WITH three rounds to play, the race for fourth spot on the Sunraysia Cricket Association First Division ladder remains tight.
Nichols Point are fourth, seeking a maiden First Division finals berth since rejoining the SCA, with Mildura West the nearest challenger – 20.76 points behind.
The Pointers face second-placed Workers Gol Gol this weekend and top side Mildura Settlers in the final home-and-away round while West host rivals Mildura East from Saturday and sixth-placed Merbein South in round 18.
Between the clash in round 17, the sides face-off at John Hall Oval in what could be a mini elimination final.
Mildura West captain-coach Chris Williams said his club would end up where they deserve to be after those games.
“What’s good is that we know what’s coming up, we’ve got three two-day games and if we are good enough we’ll probably deserve to be in fourth spot,” he said.
“I’ve said all along after last season – where we just avoided the wooden spoon with an outright victory over Merbein South – we obviously needed to improve,
“It’s not easy for drastic improvement year-on-year, there’s some good established sides and clubs, you look at Workers Gol Gol, Irymple and Setts, they aren’t just good in one grade, they are good across the whole board and that’s the benchmark we want to get to. That’s not going to happen in 365 days, we’re just looking at improvement, but our goal is to try and finish fourth.”
Although West have the easier draw on paper, with Nichols Point the only side in the top four for West to play and hosting bottom side East this weekend, Williams was not taking anything for granted.
“The draw is what it is. It was harsh for us for the first three two-day games, we had Irymple, Workers Gol Gol and Setts and the fact we have a couple of sides down the bottom of the ladder that’s how it rolls,” he said.
“At the end of the day you’ve still got to beat them, you’ve still got to turn up and play good cricket, and certainly against Mildura East this season we haven’t done that – they’ve beaten us twice and full credit to them, they’ve deserved their victories.
“We’ve got to turn up this Saturday and the following Saturday and play the cricket we know we can and hopefully we can get the win we need to put a bit of pressure on Nichols Point – we’ll either deserve to be there or not deserve to be there, we’ll see what turns out.”
