TINGHA Tigers Rugby League Club looks like being unable to field an A grade side this season, and club president Ivan Coleman said at this stage he thinks the club will fold.
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“We’ve got no applications for a coach for the 2015 season and a lack of players,” Coleman said.
“There’s an emergency meeting at 2pm at the Sport and Recreation Club on Sunday, January 25.”
Coleman said a decision on the future of the club would be made at that meeting. He said the Tigers had been in the competition since the beginning of Group 19 and had fielded a team every season.
“We’ve been pretty competitive every year and we’ve got plenty of juniors, but we haven’t got any senior players,” Coleman said.
“All the clubs love Tingha coming to play on their grounds because we always bring our crowd with us. I think without Tingha, it won’t be Group 19.”
There are several new teams entering the competition this year, but Coleman said he did not think they were the reason his club was short of players.
“Our biggest trouble is that we can’t match the money that’s being chucked about at players, and I think it will ruin football in the country, in the end,” he said.
“It’s hurt. It’s taken a lot of our players. I think it’s just come to the point that there’s no players left,”
Coleman said it seemed as though the days of playing the game just for the love of it were well and truly gone, and outgoing president Jock Needer certainly agreed with Coleman on that score.
He said clubs like Inverell and Glen Innes, that throw money around at everybody, did not help the situation of the smaller clubs.
“I’ve been saying that it will kill the game for a long time,” Needer said. “One of our ex-players, I’ve been told is going to be paid $700 per game this year.
“The only ones we paid last year were the coaches. We can’t throw money around like that, we haven’t got the big sponsorships.”
Inverell Hawks president Gary Lavender described one player being paid $700 per game as ‘pie in the sky’ stuff.
“That is just dead wrong. Who do they think we’ve got, Billy Slater? I can guarantee no-one gets $700 a game,” Lavender said.
“With the Hawks it has been $100 per win in the A grade for as long as I can remember. Everyone pays their players. They might say they don’t, but they do.
One bloke we spoke to last year said Tingha had offered him $250 a game. We said no to that and we never saw him again.
Whether he got it or not, I don’t know.
“Something had to give because this town just won’t support three teams. Simple as that. Unfortunately it looks like Tingha is the team to go.”