In the Wimmera Football Netball League in 2022 both the Southern Mallee Giants and Nhill won't be fielding Under 17 football and netball teams, while in the same age group in the Horsham District Football Netball League clubs Laharum and Taylors Lake won't have football sides.

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The Wimmera Mail-Times is led to believe there are other Wimmera clubs that are also struggling with junior numbers.

While the reasoning behind this could quite possibly come down to children finding other things to do during the lockdowns of 2020-21, HDFNL chairperson Nathan Neumann believed it was more closely related to declining populations.

"We are seeing that our Under 17 numbers are on the lower side," Neumann said.

"I think we've been seeing a trend like this anyway.

"The actual population, from what I'm led to believe and I don't know where this information's come through and I don't know how accurate it is but participation rates are actually quite high for those age groups but it's just that there aren't the kids.

"The Under 14 numbers they're quite strong. We're hoping that it may be like this for another year or two and then hopefully we'll see an increase in our numbers due to those Under 14s coming through."

Similarly, Nhill and District Sporting Club president Dom Colombera said the whole club's shortage of player registrations came down to declining populations.

"We just don't have the people that used to be in this area," Colombera said.

"Like I think in the 80s or 90s probably Gerang-Kiata were a team, little towns like Boyeo and Netherby and Yanac all had teams.

"We have a lot from Auskick which would be six and over to under 12s, we've got about 40-odd, so we're looking alright there but obviously last year we didn't have an under 14s team and this year we're not going to have an under 17s team.

"We're probably just going to fill under 14s so you can see in that 12-17 year age group we're struggling quite significantly and we're not the only club."

When the Wimmera Mail-Times spoke with Ararat Rats president David Hosking about junior playing numbers in late 2021 he also pointed to declining population numbers but added that he was of the belief that "young people's priorities have changed" from sport.

"When I was a younger person there was three secondary schools each one of them had a few hundred students," Hosking said.

"Now there are two secondary schools with significantly less younger people in the community and that just simply means that it is harder to fill sporting bodies and sporting clubs.

"The other thing is, I don't like criticising young people and it's not a criticism on them as such.

"When I was a young fellow there wasn't a whole lot else to do except play sport on weekends.

"Young people have a lot more disposable income now and the way they choose to spend their weekends has changed.

"They choose to play sport when it suits them. In the old days you played every weekend because you didn't want to let your team down."

Regardless of why its happening, the fact that some teams can't field junior sides will only impact negatively on all those involved.

Team sport plays a fundamental role in the development of many children and without a side to play in (football or netball) those children may be lost to the code or sport forever.

The flow on effect is that less teams in certain competitions may result in more uneven results between sides because the same teams are regularly playing each other and less games if teams forfeit.

This may leave juniors feeling disengaged and again may be lost to the sport.

Senior teams will suffer from this as they won't have sufficient junior numbers to eventually make the transition to the senior side.

Club volunteer numbers may also take a hit with less children involved in sport according to Colombera.

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"Normally you can rely on the parents of your juniors to fill in a few shifts here and there," he said.

"If you don't have the junior numbers you don't have the parents coming to watch those kids you struggle to fill those roles."

Neumann said many options had been discussed around addressing the Under 17 shortage but it "comes down to the individual clubs".

"As a League we can't force clubs to merge and we can't force clubs to join teams," he said.

"We've put things in place to allow them to play with lower numbers."

Whether it ultimately comes down to a declining population or lowering participation rates, fingers crossed we can see junior numbers stabilise or grow in the coming years.

Everyone will be better for it.

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