With a relatively small budget, Rosebud have focused on developing youth in recent years and have finished in the bottom two the past five seasons.

This season they face another tough task, especially after losing Kaleb Cox (moved to Brisbane), Anthony Wood, Denis Fajkovic (not playing), Kyle Munns (Charlestown), Nathan Toby (Olympic), Zaik Luck (Cooks Hill), Ewan Von Essen, Tom Jenkin and Drew Grierson.

Cox, Munns, Wood, Munns, Toby and Luck had shown promise in attack and scored 12 of Adamstown's 19 goals between them last year.

"It is what it is," Rosewarne said of the departures.

"You do your best to work with them as young guys but the disappointing part is that Zaik and Munns have been with us since they were 13, so it becomes difficult.

"But a change might suit them as well, or they may realise the grass is not always greener.

"We've got some boys that are similar ages who have been there or thereabouts but maybe not quite ready due to their physical attributes but they have matured a bit more now and they are showing some promise."

He admitted the losses in attack will make it difficult this year but said "we've adapted some of the ways we want to play to suit the fact we don't have those sorts of players in our mix.

"But even with those players last year, our biggest problem was still scoring goals. We created enough chances to be in games, or at least not lose by the amount we did and yet we still couldn't score a goal. That was most frustrating part because it's not like we weren't capable of creating chances."

Positives for Rosebud are the return of keeper Nick Hartnett, the recovery of attacker Charlie Naylor from injury and the presence of 2022 mid-season recruit Dino Fajkovic up front.

Rosewarne said his squad had been performing well in pre-season and were focused on being competitive for longer.

"There's a good core group we've been working with for a couple of years," he said.

"It will be how long we can stay in games. Our issue has been in individual moments where we haven't quite been at the level and we get punished for it.

"We are playing around with how we might play against different teams, just working on trying to frustrate some of the better oppositions, or just looking at how different teams play and what we can do to counteract that. Different formations, different set ups in terms of where we defend from and different ground set ups as well."

A return of promotion-relegation has been flagged to start next season, giving clubs like Adamstown one more year's grace.

"There's obviously a handful of us that finish around the same area of the comp every year, and it's a resource issue, and those resources won't change too quickly," Rosewarne said.

"You've got to do what you've got to do.

"The interesting part is there's a lot of good players out there that don't want to play NPL either. They are just not interested, it's not even the commitment part in terms of training. It's just the whole seriousness that goes with it.

"It will be interesting to see the different clubs' take on what they are doing."

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