By Molly Magennis
From struggling to field two senior teams to now having four men’s teams and a women’s, the Williamstown CYMS cricket club’s strong focus on community has helped them grow exponentially as they head into the 2021-22 season.
Coach Brad Robertson said that the Williamstown CYMS sporting club as a whole has really developed over the past few years, and the strong community the football club in particular has created was something that the cricket club wanted to emulate.
“The football club in particular has gone from strength to strength in the last sort of five to ten years,” he said.
The cricket club kind of wanted to emulate that in a way I suppose and just create a really healthy community club for the summer as well as the winter.”
Robertson said the leadership figures within the club put a specific plan in place several years ago determining what kind of direction the club wanted to head in.
“They’ve kind of remained pretty true and pretty strong with that direction and [we’re] probably starting to see some pay off just with the numbers,” he said.
“The numbers at training and the numbers playing on a weekend have been healthy, which from our point of view is the goal. It’s the number one goal of the club.”
Looking ahead to the upcoming season, while success on the field would be nice, player development and a focus on individual growth is the clubs main priority.
“[We want to] keep investing time into the development of each individual player, not just as a cricketer but as a person, as a young man,” Robertson said.
“Success, premierships, wins, all that sport of stuff, they’re gonna be happy by-products of what our real goal is.”
Kieren Gray, former captain-coach of the Aberfeldie senior division, is a welcome new addition to men’s first XI.
“He’s come on as assistant coach and will provide a lot of experience and leadership and hopefully some runs as well,” Robertson said.
Most importantly Robertson said he is looking forward to getting supporters back down to the club.
“We get lots of messages from the faithful supporters asking when they’re gonna be allowed to come down and watch, when the bars are gonna be open, and are they able to come down and watch training,” he said.
“The social side of things is really important to the club, probably almost as important as the on field stuff. So we are really looking forward to get that sort of stuff back.”
The CY’s are set to take on Royal Park-Brunswick this Saturday at Ransford oval.
