being implemented to our Junior section, and a host of options as add ons, it is certainly an exciting time ahead for our club.

Please mark in your calendars the start of the Junior Pre-season on the first week of September (conditions considering) and the start of the Underage Program on the first week of November (conditions considering).

Comms will continue to be circulated amongst our group, and as said I urge you to start spreading the word to get all your friends talking about joining WCC for the coming season.

There are big things planned ahead.

Please stay safe, and look after yourselves.

Thx

Cam