There was a good cross section of the local rugby league fraternity that included current and former Workies players, Oz Tag girls, Storm and Wallerawang junior representatives, New Era Cup players and officials and parents and fans.

The Workies executive was joined on the official table by the Group 10’s Gary Norton and Peter Clarke.

An apology was made from Wolves premier league captain coach Johnathan Van Veen who had prior personal commitments.

Workies club captain Chris Rhodes wanted to make it clear it was not his club’s decision to forfeit to Orange CYMS, but the players themselves.

“After our game against Oberon, on the Thursday training session we only had 11 players after four or five of our players had been injured and we still had ongoing suspension troubles.

“We were not about to call up five or six under 18s and play them against a side like CYMS.

“We already had juniors Nic Miller and Connor Legge on the bench in our games, but to have another three or four youngsters, it would not be fair to CYMS, our juniors or us.

“The under 18s also had troubles and it would be a tough ask for the boys to play their game and then back up as starters in premier league.

“Our thoughts were to get past this game and then have the bye and hopefully we would get some troops back for the game against Cowra.”

When asked by Clarke whether the Wolves would see out the season, Rhodes assured him that they would.

There were a number of thoughts that came out of the meeting on the player drain and they were that employment in Lithgow had dropped dramatically recently with a lot of the younger players having to leave the area to gain work or go to uni.

Other thoughts were that the club had put too much emphasis into buying imports and not looking after their local products and that by letting the Lithgow Giants and Portland into the New Era competition, it had spread the player pool too thin.

The Bears’ Peter Hughes backed this and added that the new teams also had a massive impact on his club who are also struggling for players.

An interesting point arose when Rhodes said that a couple of the boys from Wallerawang and Portland were keen to fill in, but due to the rules, second division players could only fill in for first division teams.

Clarke said this could be an avenue to help out the Wolves and would be asking for the Group 10 management committee to attend the New Era Cup meeting at Wallerawang on Wednesday to tinker with that rule.

One good thing to come out of the meeting was the suggestion of forming a retention-recruitment committee with Chris Rhodes, Paul Glasson, Steve Lang and Bill Ranse volunteering to work with the executive in a bid to sign players for following years.

In the end there was no easy short term resolution, but the club has vowed to fight on and become a power force again within the Group as they have been for decades.