Junior Meeting Plans Improvements
The open meeting of junior officials held in February recommeded and endorsed a range of measures for next season:
- Require clubs to register individual contact persons for each of their junior teams at the conclusion of their first match. Subsequent correspondence relevant to those teams to be sent direct to the contact persons concerned with a copy to the club secretary.
- Information on Dowling and Hatch Shield selection process to be obtained from local District and Sub-District clubs and circulated to NWCA clubs. Names and addresses of players identified through NWCA development programs to be supplied to the senior clubs so they can directly invite players to try out for Dowling and Hatch.
- Early season briefings of age group officials to be held in conjunction with demonstration of training activities provided through VCA coaching program.
- The NWCA to foster a higher level of local participation in the VTCA Under 16 Sunday turf competition. Some of the strongest clubs should enter their own sides, which could include some borrowed players, while the NWCA Under 16 development program should coordinate some extra teams. Experience with Coburg District and EBKCA Sunday competitions indicates potential demand for six teams.
- The first round of trials for the Under 12 development program, including Mitchell Shield, to be held in three locations--North, West and Inner.
- Under 14 development program to be upgraded through addition of an IACC side. Availability of helpers and potential sponsors indicated.
- The NWCA Umpires Association to recruit and appoint independent paid umpires to Under 16 matches.
- Clubs to be reminded of the opportunity to conduct Have A Go clinics (formerly VicHit) which complement our Under 10 competition. The two clubs with the biggest clinics in the North West, Taylors Lakes and Airport West-St. Christophers, made this season's Under 12 A grand final.
- In Under 12, the home team to provide both balls--142 gram leather when playing on synthetic or 142 gram plastic when playing on bare concrete.
- The NWCA to raise with the Cricket Union the possibility of increasing the Mitchell Shield boundary radius to a distance more appropriate to elite Under 12s.