North West Metro Cricket Association’s newest team is finally underway.
The Barkly St Dragons officially launched their Musgrove Shield season on Sunday, however, it wasn’t the start the Dragons dreamt of, losing to Tullamarine.
Last week the Dragons were set to kick off, but rain mid game, resulted in a no-contest.
Captain-coach of the Dragons Patrick Duggan said it was good to get underway.
“A few of us are big cricket fans and a few of the boys always wanted to play together, but we’ve all played at different levels of cricket,” Duggan said.
“It’s been in the works for a while, it was sort of one of those things that never makes it out of the group chat.
“Then it was the start of this year when cricket was finishing up for last season, I said to a few of the boys ‘if you want to do it, lets get it underway now’ and it sort of grew legs from there.
“We had some of the boys who had played junior cricket come and ended up having some boys come who haven’t played cricket before as well.
“It’s been good, everyone wanted to do something on their Sundays and do something together which is nice.”
On the weekend, the Dragons won the toss and elected to bat, unfortunately with not much success.
“We were in a bit of a shambles there for a while,” Duggan said.
“It started raining and trying to bat and we ended up getting rolled for about 70 odd which wasn’t ideal.
“There were a few ducks there as well, so it wasn’t great.”
Tom Gleeson and Duggan’s father, who was filling in for the side, top scored with 13 and 17 respectively, yet it was not enough, with the side finishing their innings on 68.
With the ball, Duggan said he is already seeing improvements in his side.
“The week before when we were bowling I think we dropped something like 13 catches,” he said.
“It’s been a bit of a slow start to the season.
“I think we’re all starting to get a bit antsy now, we might have to do something this week, a bit of fielding practice and maybe a bit of time in the nets.”
While it has been a shaky start for the Dragons, with some more time playing together and some handy players expected to come into the starting XI, Duggan remains bullish on what his side can do.
“ I think the sides that have been beating us, I don’t think they’ve been that great, we’ve just been really bad,” he said.
“So I think if we can pull something together, I think we can probably play finals and hopefully string it together at the right time of the year.”
