By Tara Murray
The Gisborne and District Cricket Association’s McIntyre Cup will revert back to an eight teams as part of a restructure of the competition.
With several teams requesting to drop grades due to losing players, association president Rob McIntyre said they had no choice but to look at a restructure this season.
In an email sent out on Sunday, McIntyre said all grades would revert back to eight teams-per-grade structure and there would be change to the old grading system.
The new system will have four different divisions, with the top three grades to all have firsts and seconds. In the McIntyre Cup, both the first and seconds competitions will have the same teams.
The fourth grade will have north and south divisions to reduce travel.
The McIntyre Cup will remain the top grade, while the B-grade competition will be renamed the District Shield competition. The C-grade competition has been renamed the Sub-District Shield.
The restructure comes as Rupertswood became the second team to request from the top grade.
As first reported by the Star Weekly, Riddell had requested to drop to the second grade after losing a big chunk of its first XI players.
Rupertswood president Peter Kavanagh said they felt dropping to the B-grade competition was the best thing for the club in the long term.
He said they had lost five or six players from their top two sides from last season and would be less competitive than they were last season when they finished eighth in the McIntyre Cup.
The original structure for this season had Rupertswood having a side in each of the top two grades.
“We want to give our kids the chance of enjoying their cricket this year, so we felt that was the best option,” Kavanagh said.
St Anthonys, which was promoted to McIntyre Cup in the original structure for this season, will remain in the B-grade competition where they played last season.
Lancefield which finished bottom of McIntyre Cup will play in Sub-District Shield this season after losing a number of players. Macedon and Kyneton have also dropped to that division.
The top two grades will include seven two-day, five one-day and two T20 matches all played for premiership points, with every team to play each other twice.
How the grades look:
McIntyre Cup
-Bacchus Marsh
-Woodend
-Romsey
-Gisborne
-Sunbury
-Diggers Rest Bulla
-Sunbury United
-Wallan
District Shield
-Riddell
-Rupertswood
-St Anthonys
-Ashfield
-Eynesbury
-East Sunbury
-Bacchus Marsh
-Gisborne
Sub-District Shield
-Lancefield
-Kyneton
-Macedon
-Trentham
-Sunbury United
-Rupertswood
-Melton Centrals
-Gisborne
