Violet Town Football Netball Club is at a crossroads.
That is not just hyperbole from a local sports journalist looking to inject some spice into a story, it is a statement from the club itself.
“We are at the crossroads for season 2023,” the club posted on Facebook on Sunday.
The post was a call for help, a late plea on the eve of the new season.
The problem that the Towners are facing is a serious one currently plaguing clubs across the region — low player numbers.
“Our football sides have been decimated with an abnormal number of off-season departures, leaving us with the real possibility of not being able to field a reserves (team) each week,” the club’s Facebook post said.
“Unfortunately, this year we have had more than normal attrition with 30 players moving on from the sides that participated in finals last season.”
Violet Town president Matthew Holmes said the club’s current numbers simply were not enough to field both a seniors and reserves team each weekend.
“Currently we have roughly 30 players committed for the season. We have enough to fill a senior side and we think our senior side will be more than competitive, but the biggest issue is losing 25 to 30 players from last season’s sides that played finals due to travel and retirement,” Holmes said.
“There are a lot of players to replace. Normally you might lost 10 or 15 a year. Thirty players doesn’t quite go into 43 written in on a Saturday.”
Violet Town’s reserves and seniors both made the finals in 2022 after finishing sixth, with both losing in the opening round of the post-season.
But despite strong campaigns out on the park, more than two dozen players have left spots that need to be filled.
The Towners are not alone in their struggles in the player numbers department.
Fellow KDL club Rushworth will not field a senior side this season, while Ardmona will be in recess for the second consecutive year.
Bigger leagues aren’t immune to the problem either.
Goulburn Valley League sides found player numbers hard to come by last season, with multiple clubs not fielding reserves teams at various points.
Meanwhile, the Corowa-Rutherglen Football Netball Club in the Ovens and Murray league will hold a vote this month on whether it will enter recess in 2023.
Holmes admitted his club’s current situation was, at least in part, a predicament of its own making. But he said there was more to the situation than that.
“Our biggest issue is we have been reliant on players coming out of Melbourne because we haven’t had juniors for six or seven years,” he said.
“We have struggled to consistently maintain our junior base of players. We have always had 20-odd kids at Auskick and we were losing them from there to other clubs and then trying to get them back was nearly impossible.
“One of the things we have been able to do this year to consolidate our future is get an under-18s side going again.
“It is going to be a slow process with that part, so it is just trying to get through the next couple of seasons with top-up players from somewhere else.”
Holmes believes the COVID-19 pandemic is still having an impact on player numbers as well.
“I think COVID does have a lot to do with it because people realised that weekends didn’t have to be all about football and netball,” he said.
“I think last year a lot of playersplayed for the sake of playing and then realised that they did enjoy having weekends free, so they have pulled the pin."
The restructuring of the junior program will hopefully help the club shore up its long-term future, but it does not offer a solution to this year’s predicament.
To address that, Holmes said the club had been putting in a huge amount of effort to try to bring in extra players.
“We have been talking to all our players to see if they have any mates who might want to come down,” he said.
“I know we are talking to a car load from Melbourne at the moment to come with a couple of new recruits that we have got.
“We are a proud club. I think we have only ever forfeited one game of football in senior and reserves football overall ever in our history, and we have been around for 125 years.
“We are still talking to players and hopefully a few more come through.”
Anyone interested in playing or helping out the club can phone Gary Abley on 0437 455 356.