THE Mildura Bowls Club has made the difficult decision to cancel its $10,000 Country Cup five-a-side tournament following a lack of entries.
Due to be held from August 31 to September 3, the event sought to have teams compete across singles, pairs, triples and fours formats with the hope of bringing tourism into the region.
Despite being advertised since May, the competition received only nine of the 24 required entries.
Mildura Bowls Club tournament director Chris Mitchell said the club was incredibly disappointed to have to cancel the much anticipated tournament.
“When we first advertised the event we were of the understanding that there were no other major events happening in Victoria on that weekend,” he said.
“Subsequently, Bowls Victoria released some dates for their Victorian Bowls League with the middle weekend of their competition falling on the same day as our Country Cup.
“On the other side of the coin, we didn’t get a great deal of local support – we did have some players from SA keen to come over but that also didn’t eventuate.
“With three weeks before entries were due to close, we decided we needed to cut and run, revamp our program and go forward with a modified version in 2024.”
Mr Mitchell said the club had organised a marquee, catering company and live broadcast. Some thought would be put into salvaging and rescheduling the event.
“We are at the moment looking at what dates are available on the calendar,” he said.
“Between October and March we have events so the reason for the timing of the August date was it was three to four weeks before the major season.
“We are now trying to work out if we can run a minor event between now and Christmas.”
Mr Mitchell said date clashes seemed to be a common issue which plagued regional clubs.
“I have had a conversation with a club down in Warrnambool and they told us they had tried to run an event last year and had the same experience with events being put over the top of theirs,” he said.
“They contacted Bowls Victoria and said ‘what dates do you have free?’ and then locked in a date with the understanding that would be their weekend so that is one of the things I will be doing in the next week.”
Mr Mitchell thanked sponsors for their support and assured them the event would run in 2024 “bigger and better”.
