By Tania Phillips
Players from around Queensland and Northern NSW are expected to converge on Warwick on Friday and Saturday for the much-loved annual Warwick Cricket Australia Day Carnival.
According to Warwick Cricket President Andrew Bryson the competition is a “heritage event” – an important part of life on the Southern Downs and Granite Belt. With many other sports choosing not to hold events this weekend to not compete with it, that certainly seems to be true.
The event has a proud history and garners a lot of love from the community – it’s often the place to be on Australia Day and has been for many years.
“It’s hard to get an exact start date on when it started but it’s 40 plus years old,” Bryson said.
“It’s probably one of those heritage events on the Warwick calendar. We’re down on numbers a little bit this year but we’ve still got 27 teams. Traditionally each team, with supporters, probably features from 30 to 60 plus people so it does bring a lot of people into town.
“There are a lot of people who were born and grew up in Warwick and have gone away, who use it as an event to catch up and come home. A lot of the teams too are memorial-style teams so they are in memory of ex-local identities who have passed away whether they be cricketers or boxers.
“Probably the majority of the teams, particularly the longer running teams, are memorials so this means usually the event is played in a good spirit and I think that’s the reason that everyone comes back and does it (every year).”
He said one of the memorial teams was celebrating it’s 20-year anniversary but they were one of the younger teams, with several tracing their competitive roots back to the beginning of the competition.
“That’s probably one of the reasons that we’re slowly losing numbers because a lot of the teams have been around for a long time so the players are getting older,” he said.
“That’s probably our next challenge, to try and reinvigorate things and try and move forward.
“It’s one of those events that you probably can’t throw your hands up in the air and say it’s too hard to keep going because it’s one of those events that has been around so long that if you did stop there would be a bit of an uproar.
“Hopefully this year we’ve hit our low and we can start rebuilding.
“A couple of years ago we were sort of mid thirties in the team numbers but we have dropped back. Covid didn’t help. I’m sure all community groups face this.”
Despite the dip in numbers the devotion to the competition is still there with teams including the Lismore-based Ring-ins – who are always in the top three teams, once again ready to cross the border in this case or in other cases, travel south for the two-day competition.
“We have players come from everywhere, we have a team that has been coming forever from Gomeri. Most of the teams have local roots but you have players that come from all over Queensland,” he said.
“It just depends on where people are moving or living. Dean Butler, a ex-Olympic hockey player, he’s a Warwick boy but his team comes each year. The team, Stunned Mullets, who have won the past four years in a row, includes people from Cairns and Rockhampton. So basically, cast a net and that’s where they come from.”
This is the first long weekend they have had for quite few years for the event. In past years it use to be a three-day carnival, however despite the extra day this time around, with it being quite a social event and players getting older it was decided to continue to restrict the competition to the Friday-Saturday, giving people time to recover and travel home on the Sunday.
“We hold it predominantly in Warwick, we have nine fields that are utilised and we have a couple reserved just in case of rain,” Bryson said.
“Our main competition will all be based in Warwick, each venue will host three games on the Friday – first game is at 8.30am, second is 11.30am and the third game is 2.30pm. The main competition, all their games are played in Warwick on Friday, our main home here is Slade Park, there’s also games at Briggs Oval, games at Mayhew Oval and Queens Park. The social competition teams all play three games at the same times. They are playing at Queens Park, Scot College, Greymare, Allora and Yangan.”
There are 15 teams in the social competition and 12 in the main event with the games played in the T20 format.
They have all been drawn into pools and every team plays two games on Saturday. In the social competition the two teams that have the biggest winning margins for the day go straight into their grand final at Slade Park on Saturday morning.
There will be three semi finals on the Saturday for the main competition featuring the top six teams with the two teams with the greatest winning margin playing the grand final in the afternoon followed by the presentation and barbecue at the end.
