Carnarvon will have a new colts team this year after the Gascoyne Football Association voted to allow Kingsford Lions into the competition.

GFA president Cameron Perry said only one club abstained from voting.

“They came along with their application and after a lengthy discussion we voted,” Perry said.

“We, the GFA, are happy to have them in.”

Kingsford president Bob Farrell said he had been pushing since January to get the new team accepted.

The Kingsford nippers competed for the first time last year and Farrell said he would push to get a seniors team up and running some time in the future.

He said 35 children were interested in playing for Kingsford and that he had not poached any one player from an existing team.

“We approached and spoke to them personally and asked if they wanted to play,” he said.

“We won the nippers premiership last year, which surprised everyone in Carnarvon.”

Perry said the motto he wanted to instil in the club was “community, health, education and respect”.

“We had good feedback from the schools last year saying there was a great improvement in behaviour from the kids that were involved,” he said. “When we first started up they were a little bit rowdy but towards the end of the year they were putting their hand up before speaking.”

The vote was put to clubs at last week’s meeting at the Department of Sport and Recreation offices where teams put in their submissions for fixtures.

Some concerns were raised at the meeting by the other teams about there not being enough young players to form another team.

Fixtures for this season’s GFA will be listed in upcoming editions of the Northern Guardian.