Essendon’s cricket and football clubs are at loggerheads over the use of the famed Windy Hill ground, a venue they’ve shared for over a century.
The AFLW season’s overlap into coming cricket season means the Essendon Cricket Club will not play on their home ground until at least round five of the coming season.
Cricket Victoria chief executive Nick Cummins said for the past two years, the cricketers had agreed to find alternate accommodation and not play at Windy Hill during October, to accommodate the end of the AFLW season.
But he said the cricket club expressed to the AFL earlier this year that the arrangement was no longer working, stating its desire to return to its home of 152 years for the full season and for the Essendon AFLW team to play elsewhere from October onwards.
Not only did he say the AFL refused, but when the fixture for the AFLW season was released last week the Bombers boasted about the “record” number of home games they’d been allocated at the venue, with two of those games scheduled during what is traditionally the cricket season.
“Effectively, a professional sporting body in Victoria is looking to bulldoze a community cricket club that’s run by volunteers,” Cummins said.
Cummins said Essendon Football Club, which is the primary lease-holder for Windy Hill, should instead work with the cricket club to come to an agreement that suited both outfits.
He pointed to the division of seasons agreement with the state government, which states the cricket season runs from October through to the end of March, while football gets from April to the end of September, and he said that tradition should be upheld.
Teams competing in a national competition are not bound by the agreement.
Cummins said the two sports had always coexisted, to the benefit of the sports leagues and the people of Victoria, and negotiations would be necessary as both sports continued to grow.
“We’d like to see the football club work with the cricket club for a mutual, agreeable outcome,” he said.
They could start upgrading the ground by installing a scoreboard. Western oval has one as does Carlton at Princes Park, Geelong and I believe Port Melbourne. Essendon should be ashamed of the state of that ground as their historical base.