Tenth team seeks first grade status

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 40

Tenth team seeks first grade status

By

R. T. BRITTENDEN

Ten teams might compete in next season’s Canterbury Cricket Association’s first grade cricket competition.

An application for admission to the competition will be received by the C.C.A. this week from the cricket section of the Woolston Working Men’s Club.

When the association agreed to give the Marist club a two-year trial in the senior grade, difficulties could be seen in running a nine-team competition, because some Sunday play would have been involved, and weather could penalise the teams playing on one day of the week-end, but not the other.

The association made no approach' to the Woolston W.M.C. club. The idea was that of the St Albans club president, Alan Jamieson.

If Woolston’s application is accepted by the association — and a two-thirds majority will be required at

the annual meeting on August 29 — the association’s constitution would have to be suspended, prob-

ably for a two-year trial period. At present, the rules demand that a senior club should have at least two other teams in the lower grades. Woolston is likely to have only one.

Woolston meets the other requirements for senior status — the provision of a

suitable pitch, and the management of at least two Saturday morning schoolboy teams.

The association’s management committee will meet on Tuesday to discuss the application. If it recommends acceptance — and there is every likelihood of that - it will have to give delegates to the annual meeting 21 days notice of its proposal. There would need to be suspension, too, of another association rule, which requires that a club must have a minimum of three teams before it wins representation on the management committee. The chairman of the committee, Alby Duckmanton, said yesterday that the application was expected, but that receipt of it did not necesarily mean it would be accepted. He commented only that a nine-team draw seemed to be “very messy.” A spokesman for the Woolston club, Gary Baxter,

said that the club’s present top team was not very strong, and much would depend on how much other clubs were prepared to support the move with players. “We will be looking to put in two teams, but the likelihood is that there will be one,” said Mr Baxter. “We could not take the gamble of putting the whole club over. But if it works out all right, the rest of the club might come over later.” There seems little doubt that the opportunity of playing senior cricket under the C.C.A. will appeal to some players in the Suburban Association competitions. The selection last summer of a suburban player, Ken Taylor, for Canterbury, must be an encouragement to others.

Taylor and Baxter, both suburban representatives, belong to the Woolston club, so do other suburban representatives, John Fielding, Ken Stagg and Phil Gruppelaar.