A WALL of resistance to change for next year's senior rugby union competitions will be presented by Lower Mid North Coast clubs at a meeting of the Mid North Coast Zone in Port Macquarie on Sunday.
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The distance in travel between Taree, Old Bar and Forster-Tuncurry clubs to Coffs Harbour was the trigger for threats to break away from the zone by Lower MNC clubs and the eventual division of the zone into two separate competitions in 2008.
The Forster Dolphins' last game in Coffs Harbour in 2007 saw the club start with 14 players - two of them 15-year-old youths - and experience a 100-point defeat. The Lower MNC competition now involves seven clubs - Manning River, Old Bar, Forster-Tuncurry, Gloucester, Wallamba and the newest additions, Myall Coast and Wauchope.
However, the Upper MNC competition now stands at a disturbing five clubs - Port Macquarie, Hastings Valley, Southern Cross University, Kempsey and Coffs Harbour - providing just two first grade fixtures in the region each Saturday. Dissatisfaction is understandable. The addition of the Myall Coast club - 110 kilometres south of Forster - has worked satisfactorily in the Lower MNC - but for the Mudcrabs to be integrated into a senior competition across the complete zone, creating a more desirable 12 clubs, would leave them with a round trip in excess of 600 kilometres each time they played in Coffs Harbour.
It would be unacceptable. One experience of that nature would end the club overnight.
Few details have been released by the MNC's executive officer, Bob Wilson, but clubs will be provided with information at an extraordinary general meeting of the zone at Port City Bowling Club, Port Macquarie, from 10am this Sunday. Inevitably, Coffs Harbour club remains at the heart of the discussion, a city centralised between the Mid North Coast and Far North Coast Zones. Previously, Coffs Harbour dipped their toe in the FNC competition only for the venture to fail, again killed off because of the distance factor.
Clubs are agog as to what proposals will be made on Sunday as to how the senior competitions can or will be altered or restructured.