Paul Barnes confirms Goulburn-Yass cricket merger is still likely

YDCA President Paul Barnes said that the merger was rushed, due to its close proximity to the start of the season, and that there was not the time to hash out the fine details as necessary. 

“We always knew it was optimistic. Goulburn only approached us in September,” Mr Barnes said. 

“They feel that their association as it is at the moment can’t survive too much longer without doing something like this.” 

This, according to Mr Barnes, is the same issue faced by many clubs around country NSW, and he believes that youth is both the problem and the solution. 

“We’re in a reasonably strong position right now, but I think country cricket throughout NSW has got the same issue, that it’s tough to keep younger people engaged in playing cricket,” he said. 

“And that’s certainly the challenge we’ve got in the next five, 10 years.” 

Despite the fact that the merger fell through in its initial iteration, Mr Barnes confirmed that the two clubs will try again at the end of this season to work towards combining their tournaments for the 2018/19 season. 

Another problem, according to Mr Barnes, was that they might have aimed for too much with the initial agreement, and he conceded that less might indeed be more for next year. 

“So the initial concept is that Goulburn would bring five teams and we would bring six teams,” he said. 

“I think that’s one of the main issues is that that’s a very large number of teams, and the standard within those teams is quite varied.

“The proposal that I want to work more towards with Goulburn would be that each association only brings three teams, and essentially create a super league.”

A smaller-scale tournament would also mean that some of the clubs would need to merge, in order to ensure that the competition was not over-saturated. 

“There’s a few likely candidates there, like the golf club’s got two A Grade teams, so if they were to merge and just become the golf club [team],” Mr Barnes said.