Swampdogs have dropped back to the Darwin reserve grade compeition in 2020 to give chances to their promising youth base

Swampdogs have dropped back to the Darwin B-grade rugby competition for 2020 to compensate for numbers and ease their growing youth base into senior rugby.

Hayden Austine continues to be a leader among the Swampdogs playing group. Picture: KERI MEGELUS

Swampdogs have dropped back to the Darwin B-grade rugby competition for 2020 to compensate for numbers and ease their growing youth base into senior rugby.

The Freds Pass based club finished bottom of the A-grade competition without a win last year.

Club president Mel Hewton believes the club’s move will help their youth players grow without making an immediate jump from the youth divisions to A-grade rugby.

“The club decided to knock back to B-grade because we have a good, solid junior base coming up,” Hewton told the NT News.

“We wanted to provide that pathway for the boys to come up and play senior rugby without going straight into the A-grade competition.

“Basically it’s all about our numbers, we will be looking to field both an A-grade and a B-grade side in the future if we get the numbers.

“We expect our side to be quite competitive in this grade and it will be good for the club to have some games at this level.”

Swampdogs last spent a season in the reserve grade in 2015 returning to the top grade contest the following year.

The side are deep into their pre-season though have not yet announced their coach for the season ahead.

Though that has allowed the players time to manage and coach themselves with former player-coach Mark Gillam and Hayden Austine stepping up as leaders among the group.

“Pre-season is going great so far, the boys have been training through the wet season to get ready with only some still away,” Hewton said.

“We don’t have a confirmed coach just yet but the players have been coaching themselves instead which has gone well.

“Training for our juniors also started three weeks ago at the end of Jan and we’ve seen that group grow in that time.”