Prospect Cricket Club captain Ben Turley leaves Pirates to return to Woodville Cricket Club
Captain one week, gone the next. A grade cricket skipper has made a surprise mid-season move, leaving his winless team and returning to his former club.
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Prospect captain Ben Turley has pulled a surprise mid-season move and switched grade cricket allegiances to return to former club Woodville.
Turley has skippered the Pirates in all five of their matches this season, including last Saturday’s loss to Glenelg, but will take to the field for the Peckers this Saturday.
He played juniors and seniors at Woodville before departing ahead of the 2018/19 season to take the captaincy role at Prospect.
Turley said he met with Pirates officials on Wednesday night and then informed the club on Thursday he would be leaving.
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The allrounder said poor results on-field – Prospect is yet to win a game this season – and “behind-the-scenes issues” were the reasons behind his departure.
However, Turley would not go into detail about the issues.
“It was sort of mutually agreed that it would be best that I moved on,” he told The Messenger.
“Some things happened that I felt I was dragged through the mud a little bit and couldn’t move past it and my position at the club became a bit untenable.
“I enjoyed my time at Prospect but I just wasn’t enjoying my cricket as much as I would have liked. Then from there the decision was easy to go back to Woodville.
“The results do play a part in me enjoying my cricket, but the (Prospect) group was so young and I was probably mentally at a different level to where some of those guys were at.
“At the end of the day we’re playing A grade premier cricket, not park cricket where one or no trainings a week is going to cut the mustard.”
Turley welcomed the prospect of returning to Woodville, where he played for 15 years before joining the Pirates.
But Prospect coach Andrew Zesers said the club “was definitely not happy” about Turley’s departure.
“He told us he wanted to go back (to Woodville) and play with his mates,” Zesers said.
“There’s not much you can you do, we could cry and scream about it but what’s happened has happened and we’ll move on.”
Players are free to move between grade cricket clubs before the mid-season deadline, provided both clubs agree to the move and they don’t owe anything financially.
Woodville coach Peter Sleep said the club was surprised by Turley’s return.
“It’s all been done in a bit of a rush,” Sleep said.
“He’s decided to come back to us and it’s fantastic to have him back home, so to speak,”
“He’ll make a very good inclusion for us.”
Turley will face Prospect for the first time following the move in a Twenty20 clash at Prospect Oval on Saturday, January 4.
Vice-captain Harvey Brennan will skipper the Pirates for their two-day clash against Tea Tree Gully this Saturday at Prospect Oval.