Heytesbury Rebels, Princetown merge in South West Cricket for season 2023-24

Heytesbury Rebels and Princetown will combine to become Heytesbury Princetown Cricket Club next season, with the ambition of four senior sides and two junior teams to represent the club.

The club, which plans to host its lower grade matches in Princetown and division one team in Timboon, has been discussing the move over the past 12 months but formally elected to make the decision after a recent meeting.

Heytesbury Rebels president Michael Vogels told The Standard the merger was a vital part of shoring up the future of the game in the two towns and providing a suitable pathway for both senior and junior cricketers.

"It's obvious the local sporting landscape is rapidly changing and Heytesbury and Princetown are fairly rural and isolated, so we felt we'd better make a proactive decision to join forces to ensure cricket is getting played locally into the future," he said.

"(The discussions) initially started out with seniors and volunteers but I suppose the main reason was it helps with player numbers and volunteer numbers.

"Both clubs have got some good kids coming through the ranks and for us we'd love to be able to give them the best possible chance to continue playing cricket locally."

He added it was vital the clubs got the balance between protecting the on-field and off-field structures right.

"A strong cricket club promotes high performance and strongly competitive cricket. At the same time you want the cricket club to have a strong social scene," he said.

"A lot of blokes part of the cricket club hardly play, it's such a vital part of our communities and an outlet for them, so we need to make sure we're protecting that moving forward."

Vogels is likely to serve as co-president alongside current Princetown president Drew Kordupel.

Demons great Simon Harkness, who also led the association at Melbourne Country Week, is still serving as the club's division one captain-coach.

He said the club was hopefully to field six teams next season with the likelihood the higher grades play out at Timboon and the lower grades a mixture of both depending on a variety of factors.

"We've certainly got the ambition to have all that," Vogels said. "It's not a hard-and-fast rule but higher division cricket will be at Timboon and lower grades maybe a mix of both. That's probably what the aim is."

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