Sport

Lions looking up with champion player at helm

By Oliver Shedden

Oct 6, 2025

Regis Chakabva will be looking to lead Bamawm-Lockington United to the promised land in 2025-26. Photo: Bruce Povey. Photo by Bruce Povey

Despite narrowly missing finals last season, Bamawm-Lockington United will be looking to take it all in the A-grade John McMahon Shield 2025-26 campaign.

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Reigning Graeme Turner medallist and Goulburn Murray Cricket Champion Player Regis Chakabva will once again be leading the charge for the Lions alongside new and returning players.

For the most part, BLU’s side will remain unchanged, with young guns such as Kade Pearse getting more development after his first season in the top flight last summer.

The Lions have brought in two imports to bolster their ranks, UK all-rounder Woody Wilson, who last played for Deepdene Uniting in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, and American leg-spinning all-rounder Prateer Mehta, who last played for Attenborough Cricket Club in the South Nottinghamshire Cricket League in England.

The strongest part of BLU’s game last season was its batting, lead by Chakabva, who made 602 runs at an average of 54.73 in 2024-25.

Bowling has been where the Lions have needed to sure up their quality, with Chakabva emphasising it had been a focus for the side in preseason.

“We’ve been doing a fair bit of work with the bowling,” he said.

“We’re certainly hoping that that improvement will come through, you know, from the previous seasons and there’s always that aspect of growth coming through with the boys and looking forward to us having better performances all around with bat and ball.

“I think last season, we suddenly realised some of the areas that we fell short on, and again it’s always work in progress all the time and so definitely we’ll be looking to make sure that our first goal will be to get ourselves into that top four, a place in the finals, and we’ll go from there.”

Looking at the season ahead, Chakabva said the whole club was excited to get started and work towards a premiership in 2025-26.

“The boys are pretty excited about the start of the season now, I think everyone is pretty much ready to go now,” he said.

“We had a golf day on Saturday to kick off the season, and we had quite a good group out there at Bamawm Golf Club.

“There was really good banter going on among the boys, which is great, they’re gelling well.

“It’s like the season really couldn’t come quick enough, everyone’s excited, and we’re all looking forward to a great summer.”