Newcastle Olympic coach Joel Griffiths is counting on his club's successful reserve grade squad - and a new American addition - to help replace the loss of experienced players this NPL men's Northern NSW season.
After finishing seventh in the shortened 2021 campaign, Olympic won a mid-table scramble to finish fifth last season before toppling Charlestown in week one of the finals, then losing to eventual champions Lambton Jaffas. They also qualified for the Australia Cup round of 32 for the second consecutive season.
Griffiths has brought through many youth prospects at the club in his two years at the helm and the former Jets star will look to develop more in 2023 after the departure of captain Rhys Cooper, Tom Davies (Maitland), Daniel Eisenhauer (Cooks Hill), Louis Townsend, Kent Harrison (New Lambton) and Jarrod Dodds.
Musa Kamara, American Malik Thom and Chan Yelchan picked up overseas deals late last season and will not be returning.
Griffiths has gained Nathan Toby from Adamstown and forward Hamza Moovsi, a friend of Thom's from United Premier Soccer League club Cesena.
But he is predominantly relying on his reserve grade squad from last season to fill the void. That group won the premiership and grand final in 2022 and Griffiths was keen to give them an opportunity and reward loyalty.
"We've promoted a few from reserves, which is great because I feel it's important that a club puts time and energy into a good reserve grade and I think there's a lot of clubs who don't do that as much as us," Griffiths said.
"I think that's been really rewarding. We've got a few interesting boys coming through reserve grade who I've got massive wraps on.
"We've just got to nurture them to become first graders. They are so eager and sometimes you need that bit of experience. You've just got to nurture them into game management sometimes.
"There's a lot of upside to the group, and it's just how quickly they can adapt, but the signs have been really good."
The club have played Sydney Olympic, the Jets Youth and Jaffas in recent trials and host Canberra Olympic this weekend.
"We've had a few trials and I think the football has been really good," he said.
"We lost 3-2 to Sydney but we were up 2-0 at halftime and just died a little bit in terms of fitness, but the football in general was really good against a side who had six or seven former A-League players.
"Then we played the Jets Youth [a 4-2 loss] and I thought we were really good in terms of football but came away with nothing to show for it.
"We played Jaffas on the weekend and I was really disappointed with [a 1-0 loss]. We couldn't get it done. We had 61 per cent possession, 17 shots on target, but the most important stat is win or lose and we lost. We've got to fix that, we've got to learn how to win."
Olympic face Edgeworth in round one at Darling Street Oval on March 4.
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