Top competition loses North County

For the first time in their 23-year existence, North County will not field an A-grade team in the Albany Cricket Association.

As cricket in Albany enters a major transition phase with the junior and seniors falling under the one association, more changes will occur after a lengthy ACA annual meeting on Monday night.

The biggest news to come from the meeting was North County confirming they will not have an A-grade team for the upcoming season, leaving six teams making up the top competition.

The Bulldogs will field one B-grade team for the 2019-20 season with club representative Hayden Davis telling those in attendance that due to low player numbers his club was withdrawing its A-grade side.

The A-grade competition will consist of premiers Railways plus Manypeaks, Mt Barker, Royals, Collingwood Park and Denmark.

With only three teams nominating for C-grade, it was agreed that B-grade and C-grade teams will play together in the same division before splitting later in the season for separate finals series.

In a meeting that lasted almost two hours, there was plenty of discussion about how the structure of the ACA will look with junior and senior cricket as one.

Two sub committees will oversee the running of the both seniors and juniors this season while a working party continues to make progress on a new constitution.

Long-standing president Terry Eaton was voted back in to the main role while Nathan Dovey, Ryan Kinnear and Tim Beech were all re-elected as executive members.

Jim Walters is the new vice-president and is one of five new faces with Jim Darmody, Amanda Thompson and Jack Hastie also joining.

Emma Russell has taken over as treasurer while the association was unable to fulfil the position of secretary.

Eaton said it was a very positive annual meeting considering the alignment between seniors and juniors.

“There is still lots to be done but there was great discussion in the room,” he said. “Once we get our sub-committees set up it will become easier.

“The future directions project will help us going forward.

“The loss of North County is disappointing in one way but it’s a situation where Royals were a couple of years ago who took a back step and have come back stronger than ever.”

Meanwhile, the Great Southern Cricket future directions project has been completed with a detailed report by Kim Buttfield and Christine Grogan and findings released last week. It can be found online.