John Parker Academy  

The South Perth Cricket Club established the John Parker Academy in 2020

·     Named in honour of the late John Parker – former President of SPCC, WA Sheffield Shield representative and Captain of South Perth’s “Team of the 75 years” that was announced in 2005.

·     The Academy has been designed to support the up and coming Male & Female youth cricketers within the South Perth Cricket Club to fast track their development in both cricket and life skills.

·     The Academy seeks to support players not currently catered for within existing WA Cricket squads and development programs/pathways

·     This cohort is considered by the South Perth Cricket Club to be a very important one – to both add value to players life experiences and to ensure retention of these young people within the game of cricket in to young adulthood and beyond.

Physical asset improvement program

It has been identified that a key piece of infrastructure at South Perth will assist in expanding the opportunities and time allocation to run the Parker Academy program as follows:

1.    Expansion of Turf wicket area on Richardson Park No 1 ground

o  Additional width added of two turf strips to expand existing 4 wicket block

o  This development will allow for full time use of 2 turf nets/lanes throughout the year

2.    Replace ageing netting and supporting infrastructure to modern, safe standard for use as the training wicket block is upgraded.

Two separate cost estimates have been received from key key turf and netting suppliers that have been engaged previously on site at Richardson Park (Ausnet and Programmed Maintenance):

Completion of this project will allow for expansion of key cricket programs for male and female cricketers.

Given the limited space and net facilities available on site at Richardson Park, combined with limited daylight hours in the cricket season after school/work hours and before sunset, use of additional net facilities will open up extra days of the week to be utilised for training and programs as well as increasing the ability to use the netting facilities on weekends.