The Nungarin Panthers Football Club committee voted to put the club into recess at a meeting last Monday, due to a lack of funding, lack of players, lack of volunteers and inability to find a coach.

Club secretary and Nungarin Shire chief executive Bill Fensome said the committee had been forced to make the decision after reviewing their resources for 2010.

“We lost about 10 players from last season’s squad because one retired, a couple went up north to work on the mines and a couple went overseas,” he said.

“From the squad of 30 that we think we need to be competitive, we could only come up with a squad of about 21.

“The other problem is that we have some players from last season still carrying injuries, so we were a little bit worried that they wouldn’t be able to get through the whole 15 games this season.

“Also, financially, because of the cropping season, the financial figure carried over to 2010 was down about $30,000 on what we had at the same time last season, so therefore it was very doubtful whether we could get through the season financially and pay for the operations of the club.”

Nungarin locals were shocked by the decision and quickly organised a community meeting to save the club.

Mr Fensome said he was pleased with the support of the community.

“We had a good turnout of local people who offered voluntary help with things such as searching for players and now we’re hoping that we can now be in a position to scrounge up enough players for the season, possibly from Perth and surrounding towns like Trayning,” he said.

“We also had some people at the meeting who talked about helping with fundraising activities, for example a couple of farmers volunteered to put in crops in the next cropping season.”

The Nungarin Panthers Football Club has a long and proud history in the town, and despite going into recess in 1989, it was revived in 2006.