Re-elected Football Wagga president Paul Galloway says a lack of volunteers will prevent the sport from growing in the Riverina

Galloway was re-elected for a second term as Football Wagga's annual general meeting last week.

David Merlino was also returned as operations manager with little change to the executive heading into 2023.

But a shortage of volunteers in a number of non-executive roles has Galloway concerned about the future of the sport.

While he does not believe the volunteer shortage is a problem purely for soccer alone, Galloway warned it could prevent the sport from some serious growth in coming years.

"Probably like a lot of sports, the biggest issue we're facing is that we do need more people involved in the running of the sport," Galloway said.

"We were a little bit short last year and we're short again this year in specific roles so we're trying to find some people to give us a hand because it's really difficult to take advantage of the opportunities that sit there for this sport when you don't have enough people participating at that level.

"I don't think that's a problem that belongs only with this code, I think that's a problem that's with every code. Trying to find volunteers is really difficult.

"We've got a meeting in a week to try to come up with some ideas on how we're going to fill positions."

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Galloway revealed Football Wagga continue to receive interest from neighbouring clubs about joining the competition.

But he explained until Football Wagga has the manpower to cope with expansion, there is little point entertaining the requests.

"The requests are there but like anything...it's really difficult to say let's expand a sport when you don't have enough volunteers to run it," he said.

"It's great to say we want to go here, here and here but unless there are people who are passionate about the sport, involved in the sport and want to get involved in the direction of soccer in this region, stick your hand up and come and help, then it's really difficult to say yes, let's expand.

"When you've only got a limited amount of people, who all work on top of what they do, you can't lean on them to say now we're going to go here.

"It comes right back down to, expansion is about a number of things, it's about one, having the right physical resources like fields and stuff like that but we actually need more people involved in the sport eg. referees, eg. volunteers to do that."

Galloway revealed there have been fruitful conversations with Wagga City Council around the desire to find more grounds to accommodate the sport's growth.

"They're really supportive of expanding the game and expanding the opportunities for people to play the sport. So that's been really positive," he said.

"Those things take time, and there has been groundwork done prior to me getting there, but what is giving us optimism is that council approached us to say why don't we do this, or this, so that's been good from our perspective."

The other key focus Galloway takes into his second year in charge is player retention.

"To be honest, what this sport needs to really focus on now is the player retention and that's probably across all the ages," he said.

"It's really about player retention as they move through the various stages of the competition from miniroos into the juniors into the seniors.

"We really need to make sure that the competitions that we've got are providing the right opportunity for players to stay in the sport. That's probably the first thing. Because we are growing and we are under constant requests for people to join the association.

"We're always getting people wanting to come in and that puts a lot of pressure on the current set-up, the current structure, it also puts pressure on the grounds, all that sort of stuff.

"We're working with council now about grounds and options there. We do need more fields, especially through that winter period. With the growth of the Wanderers, who are going well, in terms of their numbers and participation, that obviously adds an extra string to it."

Football Wagga are also working on some strategies to help grow the women's game next season and help create further excitement in what is a World Cup year.

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