by Peter White of the Western Leader.

Josh isn’t the only kid with heaps of sporting potential but limited cash reserves. The Western Leader has profiled dozens of youngsters over the past year whose families spend their weekends scrapping together every spare dollar they can. It’s not uncommon to find proud mums and dads manning suasage sizzles and selling raffle tickets in a bid to get their youngsters of to various career-launching tournaments all over the world.

What else can they do?

There is no obvious place to apply for financial assistance and the various funding agencies all have different criteria as to who can apply.

Perhaps it is time for all parties to come up with a solution so our talented sportspeople have a clearly defined process to follow. It is a real shame to see them struggling to get the help they desperately need to persue their goals. Encouraging our young people’s sporting ambitions is surely a far better alternative to having them wandering aimlessly around the streets.

What do you think? Contact [email protected] if you have a view on the sporting issue.

My view is that we need a MALE’S COMMISSION so that our boys can get as much assistance as our girls. If Josh was a girl this would be highly promoted even research would be paid out at around $120 per hour to show how wonderful our girl’s are succeeding in sporting achievements around the world and even more money would be spend to promote even more girl’s.