NORTH Companions will field a young squad when they tackle Demon Knights in their first round FFA Cup match at Marius Street on Sunday.
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Club president David Chmieluk said North Companions’ Premier League first grade side has lost “so many senior players” from last season that they will field a team averaging 20.5 in age.
“And if you take the three older players out of the squad – Scott Beaton, Dave “Rocket” Palmer and Ben Davis – out of the equation they have an average age of just 19.
“Take those out and it is a very young squad,” Chmieluk said.
“But we have a lot of good kids for our coaches Gavin (Thompson), Des (Saunders) and Wayne (Clarke) to work with.
“It is very exciting for us to just see how all these young kids gel.
‘We’ve been training for a couple of months in the heat and it will be a good test for them all against DK. They are all keen to have a run to after training so hard the last couple of months.”
The North Companions Football Club could have as many as 26 or 27 teams in this year’s various competitions.
A club registration day at their Marius Street ground threw up some new faces in the juniors teams as well.
Norths have teams from Under 6s right through to Under 16s.
The juniors don’t start their competition until May 2, Chmieluk said whereas the senior teams start their Premier League and Tamworth Football Association competitions on April 11.
“We might have six or seven senior teams,” he said.
“Two in the Premier League , three men’s teams in the Tamworth (T League) and one, possibly two, in the women’s competition.
“At this stage we have 22 to 25 women players. Too many for one team but not enough for two. We’ll be talking to the other Tamworth clubs about combining so we can give them all a good run.”
While North play DK first up at Marius Street from 3pm Sunday Tamworth will also host two other FFA cup games.
North Armidale and Gunnedah match up in their knockout Cup match at Johnson Field from 2pm while East Armidale and Oxley Vale Attunga play straight after at 4.30pm.
In Armidale South Armidale play Inverell Joeys at Doody Park from 2pm Sunday while TAS and Tamworth FC match up at 4.30pm.
NIF general manager Steve Griffith said there was no extra time in FFA Cup matches.
“They go straight to penalties if games are drawn,” Griffith said.
