Tara Murray
Melton will take the disappointment of the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association north-west season and build on it next season.
After just missing finals last season, the Lions had high hopes for this season.
The side though was without a win before Christmas and only finished with ?? wins for the season.
Lions coach Mitch Stephens said they were disappointed with how it played out.
“Coming off the previous season when we had six or seven wins as a group we thought we were heading in the right direction on the back of Benny MacRae’s strong season,” he said. “But we’ve been disappointing.
“It was a new group with a few out and a few in. We’ll take the positives where we can and there’s a lot of improvement to come and a lot to work on.”
Stephens said a lot of players had shone bits and pieces during the season, but weren’t able to put it all together for the whole season.
He highlighted Alex Kerr’s final innings of the season, Joel Mitchener making his first half century at that level, Rhys Berry taking 30 wickets for the season and Brenton Cook making some solid contributions as positives to take out of the season.
The Lions form throughout the season was reflected in their final match of the season on Saturday, where they lost to Preston.
Preston batted well and set the Lions a total of 233 for the win.
Berry and Dylan Jobson took three wickets each for the Lions.
The Lions batters were unable to bat out the 40 overs though and were bowled out for 185.
“Preston come out with intent with chance to play finals if things went their way,” he said.
“The way they batted they went hard after the bowlers. The bowlers fought back hard.
“Our batting has let us down for a majority of the year and did again on Saturday.
“We’re not getting enough runs. We got a lot of starts and not going on with it.
“Alex Kerr was able to make the most of his start and get some time in the middle but it didn’t come off consistently enough.”
Kerr finished with 84 off 98 balls.
While the season is over for the first XI, the Lions second and third XIs are still alive.
Stephens said it’s exciting for the club to have those sides both in finals action and are hoping they will progress further than the first week.
