LEXTON'S lifeblood _ its juniors _ are a rare breed this winter.
The club has been left without under-14 and under-17 football teams for 2010 Lexton Plains Football League season after it was forced to scrap them due to a lack of numbers.
And while the under-12 cubs remain on the park this year, there is no guarantees the club will reform either of the sides in the coming years.
In fact Lexton president Mal Sargent believes it is going to be difficult to re-establish the under-17 team altogether.
"The chance of getting an under-17 team up and running again would be highly unlikely I would think. What we are pinning our hopes on is that the under-12s we've got can stick together," he said.
Sargent said the club originally expected to field an under-14 team this year, but was forced to inform the league of its decision about three weeks before the start of the season that it could not field the side. He said the under-17s were virtually ruled out at the start of January.
Sargent believed the closure of the Lexton Primary School had been a massive hurdle in attracting families to the region, therefore slashing its junior stocks.
"Since then the numbers have tended to dwindle because there's no one moving into the area with young kids because there's no school to put them into," he said.
"That's probably what created the problem we've got now."
Sargent admitted the club tried a range of avenues to try and get its junior teams up and running this year, including advertising in The Courier and requesting excess players from Ballarat Football League clubs joining the Tigers.
Those efforts have proved to be in vain.
Sargent said the impact of decreased teams would not be known until the end of the season.
Lexton won just two matches in both of the under-17s and under-14s in 2009, with both teams finishing second-last on the ladder.
Last Modified on 05/05/2010 10:44
