THE local pennant bowling scene is set for a major shake-up this season.
Creation of a new premier competition covering the Murray Valley and Northern District playing areas was confirmed this week.
The Northern Valley pennant competition will encompass the best teams from across the two playing areas.
Murray Downs and Racecourse bowls clubs were confirmed as the two teams to take part from the Murray Valley Playing Area.
They will join Northern District clubs Kerang, Kerang Golf, Barham and Cohuna Golf to form the inaugural season of the new competition.
Bowls Victoria northern Victoria country manager Josh Thornton said he expected the new competition would raise the standard of bowls across the region.
“Something we’ve tried to do and the key part of getting the new competition off the ground was to try and level out the playing field across both playing areas,” Thornton told The Guardian this week.
“We had some smaller clubs across both the playing areas that were battling to maintain Division 1 sides and were coming up against clubs that were far stronger than they were.
“By doing this, those clubs can feel like they can compete again.
“It’s a great result for those smaller clubs because they are going to be able to compete better, which will have other positive flow-on effects with regard to player retention and morale around their clubs.
“The other positive effect is that we’ve also created a competition where the better bowlers, in theory, will be playing against each other, and that will hopefully lift the standard of bowls across the region as well.”
It was expected the Murray Valley Playing Area weekend pennant competition would still compete across four divisions.
The final make-up of which clubs move up to fill in the vacancies was to be determined later, as it would with the Northern District Playing Area weekend pennant.
Expressions of interest for the new Northern Valley pennant competition closed last Friday.
The six interested clubs enabled the first season to get under way in early October.
While the first season was set in stone, Thornton said he hoped expansion for the fledgling competition could happen as early as next year.
“Ideally, we’d like to have eight clubs competing, and we still want eight, but we are going to go with six for the upcoming season,” Thornton said.
“If in 12 months’ time there are two clubs who put their hand up and say we want in, then they will be included because we want an eight-team competition.
“If we have eight clubs established, then that opens up the possibility of us including a promotion and relegation system too, which would allow clubs to aspire to move up into the competition, but that is a long way off yet.
“Eventually it will be the best eight teams across the two playing area, whatever that looks like at this point is unknown, whether its six from one area and two from another, or if its four and four, who knows.
“The idea is that we have the best eight sides playing against each other and try to have an even competition.”
The grand final of the new competition will be scheduled for the Sunday following the Murray Valley and Northern District weekend pennant competitions, creating a showcase event for the region.
While there had been some criticism of the new competition, most of the feedback had been positive, according to Thornton.
“The clubs that didn’t entertain the prospect of going into the new competition, but understood why it was happening, they’re all quite happy because they see some solace in what’s going to happen, in that they feel that they will be playing against very similar teams,” Thornton said.
“The six clubs that will be playing in the new competition, there is definitely a fair bit of excitement ahead of the first season.
“You’re always going to get your naysayers and we can handle that, but going forward we can always review it at the end of the year.
“Cricket has changed over the last 12 months with the Kerang clubs coming up to play in Swan Hill, it also happened with footy decades ago – sport at a local level is changing and its time for us to change, too.
“We need to plan for the future and its better for us to be proactive rather than reactive.”
The past three MVPA Division 1 grand finals have been played between Racecourse and Murray Downs.
Racecourse selector Norm Smith said the club had so far embraced the new competition.
“It’s a new adventure for the club and the players,” Smith said.
“It will certainly be a challenge for us as the Northern District has a very strong competition down there and our players will all have to lift a little bit to be competitive.
“We had a vote to see whether we were going ahead with entering a team and enough of the members decided that it would be worthwhile pursuing the challenge.
“It will remodel our club with our second division team most likely moving up into Division 1, but we see it as being a positive for our club.”
