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Two Sunshine Coast senior rugby league clubs have been decimated with mounting injury tolls and are having to ask players to back up from reserve grade or be pulled out of under-18s.
Prior to the Easter break, Stanley River Wolves had 14 A-grade players out with a range of different injuries, some long-term.
Caloundra Sharks finished the weekend’s Round 4 game against Gympie with no interchange making a total of 11 players sidelined.
The growing casualty wards have piled pressure on the clubs to stay competitive in a rigorous competition.
Wolves have lost Ryley Kajewski (knee), Gareth Friedrich (MCL), Brodie Sharman (ankle), Wyatt Reynolds (foot) and Callum Klein (hamstring).
“Myself and my twin brother Rowan, we were both out and our other half back Brett Doherty was out,” Klein said.
“Also our front rower Blair Howard and Scott Floss were out, (it was a) very long injury toll for round one.”
Despite the growing casualty ward, Klein said he was still surprised by the result.
“The score line isn’t what I expected,” he said.
“You know you can turn up and lose and be happy with a loss in some ways.
“I struggle to take many good things out of the first half that we put in.”
The Pirates dominated the Wolves in the opening 20 minutes, setting up a healthy half time lead.
“It’s been extremely gruelling,” his mother Rachael Hepner said.
The Mt Archer family spent nine months living in Brisbane alongside Mr Hepner as he underwent a heavy course of chemotherapy.
“That was pretty massive,” Mrs Hepner said.
Mr Hepner was then told the cancer had returned with nodules found on his lungs.
He underwent more surgery before doctors discovered late last year the cancer had spread to both his thigh bones.
“He did do two rounds of chemo, lost his hair again and was quite unwell,” Mrs Hepner said.
“In November, he completed two weeks of radiation and then this year recently we found out that it (cancer) has presented itself again.”
Stanley River Wolves head coach Rowan Klein said he believed the Wolves needed to bring their A-game to beat the Pirates. We re confident that if play our best we can win, but we re going up there with no illusion - we know Noosa will be extremely hard, he said. The game will be the Wolves first match without co-captains Tom Murphy and Chris Aiton, both staples in Stanley having success in 2019. Although the Wolves lost the dynamic duo, they ve signed major talent this year including Queensland Cup alumnus Rowan Winterfield and Dalton Phillips. Coach Klein said he hoped the recruitment of Winterfield and Phillips would make up for the team losing their prior captains, but knew the season would be harder.
Aiton has departed the club to play in Moranbah and Murphy is set to hit the top end as a captain/coach for a Northern Territory team. However, premiership winner and former Sunshine Coast Falcon, Ryan Hansen, will lace up again for the Woodford side in a shared arrangement with the Moranbah Miners. Hansen will play week on week off in an arrangement that worked well for both clubs in 2019. This year s captain Brett Doherty said his team was keen after a forced year off due to COVID-19. We were raring to go and all of a sudden it stopped, we didn t know what to do with ourselves, he said.