MOVE it or lose it - that is the blunt message from Group 10 selector Royce George when it comes to the annual representative rugby league fixture against Group 11.
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Lose players, lose passion and lose the match.
As man who played for Group 10, is a life member of Group 10 and been a Group 10 selector for 30 years, George was left angered and frustrated by the build up to this year's fixture.
While George understands there were players who were injured or had pressing family matters to deal with, late withdrawals and a lack of interest meant Group 10 did not field its best squad.
It's not a new trend either.
"We had 11 players at training on Wednesday night out of the 17. Now how are you supposed to perform when that happens?," George said.
"Group 11 went down there to Blayney and trained on Friday afternoon at Blayney and did something on Saturday morning, just a warm up.
"The last player we brought in was on Saturday morning, Ossie [coach Graeme Osborne] brought young Cooper Egan up from Lithgow with him.
"The same happened two years ago, we had 16 unavailable and then we picked other blokes, but they'd organised to go away because they didn't think they'd get picked.
"When we went to Forbes [in 2019] we were three players down on that Saturday morning, we pulled Keelan [Bresac] out of the grandstand who was watching his girlfriend play.
"If we could've had our best side on Sunday I'd say probably 10 positions would've been different, but that's not wanting to take anything away from the kids that were there.
"These blokes that put in on Sunday for us, I'd love to be in the trenches with them."
As George sees it, the selection headaches that Group 10 have could be resolved by taking a lesson from the past.
Rather than playing the Group 10 versus Group 11 fixture at the end of a season or after the season has commenced, he wants to see it shifted to again act as a Western Rams selection match.
"It's being held at the wrong time of the year, when we used to have it after the Bathurst Knockout for years and years and years it always used to work," George said.
"We'd play it after the knockout and we picked a Western Division side from that Group 10-Group 11 game.
"It always worked, you got the strongest and the players had something to play for, something to aspire too.
"At the moment some people don't want to play, if you're playing at the start of year, you have that next step to Western Rams and the chance of making a [New South Wales] Country side like we used to, you'd want to play wouldn't you?
"They looked at playing it at the end of the year, but how are you going to pick a player that has been knocked out of the semi-finals and keep him interested for four or five weeks until we finish the competition?
"Have it at the start of year when everyone starts training, they're fit. The only thing they lack then is match fitness, so we have the knockout, then pick a side, play Group 11 and then we go pick a Western side from that."
Having all players within the Group aspire to represent is an atmosphere that George grew up with.
He still speaks with pride about his time playing representative league in the region.
"I played Western Division and Group 10 under 18s and I played Group 10 seniors the next year when I was 19 and then I was injured the next two years before I went to Sydney," he said.
"I was a 19-year-old kid and I would've given whatever to play.
"It's always an honour to play rep footy. I still have my Western Division jumper from under 18s, with all the stuff I've kept I still have that, and my Group 10 jumper from the next year from first grade."
Though the Group 10 side which lost 28-6 to Group 11 on Sunday was not the strongest outfit on paper the region could have had, George stressed that the effort of those in the sky blue could not be questioned.
Some of them were deployed in unfamiliar positions - such as back rowers Nick Barlow and Tom Lemmich, who lined up at five-eighth and centre respectively.
"They were great, they put their hands up, the kids we had on Sunday all wanted to play so that was good," George said.
"We got Nick Barlow from Blayney's reserve grade, he was supposed to play in the second row and he came in to replace someone else ... but we had to play him at five-eighth.
"Josh Rivett came into the side and he did really good at fullback, both our wingers, one from Lithgow [Riley Dukes] and the other from Pat's [Ash Cosgrove] did well with limited opportunities.
"We pulled in Toby Apps from Cowra, unseen sort of thing but we heard he could play second row or hooker. He started as hooker off the bench and went really good.
"Lachie Large from Lithgow, he's a big unit. He shook my hand and thanked me for the opportunity. He did his elbow, he hyper-extended his elbow, and he was that disappointed he had to come off."
The young squad, which was packed with Group 10 senior debutants, actually went to half-time on level terms with Group 11 at 6-all.
But in the second half as they fatigued, made errors and had less possession, Group 11 went on with the job.
"The first half we completed 16 out of 20 sets. The second half after 10 minutes we'd completed two out of three, but after 40 minutes of that second half we'd completed three out of 11," George said.
"When we got the ball the boys were that tired. Group 11 had three goal line drop outs and got the ball back off the three of them.
"So they were tired and forced the ball or dropped the ball, all they were doing was defending.
"But the players put their heart and soul into it, it was a big effort in that first half. We bombed a try with three minutes to go to half-time, a bloke lost the ball over the line, that would've made it 12-6 our way, which would've been great.
"You couldn't fault those guys for effort."
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