While we are on the Mainland rant, here's another couple of bits of juicy goss that may or may not be true but when has that ever stopped this forum.
Apparently a good lot of Ceri Evans' 16th grade FTC group are off to cashmere technical to play PDL. And plenty of young cashmere players (Nike cup winning team and above, 15-17) are heading to coastal and elsewhere accordingly. Funny, but one of the reasons for the cashmere technical merger was that there would be player pathways into senior ranks - well that was the naive view from the cashmere people (almost entirely parents of junior players). Whereas they are now finding out that Tech have never taken this view. The old-heads at Tech have always been about getting the best players - and they have not cared about where they come from, or given a toss about junior player development.
I have no idea on the circumstances of this instance but lets imagine all players currently at CTFC stay. Therefore it can be argued that CTFC can have 2 x sides in the D1 or A Grade. I think this is going to happen across each age section, FC2011, CTFC and possibly Coastal having 2 sides in each highest level and Halswell , maybe Bays, Parklands and Nomads making up the numbers. We become reliant on both Selwyn and Waimak have a D1 level side in each grade. I think this has to be addressed before we end up with even worse Saturday leagues than this season.