Minimum Chips wrote:Tony Clifton wrote:According to Harvey Jolly on that radio interview, 12% of South Australia's youth lives in the City of Onkaparinga. The club asked SACA about this and were told it's about getting to a number. Eight or ten clubs. Population not a consideration.
Seems quite backwards if that's the case.
Surely you look at what is the ideal structure for grade cricket both in terms of number of clubs, catering for all metro and country areas, maximising what we have to work with etc and then work towards that.
Agreed - also the point about Sinclair saying that the "new ground" will be near the city end of the expressway so travel shouldn't be an issue. Easy thing to say when you live in the leafy inner-city suburbs and it's not your problem. Typical arrogance and I would totally understand why families in the southern areas wouldn't want to travel that bit further than they have to already.
When Melbourne went through the merger process with its clubs they relocated clubs further away from the CBD and out into the faster growing population centres. Catering for the urban sprawl.
Seems common sense to me.
I've felt for a while that ND/SD are the canaries in the coal mine. If they are healthy then SA cricket is in a good place. The leafy suburbs and city beachside suburbs will always be cricket strongholds but there is no growth happening there. Improvement won't come from those areas.
North & South is where the population is growing and needs to be harnessed (throw in Mt Barker/Littlehampton too). Also those areas are more vulnerable because some suburbs are lower socio economic ones (so don't play cricket) or have a higher % of multicultural families, many of whom are unfamiliar with the game. Easy for cricket to lose presence in those areas which is disastrous and nigh on impossible to get back.
