The Lithgow club starts in-formal pre-season training on Friday night before officially kick-starting season 2018 on January 16.

And Osborne says the club is confident a couple of key additions will add to the already promising junior stocks filtering through into premier league next season.

“There’s plenty of interest,” Osborne said, returning to the head coach’s role in 2018.

He coached Workies’ premier league side from 2009 through to 2014, winning the 2012 Group 10 premiership and making four grand finals.

“We’ve signed the majority of our team from last year and we’re trying to recruit too.

“We’ve had good indications from a five-eighth and we’re on the look out for a front-rower as well, but they’re rare these days.”

He said the club was hesitant to go all out on the recruitment front in a bid to counter the likes of Oberon and Bathurst St Pat’s, two clubs that have lured in some pretty big fish in 2018.

The Tigers have signed former NRL forward Josh Starling and 2013 Group 10 player of the year Ben McAlpine.

While St Pat’s has poached some of Group 11’s best players, including prop Zac Merritt.

“We’ve got enough quality locally,” Osborne said, the club winning the 2017 first division title.

“It’s not really a technical game and we don’t think we need a lot of new pieces – we’ve done that before and all that does is upset the locals.”

With that in mind, Osborne said the club was focused on successfully re-establishing Workies as a force in the under 18s competition.

Lithgow won the 2016 junior title but then remarkably failed to fill an under 18s side in 2017.

He said any new players to the club would help Workies’ juniors progress into the senior ranks.

“What we’re looking for will help mentor what we’ve got,” Osborne said, the club appointing last year’s under 16s coach Kyle Egan as the Workies’ under 18s mentor for next season.

“Working with Kyle and the under 16s from last year, that’ll be one of our main focuses.”

Osborne said the December 1 start for pre-season was more of a way of getting the group together before Christmas than any sort of formal training. 

He said the futures of both Van Veen brothers, Jono and Brendon, were still undecided.

Jono still has a three week suspension to serve after being sent off late in 2017.

“It’s up to them. Brendo said he wasn’t going to play much last year and ended up out there. We’ll see what happens.”