Corowa-Rutherglen: Senior coach Steve Owen details their nationwide player search

Owen, who joined the Roos in December after leaving his post at Rutherglen, was faced with the thankless task of covering more than 30 departures from last season's list.

He and the club's football department worked tirelessly chasing potential recruits, even flying to the Northern Territory, but continually hit dead ends with players committing elsewhere.

However, some of those targets have indicated they would play for the club in 2024 if it went into recess and bounced back.

"As it stands right now, we have nine open-age players committed," Owen said.

"Of the group from last year, we've had five players leave to test themselves at higher levels, whether that's AFL, VFL or WAFL.

"Six players are leaving the area to go to university in Geelong and Melbourne, we've had three players leave for other O and M clubs and we've had over 25 other players leave whether to go to district leagues or just leaving the area.

"Excluding the playing list from 2022, the football department, since the end of last season, has contacted 342 potential recruits.

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"We've used our contacts over in Western Australia, South Australia, NSW, Tasmania, Melbourne, Geelong and country Victoria to assist us in recruiting, trying to find anyone out there who hasn't committed to a club.

"A couple of weekends ago, we flew to Darwin to see if there was any players interested in coming down but while we did have a couple of interested parties and we did have two commit, the logistics and financial burden on the club to fly these players in was too much.

"Some of them do live up in Darwin permanently and the only option was to fly them in on Friday night and back by Sunday night; it just wasn't feasible on an ongoing basis.

"But even though they couldn't commit for 2023, we had really strong conversations with them about the 2024 season.

"We've had multiple players come up to us and say 'yes, we're more than happy to chat throughout the year and come on board for 2024.'

"The main issue, when we were trying to talk to these 342 players, was that the coach wasn't signed pre-Christmas and there was hysteria about a mass exodus of players, so trying to sell a picture to potential recruits, all they could see on social media was Corowa losing players.

"By the time I finally came on board, talking to players post-Christmas, they'd already committed to respective clubs elsewhere."

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