Yarra Glen Cricket Club’s 2022 under 14 premiership team was treated to a special trip to the MCG to do a lap of honour and watch the big bash game.
Players and club members were invited by Cricket Australia with all recent junior premiership teams given the same special reward.
Coach Travis Gloury said it was a fantastic opportunity.
“It’s probably really a once in a lifetime thing for a lot of people to be able to do a lap of honour on the MCG, the kids were pretty excited,” Mr Gloury said.
The team won their premiership last March after going into the finals undefeated. Mr Gloury said it’s a great win that gives the young players focus for future cricketing.
“They’re at that age where they need to feel they’ve achieved for their confidence and their self-esteem, not just for cricket but life in general, so it’s a great thing and gives them something to focus on too,” he said.
The opportunity also gave the players and club a boost as the club continues to navigate their season with flood damaged facilities.
The pavilion and indoor training nets are still out of action due to flooding in November last year.
Vice-President Jordan Bain said the training facilities had a river running through it for around five weeks, while the pavilion was flooded twice.
“The damage to both facilities was fairly significant,” Mr Bain said.
Mr Bain said as works begin, more issues are being discovered and this is all happening during the middle of their season.
“It couldn’t have come at worst time of the year, where you’re leading into the back end of the year and you’re relying on trades, insurance companies, council to make things happen at a really, really busy time of the year, so progress has been slow, but progress is happening.”
The club’s expecting they won’t have any use of the pavilion for the remainder of the season but could return to the training nets in February.
The club thanked MP Aaron Violi and MP Cindy McLeish for supporting their travel to the game through the hiring of a bus.
