Sport
16 May, 2026
Pies’ fraught fixture
A FIXTURING nightmare has Boort’s A Grade netball side scrambling for a practice match opponent as the Magpies face a full month with only one competitive game.
A FIXTURING nightmare has Boort’s A Grade netball side scrambling for a practice match opponent as the Magpies face a full month with only one competitive game.
The North Central fixture has three league-wide byes in the first six rounds, which is a momentum breaker on its own, providing lots of time for recovery but not much for maintaining winning form.
And with the withdrawal of St Arnaud from A Grade competition this season due to a lack of player numbers, Boort will miss another week when it was scheduled to meet the Saints.
This Saturday is a bye weekend for junior hockey championships, after which Boort will meet fierce local rivals Wedderburn in a clash of the two top teams on the ladder.
But the following week the Magpies were drawn to play St Arnaud – before another bye for the King’s Birthday long weekend.
A frustrated Boort coach Carly Isaac said the club would have to play internal practice matches if an opponent could not be found.
She said it was difficult because other leagues did not have such a stop-start fixture as North Central’s, and the Magpies might have to rely on luring another team with a bye onto the court.
That seems a slim chance, with byes much less frequent in neighbouring leagues likely to be the source of a team prepared to play a practice game.
The Loddon Valley league, for example, has only one bye for the year, with a split round over the King’s Birthday and the following round to allow Inglewood a standalone game against Bears Lagoon Serpentine to mark its 150th anniversary.
For Isaac, the prospect of pitting her A Grade stars against Boort’s Under 17 team had some appeal.
The young Magpies are unbeaten on top of the ladder, and Isaac believed they would provide a serious contest for the seniors.
“We want to get some work into the legs,” she said, with match fitness critical to the team’s plans.”
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