By Colin MacGillivray
THE Seymour District Cricket Association’s 2022-23 season remains in hiatus four weeks after its scheduled start date, with flooding in Seymour adding to uncertainty about when its A Grade competition will commence.
Reigning premier Eastern Hill’s home at Kings Park was flooded along with much of central Seymour, with water remaining on the oval more than a week after the Goulburn River first rose.
Eastern Hill president Mark White said while Kings Park remained unusable, the club was keen to achieve a compromise that would allow play to get underway as soon as possible.
“We’re going to speak to the SDCA in the next day or two and perhaps look at playing some away games that were allocated at our ground and then try to get some home games back from those clubs later in the year to even the draw out,” he said.
“We’re coming up to round four and the whole competition hasn’t played any cricket yet. It’s not ideal, but there’s not much you can do.
“There is still a lot of water around. When I went on Saturday you still weren’t able to go through the main entrance to Kings Park because it was underwater.”
Mr White said floodwaters had prevented the club from assessing the full extent of the damage.
“On [Saturday] there was still water on about a quarter of the ground … [including] in the storeroom underneath the scoreboard where our roller is,” he said.
“We haven’t even been able to pull our roller out to see if it’s affected, which we believe it is.”
Mr White said even if the floodwaters disappeared overnight, it would be a long time until the ground was fit for play.
“Even if our ground was accessible right now and our roller worked, we wouldn’t be able to get the roller out to the pitch because the ground is too waterlogged, and you’d just get bogged down,” he said.
“You’d create a massive hole just getting the roller out there. We need the sun out to dry out the pitch, and that’s not happening any time soon.”
SDCA president Ben Trezise said the association would work with Eastern Hill and the rest of its clubs to allow play to commence as soon as possible.
He was unable to confirm if A Grade matches would proceed this weekend, but said junior competition had been postponed until the first weekend of November.
“Potentially we might be able to get a game going this week, but we’ll have to see how all the clubs are going,” he said.
“We want to play cricket, but we don’t want to be heartless to people who have lost their properties or anything like that.
“On the other hand, we haven’t played a game at all this season and for some people it would allow them to get back to a little bit of normality.”
Mr Trezise said people could follow the SDCA’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SeymourDCA for updates about this weekend’s scheduled games.
Mr White said while the floods had been a big setback for Eastern Hill after its A Grade premiership last season, the support of the Seymour community had been greatly appreciated by all associated with the Eagles.
“People are certainly giving their time to help us and everyone else out as much as they can,” he said.
“People like Stuart Kilgour [of Allround Contracting] have donated skips for not just our rooms, but other areas of Kings Park.
“We had a guy who came up from Melbourne on Saturday with a petrol gurney to clean off our covers because the power was out so we needed a petrol one.
“It’s a matter of frustration at the moment because we can’t do anything about the weather, but everyone is helping out.”
