For the few remaining on the undermanned club committee, it is a substantial juggling act according to club president Andrew Pridham.
‘‘We’re just in a position at the moment where we’re struggling for committee people,” Pridham said.
‘‘At the moment, there’s two of us left on the executive committee; we failed to fill a couple of positions at the AGM.
‘‘Since then, we’ve had the vice-president throw in the towel.
‘‘It’s just disappointing for us — we had a successful year off field and even on field we were quite good.
‘‘We’re quite frustrated as we’ve had quite a few players going to other clubs and it’s just sort of unravelled a bit compared to where we were.
‘‘Obviously we had Darcy (Robinson) step away who was a bit of the glue in the situation.’’
Pridham said the club was still working through coaching candidates, but in the interim indicated as much as two thirds of the 2021 playing group had departed.
‘‘We’re in that predicament of players who don’t want to commit without a senior coach, and the senior coach doesn’t want to commit without a playing group,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s like a stand-off between the two different parties, and we’re in the middle saying we’ve got this, and this, and this.
‘‘We need something to give — one side of the party to commit. Then everything else will start to fall into place; at the moment, that’s just not happening.
‘‘We’ve interviewed about seven candidates and haven’t managed to get any of them over the line.
‘‘We have got a potential coach we’re talking to in the next day or so. We’ll do what we can and go through the process.’’
Pridham admitted it was frustrating after a positive year for the Timbercutters — who finished seventh in the football to be ‘‘back at square one’’.
‘‘It’s gutting for us and the few (players) that are still there who had a really good year, and we were building to something,’’ he said.
‘‘Now we’ve gone back to square one — there’s a lot of work to do.’’
Pridham said his search for people committed to helping out was proving to ‘‘be a real struggle’’.
Only two remain on the club executive and five or six on the general committee.
‘‘Normally we would have 12 to 14 people, now we’ve got half of that.
‘‘There’s a lot of work to spread across those few people.
‘‘Every club’s the same. It’s all voluntary, we all work and we’re all busy, so you’re just trying to squeeze so much in.’’
The frustration for the club of not being able to appoint a coach has added further frustration.
‘‘We believe we’re offering good money. Talking to other people, it is good money.
‘‘It’s not like we’re trying to get someone for nothing.
‘‘We’re doing the right thing and still can’t manage to get someone over the line.
‘‘That little bit of highway between Moama and Mathoura, people must think it’s 100 miles.’’
The club is expecting to have to fill two thirds of its playing ranks for 2022.
‘‘It’s a big hole to fill. We have never had big numbers, we only really had just enough,’’ Pridham said.
The president said the club would be relying on the under 17s players that were coming up, who had indicated they were keen to play.
‘‘There’s about eight that are going to come up, so that’s a positive out of the position we are in now.’’
~ Josh Huntly
