SOUTH West Rocks will have its first outing of the 2014-15 Macleay Valley Cricket Association first grade season this weekend when they take on Kempsey Heights at South Kempsey.
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The side will be hoping to emulate the efforts of their lower grade counterparts with both the club’s second and third divisions recording wins last week.
Club president Greg Peel said he will be hoping some of the second grade players can fill in at the top tier this weekend.
“We are struggling a bit for numbers in first grade at the moment which is pretty normal for us at the start of the season,” he said.
“There are definitely some talented players in second grade so we will be looking towards them for some help.”
They play a team searching for their first win after going down to Rovers last week.
Despite only fielding eight players, Kempsey Heights still managed to be competitive and even had Rovers on the ropes before a century to 16-year-old Zeb Johnston gave his side back the advantage.
Kempsey Heights player Scott Witchard said the side will be close to full strength when they take to the field this weekend.
“We have three or four players coming back which is good,” he said.
“I think one of the problems last week was that we ran out of bowlers but we should be right this weekend.”
South West Rocks will play Kempsey Heights at South Kempsey tomorrow.
BOTH Rovers and Nulla will be aiming to continue their strong starts to the 2014/15 Macleay Valley Association cricket season when they clash at Athletics tomorrow.
Rovers recorded a convincing 115 win against Kempsey Heights last week while Nulla was also impressive in their first outing, defeating a new look All Blacks team by 74 runs.
There is a fair amount of history between the two sides with Rovers triumphing against Nulla in last season’ grand final.
Nulla captain said that while his side will be bolstered a couple of returning players, he is wary of a Rovers side full of confidence.
“It is always a bit of a trench battle whenever we play each other and I don’t expect tomorrow to be any different,” he said.
“They are coming into the game on the back of a big win so they will obviously have a lot of momentum. If we are going to match them, we definitely need an improved batting performance from last week. Having a couple of players back should help us out a bit.”
Despite the size of their first round win, Rovers captain Tim Smith said he isn’t reading too much into the result and is expecting Nulla to come out firing.
I was happy with the win last week but we are not getting too carried away as they only had eight players and will be a whole different team next time around,” he said.
“We are looking forward to Saturday. Nulla are always hard to beat and they will be pumped up after last week's win on the same field. We pretty much have the same side and I am looking forward to watching our younger players score some runs.”