Albany and Districts Cricket Association president Ryan Kinnear optimistic cancelled games will be rescheduled

Albany and Districts Cricket Association president Ryan Kinnear is hopeful the cancelled round of fixtures will be played at a later date after persistent rain prevented teams from playing round six on Saturday. The ADCA made an early call on Saturday morning to cancel the entire round of fixtures, including B-grade and C-grade, with all three turf wickets too wet to use and other grounds already underwater from heavy rain in the lead-up to Saturday. Collingwood Park were set to play Manypeaks and Railways were facing Royals in the two A-grade fixtures before the washout. It is the second time this season games were called off because of poor weather with round three also being abandoned after most games began before ending without results on October 29. With a five-team A-grade competition, the Lions have only completed two out of their five fixtures. After the abandoned matches in round three, the Lions had a bye in round four and then their round five clash with Mt Barker was rescheduled to February and that was followed by this week’s washout. Kinnear said the priority was to have the round six games postponed instead of cancelled with two potential dates in mind. “It’s either going to be the first weekend of January (7) or the March (4) long weekend,” he said. “The (A-grade) T20 is that weekend so we might have to look at changing the configuration of that. “B and C-grade don’t play on that weekend but then junior country week starts on the Monday that week and there’s another junior week in March. “We’ve got a bit to work through which we will do at our next presidents meeting but the consensus is if we can reschedule, we absolutely will.” An outcome was likely to be reached at Monday night’s presidents meeting. Kinnear highlighted the importance of playing as many fixtures as possible in a five-team competition. “Especially for the A-grade, teams will only play 12 fixtures with the bye so we still want to give our guys enough cricket, it’s frustrating for some clubs,” Kinnear said. “It’s definitely been a bit of a wetter start and I think on the weekend we had seven out of 11 ovals unavailable so it has definitely been quite frustrating but hopefully there’s some better weather on the way.” Round seven of the ADCA season is set down for Saturday with defending premiers the Bulls tackling the Tigers and the Lions facing Park. There is rain forecast for Albany later in the week, including on Saturday.