Quote Originally Posted by anfield View Post
But the point I'm making is that Big clubs like New Lambton and Cooks Hill probably haven't turned away too many teams and players in the last 10 years. Hence they have plenty of players, quality and multiple graded teams.
this couldn't be further from the truth - our junior teams are full in January, our All Age teams are generally stable each year with one or two gaps filled by guys who turn up to training over summer - usually full early February at the latest - National Park is already a dust bowl and we simply don't have the space for training and games, not to mention the extra work involved in having more teams

as far as men's AA and 35 - we haven't added a new team from outside the club in 5 or 6 years and that was an extraordinary situation involving friends of club members, before that it would have been another four years, also involving friends of members - in fact this season we had to turn away a lot of guys from last season with the destruction/total rebuild of a Friday team, that really hurt to tell blokes who've been with the club years that we didn't have space

I'd say we turn away on average 1-2 full teams per year asking to join, along with probably about 20 individual blokes

The zone guys are pretty much the same, stable bunch of blokes every year - a few drop offs and additions each season - very few go to other clubs, and often that occurs because people move away, rather than anything to do with Cooks Hill

often as guys get older and slower they move down a grade or two, or All Age teams want to take it a bit more serious (and use the good field) - which is why we originally formed the ZL3, even though we still had the ZPL team, which neatly brings the conversation back to the whole point Premy wanted to discuss in the first place