One of Canberra's oldest rugby clubs hopes rebuilding a junior pathway will give the club a conveyor belt of talent as they begin their rejuvenation.
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Easts president Huia Edmonds is a man on a mission, determined to rebuild the embattled club after it was forced to withdraw from this season's John I Dent Cup due to the lack of numbers.
Edmonds believes the key to a strong return will be a pathway for junior Easts players that is currently missing within the club.
"I guess coming from a club like Tuggeranong Vikings that's what you actually do, there's a relationship there between your juniors and your seniors," Edmonds said.
"And that is sort of your building curve from 15s, 16s to 18s and then what's next after under 18s? It's colts. So you want to bring those under 18s up to your colts level and play colts.
"It just makes so much sense. For me it's I pretty much got to start from scratch and build that relationship back up again."
Easts are planning a Gala day on September 12 to gain support and pull the veil off of the juniors and seniors new unification under the same club.
Edmonds believed the Gala day would help build a relationship with the Griffith area as well.
"I've got with the Easts president of the juniors and said look instead of having all your games at Curtin from now on I want all junior games to be at Griffith Oval as one big club," Edmonds said.
"The juniors will start at 8 o'clock in the morning. Then the under sevens, eights, 10s, 11s, 12s, 14s, 15s will be playing at the same oval, and then once they finish that's when the seniors will play.
"It's quite influential around the Griffith area so, you've got Grammar up the road, you've got Saint Edmund's around the corner. We want to make sure when they come out of school that they'll want to play colts with us."
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With a slow rebuild in mind, Edmonds plans to take his time with the club slowly easing their way back into higher grade competitions.
Edmonds hoped Easts could come back to the John I Dent Cup within one or two years, but wasn't planning to push anything any time soon.
"So that's where we're sitting at the moment, I guess probably next year we'll probably be in the same position, but hopefully, we'll have our under 18s come up and field a colts team from that," Edmonds said
"Whether we just stay in the Monaro competition and then build from that, and then hopefully another one or two years we can go back up to John I Dent Cup."
