Harper Sercombe
Sunbury is hoping to build from its first season in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association division 2 competition.
Although it took eight rounds for the Roar to register its first win of the season, the club was able to string three wins together in a row, escaping relegation.
While the late season wins were vital for the Roar’s survival in the higher division, coach Kevin Barker said there is still a lot his side needs to work on if they were to threaten for finals in the 2024-25 summer.
“I don’t feel like we played the brand of cricket we spoke about playing, an aggressive, positive style of cricket,” he said.
“Our batters never really found their groove, you can talk about a lot of things, you can talk about early season pitches, and all that type of stuff.
“But at the end of the day, I just don’t think our batters, including myself, backed themselves enough. That reflected in the scores we continuously put on the scoreboard.”
Although Barker said, now having seen and felt the competition and the standard required to compete in division 2 cricket will only hold him and the club in good stead moving forward.
“We know what the top four sides are like and we got close to a couple of them on a couple of occasions. But it was one or two little moments that hurt us,” he said. I think we need to stick together as a group and just work on that going into next season.
“The good thing is we have kept an almost identical group heading into next season which we weren’t able to do this year obviously. So we will learn from this season and build next season.”
To help bolster the Roar up the ladder, Barker said it is always handy to see what players are up for grabs at this time of year.
“You always look to recruit, if you’re not recruiting you’re going backwards,” he said.
“I’m confident with the group we have, we can still get it done but you’d be crazy not to look at getting a few new recruits at this time of the year.”
A shining light of the Roar’s season was bowler Sohan Boralessa, who was a recruit for this season.
He took 25 wickets for the summer, equal fourth in the competition, at an average of 10.
“Sohan has been an amazing pick up, we’re lucky to have him. I’m hoping he sticks around… I’m fairly confident he will,” Barker said.
The Roar’s second and third XIs were in finals action on the weekend.
