The biggest hockey club in Canberra has been forced to withdraw its men's team from the Capital League 1 competition.
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ANU disbanded its first-grade team after the unexpected departure of new coach Terry Evans resulted in most of its players joining rival clubs.
Evans, a former Hockey ACT chief executive, accepted the job last October, but stood down from his position to take up a high-performance role with Hockey New Zealand.
That led to five ANU players joining Wests and another three signing with Central.
Wests needed to upgrade its roster after several players left to join the new Goulburn side, led by Australian Kookaburras star Glenn Turner.
ANU president Tim Banks said the club was left with no choice but to withdraw from the top grade, given it would have fielded an uncompetitive team.
"We took the decision we couldn't do it because we'd get flogged every week,'' Banks said.
"We're better off withdrawing into second grade and investing into coaching with a view to getting back into first grade eventually.
"We went from having very bright prospects to being in the crisis mode that an amateur club can find itself in.''
Despite not having a first-grade team, ANU still has the most men's sides across all of Hockey ACT's divisions.
ANU will have teams in Capital League 2, and two teams each in State League 1, State League 2 and State League 3, plus a team in State League 4.
Banks hopes an increased focus on development – it has 150 juniors – will translate into greater numbers in the senior ranks in the future.
"We used to be a force in first grade," he said. "We had three Olympic Games players when I first joined the club 25 years ago and we won the first-grade comp that year.
''The past few years we've struggled in sustaining the model and retaining a coach long term, and that's had an impact on the sustainability of the squad."
Along with the new Goulburn team, Albury-Wodonga will also field teams in the men's and women's first-grade competitions this year.
Hockey ACT president Peter Martens said the organisation would work with ANU to help it return to first grade down the track.
"For the interests of hockey we will be working with ANU to try and get them back into first grade as opposed to punishing them in the lower grades,'' Martens said.
"The reality of any sport is you can tend to have too many teams, so there's some form of natural attrition.
"But where a club has a desire to have a first-grade side, we would like to help those clubs to reach those objectives.''
