BOTH major south-west cricket associations will use meetings within the next week to nail down plans for their upcoming seasons.
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The Warrnambool and District Cricket Association on Wednesday conceded it could postpone its preferred October 2 start date after regional Victoria was released from a coronavirus-enforced lockdown on Wednesday.
WDCA chairman Gordon McLeod said with restrictions - which currently only permit community sporting clubs to train instead of playing competitive fixtures - in place until the end of September the fixture needed to be flexible.
He said the association, which will start the campaign with one-day fixtures on hard wickets, would meet on Monday in a bid to finalise its plans for the summer.
It may slightly adjust our season. We were looking at having staggered starts for divisions but we may just have to start them all together.
- Gordon McLeod
South West Cricket Association operations manager Fraser Lucas, meanwhile, told The Standard it was in the process of finalising fixtures and playing conditions and would release details in the coming weeks.
McLeod said the ultimate aim was to get as much cricket played as possible and to give participants an outlet in a COVID-interrupted year.
"It may slightly adjust our season. We were looking at having staggered starts for divisions but we may just have to start them all together," he said.
"We might push them back a week or something. We probably have to open up a couple more one-day games earlier in the season and hopefully there's a bit more surety and we don't get affected by other restrictions until we get to the real opening up.
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"We'll go through what we can and can't do on Monday as we'll be allowed to meet and adjust the fixture to make it a little bit more meaningful I suppose and try not to waste time.
"We'll give clubs some (time) for training but we don't want to be just training and not playing."
McLeod said the best interest of the sport, players and clubs would be at the heart of any decision-making.
McLeod said the much-discussed promotion and relegation concept wouldn't be implemented this coming season but was on the agenda.
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