THE LATEST information regarding this year’s Victorian Country Championships, which will be held in Gippsland over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend in June, have been released this week with details of a provisional fixture made public.

The U12 and U16 Girls’ and U11 Boys’ competitions will be staged at the Morwell Falcons Soccer Club’s Crinigan Road Stadium in Morwell, while the U12,U13, U14, U15 and U16 Boys’ competitions will take place at Harold Preston Park in Traralgon (see image right).

The venues are approximately 15 minutes from each other with a couple of route options.

Although changes are expected to be made to the provisional fixtures that have been released, it does give the Geelong region’s players, coaches and support crew an indication of the format of the tournament.

There are a few changes from last year’s event, with no Shepparton or Echuca/Moama sides entered this year - which takes out a couple of group games. Also, Ballarat is only fielding Boys’ teams in the U12, U14 and U16 divisions.

As a result, it is disappointing that there will only be three teams in the Boys’ U13 and U15 divisions but it does mean that the two Geelong sides will still get to play four matches and hopefully a final. It is expected that the two other sides in those divisions, Bendigo and Albury Wodonga, will both field extremely strong sides. 

In other tournament news, at least seven match officials (referees) from the region will be accompanying the Geelong representative squads – an amazing achievement considering last year there was not one single referee from Geelong.

The Geelong region last year fielded three representative squads in the Boys’ U12, U14 and U16 age divisions, totalling 48 players. It was the first time Geelong Boys’ rep squads had been represented at the Victorian Country Championships in several years.

This year that number has grown to 140 players over an incredible nine teams, two Girls’ teams (U12 and U16) and seven Boys’ teams (U11North, U11South, U12 U13, U14, U15 and U16).

After the Bendigo region, which is fielding ten teams at this year’s championships, Geelong will be the second highest represented region in Gippsland.