The newest president of Cricket Shepparton is wasting no time jumping into bat.
A changing of the guard at the top of the order had Narelle Claney take over from Brandan Reilly at the recent annual general meeting, making her the association’s first female president.
But she’s not reading into the gender side of it ― after all, there’s too much work to be done.
With a complete switch from administration platform MyCricket to PlayHQ needing to be steered by Cricket Shepparton before the season’s October start, as well as other matters which must be addressed, Claney won’t be short of work.
However, she is looking forward to the challenge.
“I’m not really big on the whole gender thing, because realistically I look at it that there’s been a lot of other women who’ve contributed to Cricket Shepparton in the past,” she said.
“There’s been lots of great team members before and you don’t have a cricket team without good players.
“We’ve had all the good players who’ve been female, I’m just the first one to be the captain.”
The analogy of team players is a fitting one, as Claney has been on the Cricket Shepparton team for about a decade.
She joined as Karramomus’ board member and has been a part of the organisation’s inner workings for some time now, believing the body is well poised to progress ahead given its current, stable situation.
“I see it as if clubs have their representation there, then Cricket Shepparton as a whole is able to maintain its strength,” she said.
“We’re lucky that we are one of the stronger associations around, there’s a lot of clubs out there in all fields of sport – not just cricket – where they’re struggling to maintain their players.
“Cricket Shepparton is actually growing and surviving quite well.”
First up on the list of business for Claney and co is registering each club into the new PlayHQ system so players can then register themselves, while a decision will be made on whether Eastern Hill Cricket Club will join the association at a July 10 meeting.
“It sounds silly and small, but it’s going to be a huge thing for a lot of players to get their head around in terms of registering themselves,” Claney said.
“We’ve also got to work out our structure; how we envision the season to look like.
“All of those things have to be sorted out now — we may not bowl our first ball until October, but there’s a lot of work that goes into it prior to that.”
As for why Reilly chose to step aside and move back from the top job into an executive committee role, the reasoning was personal.
“The reasons for me standing down, the main one, is I’m actually getting married at the end of August,” Reilly said.
“By the time you start stressing on that from here on in, trying to get everything organised and set up, I just don’t have the time.
“Then you go away for half to three-quarters of September, it’s not fair on our clubs if I’m not there to give them 120 per cent – especially when we’re changing over from MyCricket to PlayHQ. I’d hate to be that guy that’s not there.”
Reilly said he thoroughly enjoyed his 12-month tenure at the helm of Cricket Shepparton despite a turbulent year, and learnt plenty about himself as a person through good times and bad.
“I absolutely loved it, it was huge. We probably had one of the busiest cricket seasons going around both on and off the field – obviously we had the floods and everything else,” he said.
“It was really challenging at times, we lost a mate at the back end of the season in a car accident from Katandra.
“So we’ve literally ridden the highs and lows of life through the role as an executive committee, and the support and people around was absolutely amazing – I’d highly recommend it to anyone else.”