By LIZ MOORE

Souths coach Todd Dammers has found a wellspring of young talent from the central Queensland Capricornia region, and believes it will play big dividends for the club on and off the field.

The growing central Queensland contingent is a tactical move from Dammers who initially came back to Souths to help coach Colts, and was looking to increase depth through recruitment.

“My first instinct was, if we’re going to do this, we need to do this in a way that is sustainable and also has an impact,” said the Souths Premier coach. “A lot of my recruitment training or a lot of the stuff I’ve seen at Sydney Uni or at Nudgee College, and a lot of their, I guess, tentacles of recruitment were country guys.

“I thought to myself, well, Souths is running dead last in Colts, so attracting GPS talent is going to pretty difficult,” Dammers said. “But, if you had a look around the clubs, outside of UQ, there wasn’t too many teams chasing country lads and so I stumbled on a contact in central Queensland and it all got the ball rolling from there.”

The success Souths enjoyed with another ‘country contingent’ of young stars in the 1990s is not wasted on Dammers either.

“In essence, when Souths were really, really successful in the 1990s, that’s what they built a lot of their strength on, the Toowoomba lads, Timmy Horan, Garrick Morgan and Jason Little.