Veteran administrator calls for big changes to Melbourne Country Week

Melbourne Country Week will die unless its format changes, according to a former top cricket administrator. He has a blueprint to rejuvenate the time-honoured competition.

Geelong Cricket Association players celebrate a wicket at last season’s Country Week carnival. Picture: Mark Wilson

Fearing for the future of Melbourne Country Week, a former regional cricket head is calling for the time-honoured carnival to be revamped to include metropolitan competitions.

George Munro, a long-time chairman of Gippsland cricket and board member of the Victorian Country Cricket League, believes Country Week will die unless changes are made.

Munro was a regular in Central Gippsland teams that contested the century-old competition.

He also coached the Traralgon association to successive Country Weeks titles.

Central Gippsland merged with Traralgon to form Cricket Latrobe Valley, which has decided not to send a side this season.

It’s the first time in many years that the area will not be represented in CW.

Warrnambool and District Cricket Association batsman Chris Bant splashes out with a cover drive at Melbourne Country Week. Picture: Mark Wilson

Melbourne Country Week had two divisions last season, including an XI supplied by Victorian Premier Cricket club Kingston Hawthorn.

Munro said it had eight divisions when he played – “and there was a waiting list’’.

He said it was time to try to rejuvenate a competition that began in 1922 and is played on Victorian Premier Cricket and Sub-District grounds.

Munro said Melbourne Country Week should be renamed Cricket Week and metropolitan associations, such as Cricket Southern Bayside and the Victorian Turf Cricket Association, should be invited to enter teams.

He said it would boost numbers and interest.

“I don’t want to see representative cricket disappear but unfortunately we’ve lost many associations over the years,’’ Munro said.

“To my way of thinking, we’ve got to think outside the square to get more participation, and the best way to do that is open it up to make it a cricket week and introduce the metropolitan teams and country teams and promote it as a festival of local cricket.

“I think it needs to be revamped. We need to try to put on something good for the players, something different, not just sit back and wait for it to die.’’

Geelong Cricket Association bowler Bailey Sykes. Picture: Mark Wilson

Munro said there was a range of reasons why the number of teams had fallen over the years, including players’ work commitments and the inability to take leave, family demands, costs and changes in society.

“Farming communities have dwindled. People have moved to the cities. A lot of younger players no longer reside in the country,’’ he said.

He said the standard had fallen away and led to a drop-off in players who wanted to test themselves against the best.

Some associations were also preferring to spend their money on junior development programs rather than on Country Week campaigns.

Cricket Latrobe Valley president Brad Howlett said his 19-club association had only four players committed to playing Country Week this season.

He said others had made themselves available for one or two matches and in the end officials, reluctant to enter a “third-rate’’ team, decided to pull the pin.

Howlett said it cost his association $10,000 to field a Country Week team.

“It wasn’t worth the financial impost on the clubs,’’ he said.

Bellarine Peninsula won the 2019-20 Division 3 Country Week title. Picture: Stephen Harman

Howlett said people in his association had informally discussed the concept of taking Country Week to regions.

“Instead of being a metropolitan-based thing, it could be regional-based, shuffling it around, one year holding it in Cricket Latrobe Valley and Warragul and the next year in Ballarat and then Bendigo and so on, so that every four or five years you’re not paying the travel costs you are at the moment,’’ he said.

Former Tasmanian paceman Mark Ridgway, who represented the Warragul association at a number of carnivals, has suggested that Country Week become a region-based competition.

He said the Gippsland associations, for example, could put up a combined team against other zones.

It’s understood 18 teams will make up two divisions in next month’s 102nd edition of Melbourne Country Week carnival.

Last season, Ferntree Gully District, Geelong, Leongatha, Sale-Maffra, Bendigo, Wangaratta, Mornington Peninsula and Warrnambool and District made up the top grade, Provincial.

Ballarat, Latrobe Valley, Hamilton, Casey-Cardinia, Bairnsdale, Maryborough, South West, Sunraysia, Bellarine and a Kingston-Hawthorn Under 18 team were in Division 2.

Originally published as Veteran administrator calls for big changes to Melbourne Country Week