Sport
13 November, 2024
Local cricket clubs combine
The Wamuran-Stanley River Cricket Club is dissolving into the Caboolture Sports Cricket Club to boost cricket’s growth across Moreton Bay and improve access to playing facilities.
The Sunshine Coast Cricket Association aims to consolidate clubs into five to six larger entities, with more teams per division, rather than managing several smaller clubs.
This vision has driven the decision for Wamuran to dissolve as a standalone club from next season.
Wamuran will likely have a subcommittee within the Caboolture club to help manage the facilities previously leased by Wamuran.
Wamuran-Stanley River Cricket Club president, Aaron Phillips, said both clubs are working together to make this change a positive for the community.
“It’s not so much us wanting to get rid of Wamuran or anything,” he said. “It’s more how do we capitalise on this opportunity and turn it into a positive outcome.”
“Caboolture will be able to take advantage of the facilities to keep using them.”
Aaron added it was important to ensure there are still junior cricket pathways available in Moreton Bay.
“We have really large junior numbers, and we want to bring that to Caboolture because the bare bones for that is here in the community already,” he said.
“Through partnering with Caboolture, we are able to maintain that and give players in the community somewhere to play cricket on a Saturday.”
Aaron said the plan is for junior grade games to be held at Wamuran, while senior grade games will be held at Caboolture, which has excellent facilities.
Caboolture Cricket Club president, Ben Stuart, noted that Caboolture is at full capacity, so joining forces with the Wamuran-Stanley River Club will give them access to more facilities.
“This fills a need for us. Wamuran were happy to give up the lease, and council is going to give us the tenure,” he said.
“It’s another field that we can utilise, so we can continue to support their growth and not turn people away and say they can’t play.”
Ben said it was crucial that neighbouring local cricket clubs should support each other to keep the sport thriving in the area.
“The more chances we get to reach out and help these clubs and get people to still play cricket, that’s the main goal,” he said.
“Especially with both of our junior bases, if we keep growing it, then we can hopefully have Australian test players, male or female, playing from our clubs.”
“We are really looking to expand the sport in the area, we had a lot of growth in the last couple of seasons, and we want to spread our wings into the region."
