DEFENDING Group 11 premiers Dubbo CYMS will open their 2015 campaign with a home clash against Narromine after the draw was officially ratified at a meeting in Narromine on Sunday.
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Officials from all nine clubs met to discuss a range of topics, including the inaugural Nines competition to be held at Parkes next month, a women's league tag competition and a change to the interchange system in first grade.
But the biggest topic was the draw and after multiple attempts to produce a level draw that catered to certain needs of some clubs the final draft was endorsed.
The competition will start on Sunday, April 12 with CYMS to host Narromine at Apex Oval, Nyngan playing Wellington at Kennard Park, Dubbo Westside travelling to Forbes to meet the resurgent Magpies and Parkes hosting Cobar at Pioneer Oval.
Dubbo Macquarie has the bye in the opening round, with their first match of 2015 being an away clash against Cobar in round two.
"We opened things up for clubs to make some requests and then tried to work around it,".
“For example Cobar didn’t want to play on the weekend of Louth Races, CYMS didn’t want to play on the weekend of the Dubbo Show, and Parkes and Forbes like to play on the June long weekend,” Group 11 secretary Ross McDermott said.
“It’s hard to come up with a perfect draw when you’re trying to meet with these requests and you have two teams playing out of Apex Oval but we think it panned out okay and there were no real complaints from the clubs.”
A couple of new initiatives are being introduced to Group 11 in 2015, including the introduction of a women’s league tag competition and a reduction from 12 interchanges to 10 in the top grade.
Six clubs have nominated for the league tag competition, with only Macquarie, CYMS and Narromine yet to commit.
The league tag will be introduced at March 15’s Group 11 Nines competition, which will be played at Pioneer Oval.
“The reaction to the women’s competition has been very positive and the good things is a lot of the clubs from the smaller towns have committed to it,” McDermott said.
“The Nines is something we’re really looking forward to as well. Each club will have the option to nominate two teams for it and we’re in the process of hopefully finding a sponsor that will enable us to put some prize money forward.
“After that we will have our two official trial weekends, then the Easter weekend where we will hopefully host that Manly v Canberra NRL match and we’re into it on April 12.
“Last year our season finished late due to the ABC coming out to call the grand final but this year we’ve gone back to the traditional format of having our grand finals on the first Sunday in September and a Group 11 ball/presentation night on August 28.”
