Canberra's American football competition is in danger of folding after a severe player shortage left the ACT Gridiron league with just two teams.
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The Canberra Centurions and the University of Canberra Firebirds will play a condensed four-game season as the last clubs standing after the Central Spears withdrew a fortnight out from the season opener.
The league has had a presence in Canberra since 1993 but ACT Gridiron has struggled to tap into a growing American football fan base with player numbers declining rapidly in recent years.
ACT Gridiron president George Stosic said he wants the league to "start from scratch" with this season to be five games long - including the final - and rounded out by flag football.
The competition boasted five teams in 2017, four teams last year and now has just two vying for the Capital Bowl after the Spears joined the Barbarians on the scrapheap.
"I'd love to blow it up and just start from scratch. That is what I want to do," Stosic said.
"Want I want to do is that you register under the league banner and we put a cap on each club, for example 35 for each team.
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"If you reach that 35 then you spill those remaining players flow onto the next club who don't have the numbers."
Centurions and ACT Monarchs coach Josh Gargiulo said clubs need to do more themselves to attract more players.
"One thing we don't do a good job at the moment is putting the word out there that we exist because at the end of the day no one is going to play the sport if they don't know about it. We recognise that we are a niche sport," Gargiulo said.
"To be honest I think a lot of the problem is our fault. As clubs and administrators of the sport I think there's a lot more that we can do to get people."
"Everyone knows about the Superbowl, so why can't we tap in to those people who are potential players, administrators, coaches or volunteers?"
Former NRL players Jarryd Hayne and Valentine Holmes have helped to catapult American football into the mainstream in Australia, with free-to-air television audiences growing 55 per cent since the 2014-15 season.
Centurions president Richard van Lohuizen says the foundations have been laid by those players but now the clubs need to do more publicity.
"We've been getting out to shopping centres and just being more visible to the public but a lot of people still don't know we're around," van Lohuizen said.
"The opportunity to grow and to pick up numbers is certainly there but we need to actually capitalise on the increased publicity as we just can't expect it to work out itself."
