Glenorchy confirms its plans for the 2023 season

The outlook of the 2023 Tasmanian State League season is now clearer after Glenorchy confirmed its plans for the year ahead. Here’s what will happen.

THE Glenorchy Football Club will field a side in the TSL this season despite fears the once powerful club would go into recession due to a severe player shortage.

Glenorchy president Tim Woodham confirmed with the Mercury on Monday that the club would be fielding a senior men’s side in 2023 but are unable to field a Development League side.

The Magpies presence in the TSL sat on a knife’s edge this summer as they struggled for players, with as little as 15 players reportedly hitting the track for one of their main pre-season sessions.

But on Monday Woodham confirmed the club would take to the field after informing AFL Tasmania of the decision on Sunday.

Woodham said it was the best decision for the future of the club.

“We’ll 100 per cent have a team as we told AFL Tas yesterday,” the Glenorchy president said.

“If we went into recess it would be very hard to get back so we’ve got to exist this year and get through it and we’ll build throughout the year and we’ll get back to where we need to be eventually.

“Our numbers have been picking up and so the decision we’ve made as a club is to go that way and just field a men’s senior side.

“We had 31 players last Wednesday so that’s growing by the week and so at our board meeting last Wednesday it was a unanimous decision to have a senior team in the TSL this year.”

While AFL Tasmania will notify the other six TSL clubs of the decision in a meeting between presidents on Tuesday, Woodham said he had already personally informed them of the Pies decision.

“I rang all the other presidents individually and they were all positive and incredibly pleased we’ll field a team, not one of them pushed back,” he said.

“They were all very positive and understand we are heading the right way to turn it around.”

Woodham said he was confident the Pies could shake off initial concerns from AFL Tasmania around their ability to compete and retain players throughout the season.

“They [AFL Tasmania] had concerns that if we get beaten by big margins early in the roster that players might start dropping off but I’m confident they won’t,” he said.

“No doubt there’ll be some hard roads still and we expect that but we’ll improve throughout the year and off the field we are getting everything together as well.

“We had 50 people turn up to the bar at the club on Friday night and we can’t help but go forward now so everything from our end is about being positive and returning this club to where it needs to be and we’ll get there.”

It is understood the TSL will release its season fixture on Wednesday now that Glenorchy has committed to the season.

Woodham confirmed the club was still in negotiations with luring Gary Ablett Junior for a one-off game this season but said it would have to make sense for the club financially.