Huntly’s return to Strathmore Union cricket has been postponed due to coronavirus restrictions.
The Strathbogie side were due to face Stoneywood-Dyce 2nds in the new North-East Championship on Saturday at Castle Park.
However, Huntly draw a number of their players from Moray, which is in Tier 3 of Scotland’s coronavirus response system, while Aberdeenshire is in Tier 2.
It means the players from Moray are unable to travel into Aberdeenshire for Huntly’s fixture, which has resulted in the match being postponed, while their second XI’s Aberdeenshire Grades fixture against Dunecht has also been postponed.
Captain Jack Mitchell said: “The weekend games are off because of the Moray restrictions on travel, which means we’re missing players.
“The league has agreed that they will reschedule the games for later in the season, but unfortunately we won’t be playing any cricket this weekend.
“It’s a shame, because we’ve had a good pre-season and good training and everyone is raring to go.
“But the Level 3 restrictions have caused us a problem, we would struggle to put two teams out and would probably be missing around half of each team.
“It’s not ideal, but the rules are in place at the start of the season that it was subject to government guidelines and if we’re being told we’re not allowed to travel then it’s for the best.
“We’re the team furthest north in our league and we’ve got quite a few players from further north who travel through to play for us.
“I guess the geography isn’t in our favour, but there’s nothing we can really do about it. It’s out of our hands.”
Disruption could continue
If Moray remains in Tier 3 this could impact Huntly for a number of weeks.
However, at this stage Mitchell isn’t too concerned about significant disruption to their season.
He added: “The league has got rules in place for games to be rescheduled, so at this stage I’m not too worried because we have got the back-up of playing them later in the season.
“I’m worried about the guys not getting to play cricket, because we’ve had a good start and a good win against Aberdeenshire last weekend.
“So it would have been good to build on that this weekend if we could have, but it’s not to be.”
Exciting times ahead
Mitchell returned to his hometown club last year as Huntly moved back into the Strathmore Union, and he believes the future is bright for the club.
He said: “It’s exciting times, we had a really good winter in 2019 into 2020 and were ready to get going last year before Covid.
“We’ve managed to recruit some players and bring some guys back to the club and, with two seniors teams as well as the junior set-up, I think it’s exciting times at Huntly.”
