The Junee Jaguars have confirmed their intention to nominate a first grade team for the upcoming Football Wagga season after opting to take a hiatus last year.
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The Jaguars, who will resume training next week, believe the further development of young players the past 12 and the arrival of experienced players in town has them well placed for a Pascoe Cup return.
Junee won the 2015 premiership with a grand final victory over Henwood Park, and their inclusion would increase the number of teams in top grade to 11.
Incumbent women's coach Craig Duncan will juggle the men's role this season and is confident they have will have enough quality to compete, despite finishing seventh in reserve grade last year with six wins from 18 games.
"Next week we plan to nominate our teams and the outlook is we'll be nominating first grade and reserve grade teams," Duncan said.
"I'm pretty sure with the young guys coming up (there's enough talent), Max Riley in particular is a good prospect.
"We finished a fair way down (in reserve grade) but there was some good signs, we were reasonably competitive to be honest and there was only one or two goals in a lot of games.
"I don't think we've lost anyone really, we've had a few new players coming into town as well who are older but still quite capable.
"Everyone here's of the same view as me that first grade is where you want to be, you always want to test yourself.
"We won a first grade grand final a few years ago and that momentum is coming back slowly, hopefully that will take us through the next few seasons."
Football Wagga president Tony Dobbin said their preference was always for Junee to return to first grade as soon as possible.
"We gave guarantees to Junee that if they can get a senior men's team back in, they can come back into the competition," Dobbin said.
"We might have to have a look at the season length. We could drop out a couple of reserve days we have, or simply make the season longer.
"It puts a bye in the situation, but we've had byes before.
"It was a guarantee we gave to them and it's good, because from our point of view getting Junee back into the folds just adds to the competition."
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