Clubs are Going to Go - Sydney Cricket Association

Western Suburbs District Cricket Club Sydney | August 07, 2024

This is an extract from "Cricket in Black and White: 110 Not Out: The history of Western Suburbs District Cricket Club. Published in 2006

 

Nothing has caused quite so much controversy in Grade cricket as the introduction, in 1985, of the twenty- team competition. Ever since the introduction of the three new clubs, the expanded competition has had fierce opponents. The grounds for the opposition vary: some have argued that fewer teams would concentrate talent and lift the standard of the competition; some say that a smaller competition would be fairer as each team could play each other team once during the season; others have opposed the existence of University clubs, and others believe that the clubs are located in the wrong areas. It is a debate that has shed more heat than light, fuelled by the inevitable fact that in any particular season there are one or two clubs that are observably weaker than most of the others.

In 1989, the Sydney Cricket Association Committee of Management was charged with producing a report that would recommend the number of clubs that should compete in Grade cricket, and the areas in which those clubs should be located. That report recommended that there should be sixteen clubs, and that only one should come from the inner-western suburbs where Wests and Petersham-Marrickville were based.

The report was read and digested by the New South Wales Cricket Association Board, which reserved to itself the power to decide which clubs would play in the Grade competition. But no action was taken to put into practice the report's recommendations. The issue didn't go away, but festered for four years until 1993-94, when the Sydney Cricket Association proposed another restructure - which the Board again declined to implement. Instead, in 1997-98, the Board requested its management to prepare a Strategic Plan for New South Wales cricket, key elements of which were a reduction to sixteen teams and the relocation of one club to Blacktown.

And, again, nothing happened. The Board knew that if it removed clubs from the Grade competition, one or more of them would contest the decision in court; and a leaked memorandum prepared by one Board member appeared to provide fuel for an argument that he, at least, had made up his mind on some of the issues long before the Strategic Plan had been delivered. The prospect of going through the difficult process of ejecting clubs from the competition, and then contesting a claim for denial of natural justice, was just too unpalatable and plans to restructure the competition were shelved.

From the outset, David O'Neil recalls, Western Suburbs adopted a simple strategy:

Maximum resistance! We had our ups and downs, and we'd acknowledge that the demographics made it hard. The new clubs had massive population bases and a lot of the inner-city clubs didn't, and found that hard. But we didn't think the right approach was to kick clubs out. Noel Laming was the Chairman of the Sydney Cricket Association throughout that time and Noel seemed to have a bent to get rid of clubs - he thought poorly of Petersham and us, and seemed to want to get rid of us and get Blacktown in. But it wasn't Noel's decision, of course, the Board of the NSWCA had to make the decision

As early as 1993, David O'Neil attended a meeting with Alan Crompton, then the Chairman of the Board, "and he said, 'the Board's decided that clubs are going to go, and you're one of them, even though we know you've got your centenary coming up. And, this wasn't Alan's doing, but it became a farce, really, because there'd always be these threats to kick out clubs and then it would never happen. It was a very sad chapter in Sydney cricket's history. The Association never got a handle on the right way to go about it, if there is a right way. Happily, the whole environment has changed now."

At one stage, in 1998, it appeared likely that Western Suburbs would merge with its neighbouring club, Petersham-Marrickville. “Although”, David O’Neil remembers, “it wasn’t called a merger, but they would play with us for a year. Chris O'Neil and I went to a meeting of the Petersham club where they voted in favour of the idea. We had our meeting at Wests the next night, but before that we spoke to the Association and no-one was sure what Petersham had agreed. And we had particular requirements about how the team would be styled, because of our major sponsor Wests Leagues (now Wests Ashfield) and no-one was sure how that would work. Then Petersham had another meeting and this time the vote was different. The best thing happened, because it would have been a very unhappy union, however it was going to occur."

The Petersham-Marrickville club eventually buckled to the pressure: when the Board engaged in yet another review of the competition, in 2000, it merged with another threatened club, Randwick, to form Randwick-Petersham. But Western Suburbs, again, weathered the storm, to emerge from a dozen difficult years with its identity intact.

The precise impact of this struggle upon the Club is difficult to measure, but Bernie O'Neil is certain that:

The seemingly never- ending attack on our Club made administration ever more difficult. It affected retention of players and relations with Councils and caused a loss of personal contributions by club supporters. Too much of our energy was taken away from running the club and directed towards resisting the Sydney Cricket Association. As the Club was run by volunteers, on a small budget, any distraction was both unwelcome and debilitating. As a delegate to the Sydney and New South Wales Associations at that time I saw and lived through this at first hand as well as at Club level. It was extremely divisive, imposing a reduction to 16 clubs, but also severely crippled those clubs that were targeted.