Rutherglen and Wahgunyah will not join forces after merger talks were called off

The Cats have voted to play on as a sole entity, leaving their neighbours 'up against it' in the battle to survive.

Occupying the bottom two spots in the TDFL, the local rivals have lost a combined 16 games by an average of 160 points this year.

Wahgunyah, who went down to Rutherglen by 82 points last month, look set to endure a second successive winless season and had held extensive talks with their neighbours about a possible amalgamation.

But despite the dwindling player base in the region, which forced Corowa-Rutherglen to pull out of the Ovens and Murray for 2023, the Cats are determined to press on under their own steam.

"It came down to a member decision," Rutherglen president Pat Beattie said.

"We just didn't have the support for it.

"In our sub-committee discussions, Wahgunyah were sitting around 85 percent support among their group but by the time we started putting the feelers out there, we were only sitting at about 10 percent.

"We needed a two-thirds to three-quarter majority and we weren't going to get anywhere near that.

"It was starting to destabilise the club in the end so instead of going down that path and having a vote, which we knew was going to fail anyway, we decided to pull the pin."

Wahgunyah president Darryl Hore said he respected Rutherglen's decision but didn't mince his words when considering the Lions' future.

"To be quite honest, we're up against it and we're not going to hide from that fact," Hore said.

"Commitment levels seem to be dying off each week, so if we're going to go ahead in 2024, there's a lot of water to go under the bridge.

"As far as the AFL's concerned, it was going to be 'natural attrition will take place' so now it's just a matter of every club fighting for their own survival.

"It's something we've got to have a good look at now.

"Our volunteers are getting tired because last year was the year from hell.

"We're going to ask the community 'are we fighting for something that you want or do you not feel that the club's important?'

"For us to survive, it's got to be driven by the community so we'll be asking ourselves some big questions in the second half of the season."

Beattie could see the merit in merging but simply found himself outnumbered.

"While I didn't think it was the best thing for our town, I thought it was the best thing for football in the region," he said.

"I was aware I was up against it from the start.

"The merger between Corowa and Rutherglen, back in '78, still holds a lot of sway over people's opinions about mergers in town.

"There's a lot of negativity about that one, all these years on, even for people who weren't born then.

"It's a constant in our club that 'it just didn't work.'

"But we firmly believe we can go ahead.

"We've got good numbers all the way through our junior grades in football and netball - kids leaving home for work and uni hurts us every year - but our U17s are sitting second on the ladder and they've got a fair crack at it this year.

"Financially, we're good, and our member base is quite good but our facilities aren't where we want them to be and that was one of the major factors I looked at, that between the two clubs, we actually had some better facilities between the two of us (at Wahgunyah).

"Our netball court's in desperate need of an upgrade and to rip it all up and re-do it, we've been quoted in excess of $200,000.

"We've got a female side based at our ground, the Felines, and we don't have female-friendly facilities for them either.

"Just about everything we look at down there is outdated."

By contrast, the Lions would leave some of the league's best facilities standing empty if they were to fold.

ALSO IN SPORT

They don't have U14s or U17s this year but Hore isn't about to wave the white flag.

"We are preparing to go ahead in 2024 and we'll do everything we possible can to get our juniors back," he said.

"We've still got great U12 numbers and our netball juniors are fantastic so we've got to be prepared to go ahead - and we will.

"But what toll that takes down the road, unless the community buys in...

"It's going to be a very long year and hopefully it's not our last.

"This club is definitely worth fighting for.

"We still have got some absolutely fantastic people down at the club, our volunteers are the ones that keep driving us on and they keep saying to us 'we can do it.'

"Would a merger have made it any easier? I don't believe so.

"If we think it's hard now, to bring two clubs together that have traditionally been rivals, that would have been a lot harder.

"It's just a question of how long the same people can continue doing the hard work."

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