In the Newcastle representative side that went down to a red-hot Illawarra in the final of the NSW Open State Hockey Championship, no less than five players were from the Rams.

That's five out of 15. Six if you want to count former Maitland player and international Simon Orchard who was included under the 'home grown' exemption rule.

"It's pretty amazing to think one third of the representative squad were Rams players," Maitland co-coach Matt Magann said. "I've known representative teams with two or even three Maitland players, but never five. It shows we must be doing something right."

The five, aside from Orchard who is a long-serving former Kookaburra, were Magann himself, Ryan Simpson, Pat Magann, Tom Forbes and Josh Magann.

What the club is most certainly doing right is investing in developing young players.

"As a club, about eight years or so ago, Maitland committed to developing juniors," Magann said. "And now that's paying off. We brought talented kids out of our own Maitland competition and they stepped up to a higher level in the Newcastle competition. We committed to getting them better coaching, so a lot of the senior men players would work with them, give them advice.

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"They're pushing through now - in our Premier League side, for example, we have seven players who are 18 or younger. Four of those have started every game for us this season. I'm 25 and our fourth oldest player."

The move meant the Rams are now seen as an attractive club for those wanting to improve their games.

"We have young players from as far as Taree coming down to play for us, from Port Stephens, and up through the Hunter Valley," Magann said. "Young players know they will get every chance to improve here."

The club now have under-18, under-15 and under-13 sides in the Newcastle competition, and this season broke new ground with their first girls under-15 side.

"The girls haven't won yet, but the improvement in them is really noticeable," Magann said. "You have to remember some of them had never played on a full size field before, so they were never going to go out there and take the competition by storm. But each time they go out they're looking better. It's only a matter of time."

As far as the first grade side goes, Magann is reluctant to make any bold statements, even though they've had a couple of very positive results. This season the first grade side beat perennial powerhouse Norths, and pushed the other team to beat, Gosford, to the limit.

"We were level with Gosford at three quarter time, but they got us in the final quarter," he said. "Those are encouraging results but they are still clearly the dominant two teams and the rest of us are fighting for third and fourth."

That may be so, but each season Maitland is getting more experience and have more quality youngsters coming through.

Like the under-15 girls . . . it's a matter of time.