SWANS SIT OUT 2020 SEASON - By Peter Doherty 

THE Riverina League has lost a second club for the year with Griffith Swans deciding on Friday afternoon not to participate.

They joined Narrandera in making their own call and informed AFL Riverina of their decision. "We'll withdraw from the competition as well," Griffith president Jeff Harris said. "Like most clubs, we're being heavily weighing up the risk versus reward balance.

For us, the risk - not for the playing group as much as the supporters and the wider community - got to the point where that is weighing heavily on everyone. "With that in mind, we think, it's best for everyone if we withdraw from senior footy and netball."

 Harris said the Swans will leave the door open for the juniors at this stage. "Hopefully we can get a South West junior season up, and Auskick programs," he said. "They're obviously a little bit more geographically insular.

So, we can have a bit more confidence that they might be a viable prospect."

The Swans had players in the border regions, including Jacob and Lucas Conlan, who'd gone to test themselves in the Ovens and Murray but were going to come back to the Swans. The rules restricting travel out of Albury made that another factor to consider.

"We were happy to provide them somewhere to play footy until that obviously became a big question mark over the last week.

It's unfortunate guys like that - the two Conlans, Isaac Campbell, Jack Rowston - had gone away to play higher level and haven't had that opportunity," Harris said. "Where it made sense, we would have been happy to welcome them back into the club."

Harris said they didn't want to spend the weekend in limbo and the rapid development of this week had changed their mind.

"With the season just around the corner, we thought it was appropriate.

We met during the week to come up with the club perspective and wait and see what the AFL Riverina board was doing but at the end of the day, it's an opportunity to get on with it and provide some clarity for everyone," Harris said.

 Like his Narrandera counterpart Mark Savage, Harris thanks the AFL Riverina board for their tireless efforts in trying to give clubs a competition to play in. The Swans say they'll work hard to keep their community together and prepare for next season.

We'll go into some planning for next year but also look at ways of keeping our playing group involved in the footy club, looking at events and getting together and what we can do, getting the boys and netballers together," Harris said.

(The Area News - Monday July 13, 2020).