Old Beach Cricket Club has asked to drop back a grade to keep playing at its home ground, after Brighton Council said its insurers would not accept the risk of first grade cricket there.
The club, formed in 1896, was promoted to the Southern Cricket Association’s first grade competition after last season.
Club president Tony Allanby said the club was told two or three weeks before the season was due to start that it could not play the top grade at Cloak Oval.
With the season starting next weekend, he said the club was “currently in limbo”.
“We’re not happy to go back to second grade, but if we have to, we have to,” Allanby told Pulse.
Brighton Mayor Leigh Gray said the oval’s closeness to a playground and houses meant balls hit out of the ground could cause injury or property damage.
The council said it had worked with the club to install netting and limit the types of games played, with the latest netting near the playground costing about $30,000.
It said stepping up a grade increased the risk, which its insurers had advised was “not acceptable”.
“Council is a strong supporter of community sport, but we don’t want to see anyone hurt,” Gray said.
The council said it could accommodate the club at another ground, though some rostering changes might be needed.
Allanby said playing home games elsewhere was not an option because the club relied on home-game revenue.
He said losing its first grade home games would leave the club around $8,000 to $9,000 out of pocket, which “would just about put us out of business”.
According to Allanby, the club lost about $5,000 in revenue when the council stopped T20 games at the oval because of its size.
He said the clubrooms were also a social outlet for older residents and the club was the last established cricket club in the Brighton municipality.
“We get the impression that the council’s certainly not supportive of the Old Beach Cricket Club and they don’t really want us playing on Clark Oval, so we sort of, we fear this might be the beginning of trying to push us out,” he said.
He expected little to come from a meeting with the council on Thursday.
Gray said the council would continue to work with the club to find a resolution.
“Just be a bit more supportive in the risk assessment,” Allanby asked of council.
“We believe that the risk assessment was a recommendation and we’ve sort of been in conversation with the council for a while about it, but there hasn’t been anything clear and the season’s about to start then all of a sudden the decision’s been made.”
“Which leaves us very little time to do anything other than potentially drop back a grade.”
