Central North finalised its season draw on Sunday, or half of it anyway.
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Uncertainty hangs over the Colts competition draw after only three clubs - Narrabri, Tamworth and Pirates - indicated they will be able to field sides in both the 17s and 19s at Sunday’s pre-season meeting at Barraba.
Farrer will also again put in two teams, although who they are aligned with is still to be sorted out.
It is a disappointing outcome, zone president Tony Byrnes said.
One of the ideas behind changing the Colts age groups from 16s and 18s to 17s and 19s was that it would increase the players available to clubs and enable more to field Colts sides, but that hasn’t transpired.
“We were hoping that would be the case,” Byrnes said.
He added that it is still early days and is holding out hope that the situation might change before kick-off on April 22, but admitted there is no simple or clear answer.
“We’ve just got to keep hammering away at the door,” Byrnes said.
And continue to encourage clubs to have Colts.
He used Narrabri as an example of a club that a couple of seasons ago didn’t have a Colts side but now have two.
“Some clubs can never do it but some clubs should be able to come up with Colts,” he said.
“It is hard work but it’s all about clubs surviving.”
To do that they have to have juniors coming through.
Byrnes said a lot of the discussion on Sunday was around the difficulty in the smaller towns to find players.
One approach to getting around that was clubs banding together to form composite sides but that didn’t quite work out as hoped.
Not wanting to discourage players, or lose any more, Byrnes said one thing the zone discussed was the possibility of playing 10-a-side or seven-a-side games if clubs don’t quite have the numbers to play 15-on-15.
“It is a real challenge, there’s no doubt about that and it can’t be hidden,” he said.
“We’ve just got to be more experimental.”
That might mean having interaction with nearby zones to fill in the gaps.
With the Colts draw following the Seniors, some clubs might not have a game for two or three weeks.
On a brighter note, the draft Seniors draw was accepted unopposed.
The zone last season changed the format of the finals with the top side from the bottom tier progressing through to a six-team finals series. That appeared to work well, Byrnes said.
All 10 clubs have at this stage nominated for first and second grade, although Barraba have expressed some concern that they might not be able to after losing a number of players.
Byrnes said they’ll do another ring around before the first round to get a final picture.
Another topic to come up at Sunday’s meeting was the continuing of discussions between Central North and New England about a combined competition.
“The combined competition was resurrected at our 2020 vision day,” Byrnes said.
“It got up as one of our five major priorities.”
He said he and his New England counterpart David Clifton will get together early in the season and consult with the clubs over the season, with the possibility of at the end of the season experimenting with some of the trial ideas that arise.