THE weather is heating up, the sun is out shining, and the return of country cricket in the Wangaratta and District Cricket Association is right around the corner.
WDCA president Greg Hoysted confirmed the association is working towards a start to the season on Saturday, October 9, but said the shadow of COVID restrictions was never far from thought.
"We're into spring now – in a normal year, clubs would be in training now and starting to get ready, but we've all just got to wait," he said.
"Like everybody else, with COVID, we're in a bit of a holding pattern.
"We've got plans, but we're not going too far with releasing or publicising or things like that.
"We just don't know when we'll actually be able to do anything.
"We've got a target start date of October 9, but we're pretty flexible at the moment – if we can't start then, we can roll things back and start when we can and hopefully get through a season."
While preparations for the season hinge on current restrictions, Hoysted said contingency plans were being drawn up to successfully run a sporting competition in a pandemic.
"Our plan is to try and make sure we get through a complete round of matches as quickly as we can in the season," he said.
"Therefore if things do go south, we can at least have the discussion about, if there is an outbreak later, whether we need to stop the season and go into finals, or not play finals.
"In our plans, we're giving ourselves options.
"Ideally, obviously, we'd complete a whole season but we give ourselves possibilities of alternatives if we need them."
Hoysted will meet with the clubs online Monday night, to touch base with all stakeholders as well as vote on adding another club to the association.
"Merton Cricket Club, they used to play in the Benalla and District Association and then they played in the Seymour association, and then they went into recess for a couple of years," Hoysted said.
"Now they're reforming and have applied to join us.
"That's been the journey of the competition over the last 20 years now – as other, smaller competitions in the North East have dropped away, their clubs have come into the Wangaratta competition.
"Obviously if the clubs vote to accept them, then we will look at things like that and whether there are some things we can do in the draw to try and reduce the travel a bit."
With some restrictions set to ease for regional Victoria in the coming weeks, cricketers all across the North East are gearing up to slap on the whites, roll the arm over, and get ready for the summer of cricket.
