Josh Toole says concept of the combined team needs to be re-evaluated.

JOSH Toole, like many of his team-mates, was left battered and bruised after Mitchell fell to a crushing eight-wicket defeat in their Western Zone trial against Combined Valleys in Dubbo on Saturday.

The Bathurst vice-captain was part of a side that was dismissed for just 92, making nine before becoming one of Ben Patterson’s  five victims.

His performances for the Western side last year, when he made 29 and 59 in his two matches, were enough to allow him to retain his spot, alongside just two Mitchell team-mates.

One of them, Will Lindsay, is a Dubbo product himself, while the other, Orange quick Curtis Free, is an English import in his first season in the region.

It spoke volumes for the gap between the sides on Saturday, and Toole says that the concept of the combined team needs to be re-evaluated.

“Look at the Macquarie team, they could pick the Dubbo representative side on its own and it would be strong, there are seven Dubbo guys alone in the Western squad, so surely they can pick a Macquarie team too,” he said.

“With Lachlan, the Parkes side is awesome and if you take a couple of the good players from Cowra like Mick Curtale and put them in there, you’ve got a strong Lachlan team as well.

“I think that they either need to aim at keeping the whole tradition of Mitchell, Macquarie and Lachlan alive and get rid of that combined side, or just pick the best 24 players from across Western and have a stand-alone trial match.

“Divide them into two teams and go from there. We gave it our best shot and tried to represent Mitchell as best we could. They were a very strong opposition and we weren’t up to it on the day,” Toole said.

In principle, a match in Dubbo would normally give the batsmen a chance to shine and put bowlers under the microscope, given the flat nature of the main wickets in the town.

The game was played on a surface at Lady Cutler that aided the quicks, with plenty of lateral movement, and really it was only Bathurst opener Joey Coughlan who looked like taming them during his top-score effort of 20.

“Joey batted well, he scored most of the runs we actually got from the bat, sundries [33] were our biggest contributor I think,” Toole said.

“He played and missed a few times, but everyone did, he dug in and it is probably a bit unfortunate for him that he was up against some outstanding openers for a Western spot, otherwise he would have been a big chance himself.

“It definitely seemed very hard to bat out there, plenty of sideways movement and Tim Cox and Tim Berry are both quality bowlers, and Patterson as well. The inside of my back leg was covered in bruises afterwards.

“We were trying. Remember that, going on the selections after the game, we were playing almost against a Western Zone side ourselves, so by rights it would have been a bit of an upset if they didn’t give us a touch-up.

“We also dropped two catches in the first over of their innings. You can’t do that with a bloke like Anthony Heraghty who hits the ball the way he does.”

Regardless of what has happened, Toole’s focus now turns to the Country Championships which start tomorrow week in Griffith where Western face Riverina.

“Last year was pretty disappointing. We lost all three games, but another 10 or 20 runs in each of them and we could have won them all,” he said.