Sport
11 January, 2026
SUMMER READING Etched in cricket history
Halcyon days are long gone the the memories of these clubs live on
SCANNING a list of premier teams in the Upper Loddon Cricket Association is like reading the headstones in a cemetery.
The names of long-gone clubs – at least from the Upper Loddon competition – such as Woodstock, Moliagul, Newbridge, Korong Vale, Serpentine, Inglewood, Marong, Wedderburn Gold and Tarnagulla leap out from the page.
A thriving league that comprised 13 teams as recently as 2001, including Bridgewater Red and Bridgewater White, is now down to five.
Last season Bridgewater, with 24 premierships since 1954-55 easily the best-performed club in Upper Loddon history, could not field a single team and the competition was reduced to four sides.
This led to the bizarre outcome of Arnold collecting the wooden spoon for finishing last in the 2023-24 home and away season and then taking out the premiership with two shock finals wins.
In the current season, the Bulls have returned with senior and junior sides, but have struggled for numbers, with many juniors pulling on the whites for the senior team in the afternoon after a match in the morning.
That is true of most clubs, with teams fielding up to half a dozen juniors in a boys (and girls) against men scenario.
Twice, senior games have not gone ahead because of a lack of players.
Wedderburn Band forfeited its match against Arnold on January 18, and last Saturday Boort Yando and Bridgewater agreed to turn their two-day contest into a one-day game to avoid the need for a forfeit by the Bulls.
At the junior level it has sometimes been all hands on deck to ensure matches go ahead.
Kingower junior Abby Wilson even batted one week for Boort Yando to help make up the numbers.
The raw figures are stark.
Five teams are contesting the 2024-25 season in the seniors, and just four in the junior division, with Arnold unable to field a youth side. This means talented Redback juniors such as Georgia Hancock, who has filled in with the seniors this season, are forced to look elsewhere to play their age-appropriate cricket.
Among the defunct teams, Woodstock was a standout, with 12 premierships between 1958-59 and 1993-94.
Yet within a few years of its last triumph, the club was gone.
Marong – now playing in the Bendigo league – won three Upper Loddon premierships, the last of which was in 1980-81.
Inglewood won eight, the most recent in 2007-08, but its involvement in the competition now is a loose arrangement with Bridgewater to encourage locals to join the Bulls, a plan which has met with limited success.
Wedderburn Gold, Bridgewater Red and Bridgewater White all won premierships in the 1980s and 1990s, highlighting the strength of cricket in those towns at that time.
Moliagul was runner up three times in the 1960s and early 1970s, while Korong Vale finished second in 1967-68 and 1968-69. Tarnagulla was not successful on the field, but its historic cricket ground, which boasts the oldest wooden grandstand in Victoria, hosted a grand final between Wedderburn Band and Kingower as recently as 2012.
And the 2019-20 grand final was played at Newbridge.
There are many reasons why towns can no longer field a team.
Population loss is one: smaller places such as Woodstock, Tarnagulla and Moliagul simply don’t have enough potential players to draw on. The dominance of Australian football is another, with talented young players required to train earlier than ever for the winter season, often making them unavailable for cricket.
At the higher levels, young footballers are actively discouraged from playing cricket by football clubs for fear of injury.
Playing other summer sports such as tennis can also mean choosing between one sport and another.
In the Loddon region, the harvest period always plays a significant role in player availability, especially in more rural areas of the shire such as Boort.
Harvest, an unpredictable beast at the best of times, usually means pre-Christmas teams are harder to put together than post-Christmas.
And then there are summer holidays, with some clubs struggling to fill teams while the school break continues.
Association president John Daldy said he would “love to see a lot of those old clubs back, but as lot of them have already joined up with other clubs.
“I’d love to see Newbridge back, and Inglewood, and with the number of juniors starting to come through there might be an opportunity in the future.”
One universally praised innovation this season is the debut of T20 cricket in the Upper Loddon.
Four rounds led to the final, in which Kingower beat Wedderburn Band to claim the Loddon Herald Cup.
The shorter format, with matches sometimes completed within a couple of hours, means players do not have to commit so much time to their sport.
The general view is that more players would make themselves available for cricket if the time spent on Saturdays is reduced.
The Association is committed to scheduling T20 matches in the future but also wants to see traditional two-day matches take their place on the calendar.
Daldy said the success of T20 this season showed the way forward: “What I have seen this year is that the format has sparked interest and brought back some older players as well as juniors.”
Talented Boort youngster Cooper Gooding is an interesting test case on the football versus cricket issue.
At 15, he is taking all before him with unbeaten Boort Yando in the junior competition and has also made several senior appearances.
This is without being able to practice for cricket due to football training commitments with the elite Bendigo Pioneers under-15 representative squad.
His mother Kristen, who is also Boort Yando club secretary, said Cooper had not yet been forced to decide between football and cricket, but the Pioneers had made it clear he needed to prioritise one sport – and he had chosen football.
“Number one is football – he loves football more and it will always come first,” Kristen said.
In a nutshell, that is cricket’s dilemma.
Upper Loddon cricket’s halcyon days were when locals simply played footy in winter and cricket in summer.
Cricket was training for football – you were keeping fit during the football off-season – and there was never a clash or an overlap with training.
Now, young players are being asked to make a call between sporting loves – and increasingly early in their emerging careers.