The Dungog Warriors go into season 2017 minus six players from last year's grand final team.
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However, confidence is still high within the club that they will be more than competitive, particularly if they remain in the Newcastle Hunter Rugby League’s C-grade competition.
Front-rower Tim Harlow, hooker Daniel Bates, Phil Badior and James Foot have all moved to other clubs and forward Dave Taylor and lock Zach Thackeray have retired.
Badior, the Warriors kicker last year, and centre Foot, the club’s leading try-scorer with 17, are both moving back to Clarence Town, which is returning to the competition this year.
“Phil and James both played for Clarence Town and when they didn’t field a team last year switched across to help us out. Naturally they went back when the club decided to re-enter the competition ,” Warriors spokesman Peter Hudson said.
“We’ll miss them and players like Tim and Daniel are hard to replace, but we are confident we have a core of experienced players and a good coach in Nathan Ward to take us forward.”
Dungog qualified for promotion to B-grade courtesy of being runners-up but the composition of the open age competition is set for a major revamp with several new clubs joining or returning to the competition.
They include Morpeth, Kearsley, Clarence Town and new open-age teams from Newcastle Rugby League teams Maitland and possibly Macquarie Scorpions and Lakes United.
“We have qualified for promotion and would be competitive in B-grade but given we have lost six players from last year’s grand final side our preference is to remain in C-grade,” Hudson said.
“There’s still the core group from last year. We’ve got three or four blokes with 100 plus games experience for Dungog to take us forward.”
The Warriors will be boosted by the addition of Jacob Long, who lives in Dungog but played with Maitland’s under-19s last year and brothers Aiden and Trai Brekelmans who played with Raymond Terrace in B-grade last year.
Front-rower Matthew Hinton is back after missing most of last season with a broken leg.
The club is training on Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm at Bennett Park and welcomes any new players.
