Federal will not field seniors in the Upper Murray league this year

A chronic player shortage led the club to make the tough call at a meeting on Tuesday night.

Federal has put in a formal request to the league to play reserves without seniors.

The club also has enough players to compete in under-11 football and all grades of netball.

"We had 12 senior players that were full-time and we had another five or six who, due to work commitments, could only have played every second week," Federal co-president Craig Sheather said.

"We got close but we did play with 15 at the start of last year a couple of times and it just gets too tough.

"It's too hard on the blokes that are on the ground and you've got no bench.

"Football's in a fair bit of trouble and netball's following close behind - although we do get players and juniors for the netball.

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"There's still a lot of people being asked, who probably thought they were going to retire, to come back and play with their kids."

The ball is now in the league's court as Federal waits to discover its fate.

"I'm certainly hopeful," Sheather said.

"I don't know what the options are if we're not allowed to play reserves.

"Do they allow the club to continue or do they say 'no, just bugger off'?

"I don't think they can say that because there's too many kids involved.

"We certainly hope they see our point of view and I hope any decision will be rail-roaded quite quickly.

"We've had five or six meetings, hundreds of phone calls and lots of time spent by a lot of people to reach this point.

"It's a pretty hard option (to withdraw the seniors), a very tough option."

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