Roxburgh Park Broadmeadows will look to the future after withdrawing from the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association.
The club pulled the pin on its sub-district cricket aspirations on Friday because of a lack of players but will look to play on in other competitions.
Club legend Mick Streiff, who had put his hand up to be president, said the club had worked hard to stay in the sub-district competition.
“We had a committee together of about eight or nine people and had done draft budgets,” Streiff said. “Everything seemed fine … we signed Adam [Yates] and Mitch [Streiff] to be coach and assistant coach.
“We spoke to people about captaining the thirds and fourths and we had numbers for both sides.
“As long as we had enough for the top two sides, we would have been right.”
Streiff said the club thought it had the numbers necessary for the top two sides, but several players had pulled out.
“We had five retirements from the senior side and were looking at getting a few extra players on board,” Streiff said.
“We’d signed a guy from England. One player then said he wasn’t sure if he was staying and it snowballed … we had five or six say they weren’t coming back.”
After several committee meetings and separate discussions with Yates and Mitch Streiff, the Falcons decided they didn’t have the numbers necessary to play on.
“It was a hard decision [but] we had to make the decision now,” Streiff said.
“Adam and Mitch had knocked back offers from other clubs – they had tried hard to get new players but could only get a couple of players who were maybes.”
Streiff, who has been involved with the club for 40 years said he would not stay on as president.
Former club president Ben Wood said since Friday’s decision he had been approached to help set up a new committee.
Headed up by Tyson Sinclair and Matt English, the new committee wanted to continue having both senior and junior sides with a focus on more social cricket.
“The club will survive. The guys who are running it have to make some decisions,” Wood said. “It’s important to ensure we have a club going forward.
“We’ve got strong numbers at a junior level and have the numbers for thirds and fourths.
“Juniors won’t change, but do they want to play in Victorian Turf Cricket Association or in the North West Metropolitan Cricket Association? Or maybe they play in both competitions – they have to sit down and decide where the club heads.”
