Stingrays not in a mood to surrender

CORIO Bay Stingrays president Cara Spangaro says her side can survive relegation from Big V State Championship after yet another barren season in the league’s top tier.

The Stingrays have won only one of 11 matches this season, which compounds their 4-18 record of last season.

While Whittlesea Pacers finished lower than the Stingrays last year, the Corio Bay side sits dead last this season, with questions to be asked at season’s end whether demotion to Division 1 is necessary.

But Spangaro said her club would fight to stay in top division.

“We want to stay in State Championship next season,” she said.

“That’s really important for our association and also the people we've recruited in the last 12 months.

“I think that’s achievable; we just need to get through the second half of this season and put a couple of wins on the board.”

Big V has sole discretion on whether to promote or relegate teams, but pressure will mount on the Stingrays if they fail to improve on their bottom placing.

“At the end of the season they’ll ask (us) and it depends also in the results in Div 1 men,” she said.

“As long as you can support your plan and you’ve got your signings, I think they’re really supportive on clubs that have had to go through a transition process.

“We’ll keep working away for some wins for the remainder of the season and hopefully that will sort itself out as we move towards September.”

Spangaro said the club’s woes were different to the issues of last season.

“It’s a completely different group. Obviously we’ve still got Michael Rebula and Joel McFall, and Griff (Errey) and Chris (Eichler) were out of Youth League, but I think it’s a rebuild in its own entity,” she said.

“This group has come together in this form and we only have 11 games under our belt.

“There are a lot of teams that have multiple imports and we’ve only got one import this season, which was a decision that we wanted to focus on our core Geelong-born players. But that certainly has an impact when there are two imports in the other teams.

“All the signs are positive and the feel we have within the group is positive.”