After dominating the Maitland A-grade one-day competition the Port Stephens Pythons are excited by the challenge of stepping up to first grade.
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The Pythons will join reigning premiers Raymond Terrace in first grade for the 2018-19 Maitland and District Cricket Association season, which will swell to eight teams.
“It’s exciting on a number of levels, I think mostly just so we can get some competitive cricket especially after what we went through last year,” Pythons captain Josh Moxey said.
Port claimed their fifth minor premiership and third straight major premiership in a row but after A and B-grades were merged the only real opposition was from Paterson, whom they faced in the grand-final in March, and their own club’s second XI team.
“Definitely it’s a big challenge for a number of guys in the side who have not really played two-day cricket before,” Moxey said. “We’re not going in there just to be easy beats. We’re going in there to at least be competitive and see where we are at against the first grade sides.”
The association has moved the start of senior season back to October 13 instead of October 6 to avoid a clash with school holidays.
Mark Warland, the association’s senior vice-president, said the addition of Port Stephens and Tenambit-Morpeth in second grade would remove the need for a bye this year.
“Initially we had requests from Port, Tenambit-Morpeth and Singleton to run teams in first grade, which would have meant a 10-team competition,” Warland said.
“We felt that Singleton and the Bulls would benefit from another year of getting ready to compete in first grade and have decided to go with eight-team competitions in first and second grade.
“We have asked Tenambit-Morpeth to field a second grade team this season and have given Port Stephens the nod for this year.”
Port Stephens had six players in Maitland representative teams last season and made the semi-finals of the Hunter Valley Cup in the one-day game against Maitland first grade teams.
“We’ve pretty much got the same squad as last year,” Moxey said.
“We have competed against the teams in the Hunter Valley Cup for a while so there is no reason why we shouldn’t be expecting to be competitive with the players we’ve got.”
The one-day competition will revert to a six-team A-grade and B-grade fixture.
Port Stephens second XI, which was part of a combined A and B-grade competition, will move into A-grade.
A-grade will feature Paterson, Port Stephens, Bowthorne, Raworth, SMR and a new team into the competition Rutherford Hotel.
