Cricket Victoria agrees to delay start of season to help footy
Cricket Victoria has agreed to delay the start of its season to pave the way for football to move finals into October. Here is how it will all pan out should footy get underway.
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Cricket is going into bat for community football.
The sport’s authority, Cricket Victoria, has cleared the way for AFL Victoria to play through the first three weekends of October, should local football competitions get underway.
CV has agreed to AFL Vic’s request to cut into the start of cricket and run finals for shortened football seasons.
Even if football doesn’t get underway until the first Saturday of August, it now has the scope to use nine Saturdays before October: August 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, and September 5, 12, 19 and 26.
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Under the agreement, home-and-away games for senior and junior football must finish before Sunday, September 27 and junior finals must be concluded before Sunday, October 11.
Senior finals must be wrapped up by Sunday, October 18.
But no football games can be scheduled on any of the 21 Premier Cricket grounds after October 1.
CV will have the option of starting the Premier Cricket season on Saturday, October 10.
Under the deal, it will also have the ability to schedule finals through to April 25, 2021.
Junior cricket will be permitted to start on Friday, October 16 and senior competitions from Friday, October 23.
AFL Victoria had told CV the impact of COVID-19 was “possibly the greatest challenge each of our sports have ever faced’’.
Local football leagues and cricket associations are being encouraged to work with local councils to identify grounds for football finals to help plan both seasons.
“This delivers a fair outcome for both cricket and football to conduct our seasons as close to normal as we can in the current landscape,’’ Cricket Victoria CEO Andrew Ingleton said.
“We understand our respective communities and our partners in state and local government are looking for clear direction on upcoming seasons and this agreement provides that.
“I’d like to thank AFL Victoria and our team at Cricket Victoria for their comprehensive work to deliver this.”
AFL Victoria head of community football Stephen O’Donohue said: “We are pleased to have reached this outcome for cricket and football in Victoria, sports that mean so much to many people in communities across the state.
“We will continue to consult closely with the State Government and relevant medical authorities, and if a further easing of restrictions is to occur, we now have the flexibility that provides local football leagues with an opportunity to hopefully get games away in the coming months.”
The Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association had supported AFL Victoria’s approach.
VSDCA secretary Ken Hilton said: “We think we’ve all got to compromise a little bit to support each other.
“Easter (in 2021) is April 2 so we’d have to finish our season by the last weekend in March.
“So to achieve that and play 13 rounds plus the three finals rounds, we’ll probably have to change the mix of two and one-day games.
“But if we can get away late October or early November, we’re still confident we can get the 13 rounds in and be finished by the end of March.
“This is a really unique situation and we can work in with each other we can make it work for both sports. That was our position to Cricket Victoria.’’
AFL Outer East region manager Aaron Bailey welcomed the announcement ahead of the league’s release of a road map to the return of football on June 2.
“We have three or four of our grounds, and quite a few across the region, that don’t have cricket pitches, so we were fortunate in that regard.
“But this provides us with a clear (cricket) start date that we can work towards.”
Ferntree Gully and District Cricket Association president Colin Capon said his association would be able to absorb the three weeks with some adjustment to the fixtures.
He said it was important all sports worked together in an exceptional time.
“If it’s only three weeks, it’s really only a slight change, we’ll make it up somehow,” Capon said. “Whether we just play a couple of one-dayers or, like Premier Cricket, a Saturday/Sunday game.
“We just want people to get back into community sport. This is a mental health issue, you just want people to start getting out and doing some ‘normal’ things.”
Eastern Cricket Association president Richard Barker said more information was needed before fixtures could be tweaked.
“The upshot of that is we have to work out if they (football) have finals, what grounds will they be using,” he said.
“If that’s the plan, what grounds are they going to use so that we know what grounds we are going to use.
“We have an executive meeting on Monday, so no doubt we’ll start discussing that.”
Barker said the association hoped to maintain its 14-round season by condensing some two-day matches into one-dayers rather than playing on Sundays.
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