SPORT suffered a body blow last week at the hands of an Australian Crime Commission report into wrongdoing at the professional level.
Sure, it is an issue to do with sport in the upper echelon, but the negative mood reached anyone with a sporting bone in their body.
Locals did not have to wait too long for a much-needed pick-me-up.
Sportsmen and sportswomen of the west lifted the cloud by doing what they do every weekend, returning to the field for the mere love of the game.
CLICK HERE for our picture gallery of the St Albans v Seddon match.
At Kings Park Reserve, St Albans and Seddon — two clubs battling it out for a finals berth in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association north A1 — gave their supporters a reminder of why sport is so great on Saturday with an intriguing opening day of a two-day game.
“It was just a good battle today,” Saints skipper Andrew Pizaro told the Weekly at stumps.
This match represents a summer for the Saints — a matter of do-or-die when it comes to their finals aspirations.
“This game is really like a semi-final for us,” Pizaro said. “If we can finish this one off, it really sets us up well to win the last game to make the finals.”
So far, so good for the Saints, who took the day one honours, but not before they had to fight their way back from a tough position in the lead up to the tea break. They eventually worked through a tough period to bowl out Seddon for 172.
An almighty effort from the Saints, considering the visitors were 1-110 at one stage. “We toiled hard,” Pizaro said.
“They’ve got a very good batting team, an extremely good top five and a couple of blokes who are all right in their lower order.
“After tea, we got two or three quick wickets, and suddenly we started to get on top, and then we picked up the next three or four. It was a good fight back from the boys.”
Pizaro, a former district cricketer with Footscray Edgewater and North Melbourne, bagged six wickets.
Shane Jones, a right-arm off-spinner also with district credentials, claimed the other four scalps.
Pizaro pointed to a new age problem for batsmen as a reason behind the Seddon’s sudden collapse.
“It’s pretty simple, if you can string maidens together at any level, then you’ll get batsmen making mistakes,” he said.
“If you look at the science of batting these days, batsmen like to score quick; gone are the days where batsmen go out and block all day.
“It just doesn’t happen any more, batsmen want to score runs and don’t have the patience they used to.”
The Saints, 0-47 in reply at stumps, hope their own willow wielders have enough patience to stick it out for the 126 required for victory.
SCOREBOARD
Senior division: Greenvale 0-2 v Keilor 183 (J Brown 3-71 T Moughanie 2-11 C Jayasinghe 2-30 C Darshana 2-54)
North division: Youlden Parkville 4-89 (LC Wilson 3-34) v Sunshine Druids 145 (J Rudd 48 I Gallage 29)
North A1: St Albans 0-47 v Seddon 172 (A Pizaro 6-38 SM Jones 4-36); Sunshine United 2-39 (L Lewis 2-14) v Altona Roosters 169 (D Pham 45no A Peters 33); Taylors Lakes 186 (I Yaddehige 5-42 M Simpson 3-21) v Aberfeldie Park 2-21
West B1: Avondale Heights 7-207 (B Whale 109no M Singh 32no) v Sunshine Heights; Sunshine YCW 0-18 v Barkly Street Uniting 178
