By DAVID NAGEL
IT’s not a matter of if… but when… the Beaconsfield Cricket Club will be making the move from the West Gippsland Cricket Association (WGCA) to the Dandenong District Cricket Association (DDCA) in the very near future.
And the reason?
“Being so close to Berwick we have players who want to play turf cricket just drive past the front gate,” Beaconsfield Cricket Club vice-president Steve Glen said.
“We lose players, we lose juniors, right now there are six or seven guys who live close by who just pass on by. We want this club to attract good cricketers, not push them away, and provide the opportunity to play cricket at the ultimate level.”
Beaconsfield Cricket Club has met with both the WGCA and the DDCA and made their intentions clear.
The DDCA, who had initial talks with the club six years ago, are very keen to have the Tigers on board, while the WGCA’s reluctance to make the switch from synthetic to turf could see this as the Tigers final season under their auspice.
The transformation of Perc Allison Oval from a synthetic to turf facility is already a fair way down the track in regards to planning, as Glen explains.
“We’ve done the costing’s and accessed the turf and we expect the delivery of 220 cubic metres of turf soil (high content clay with very little sand or grit) in the late summer months,”
“As soon as the 2014 footy season is finished we’re into it. We dig out a 25 metre by 15 metre square, which will give us five turf pitches; we sprig it with Grand Prix Couch and hope to be playing on it by late 2014. We’ve also allocated four metres for one turf net which will sit beside the five new synthetic nets that were recently installed.”
The cost, with the help of voluntary labour, could be as low as $35,000 while worst case estimates land the project in the $60,000 category.
“Depending on funding, we’ll be gone next season,” Glen said.
“We’ve put in for machinery grants for things like rollers and mowers but we can’t get support with the turf. Then we need hessian covers, normal covers and then a shed to house the stuff. It’s costly but the short-term pain will be worth the long term gain.”
Beaconsfield’s preferred option is to join the DDCA for the 2014/15 season and play all its games away until the wicket is ready halfway through the season.
