But the outfit's leader, who is in the second year of his term, understands the reasons of Jake Williams and Ethan Conway's move to Glenorchy, with a strong coaching program orchestrated by Brett Geeves attracting the former St Patrick's College pupils.

"Ultimately, a lot of our Raiders players, if they want to play for higher honours and get a state contract, the reality is that they will probably move to Hobart and base themselves where state training is," Mitchell said.

"I just hope that Jake and Ethan are moving down for the right reasons and it's not too early in that stage for them because as I understand, neither of them are contracted or have rookie contracts with Cricket Tasmania.

ELSEWHERE IN SPORT

"Our team is an equal team in the Cricket Tasmania Premier League, they are playing in the best competition they can with the Raiders so I hope the reasons that they've gone down to Hobart, I hope they are beneficial in their long-term careers."

Williams has scored 1047 runs over the Raiders' two seasons, securing a Tasmanian second XI game last year and becoming their most prolific scorer while Conway scored 77 runs in five matches, sneaking into the team later in the year.

But the pair arguably aren't the Raiders' biggest loss for 2020-21.

The man described by Mitchell as the Raiders' "founder", Richard Bennett, has stepped back from his cricket operations manager role citing personal circumstances that require his focus elsewhere.

"He's got some work issues that are pressing to him and he'll always have the Raiders at heart.

"I speak to Richard two or three times a week and he'll still have some input, he just needs to take a step back for work reasons at the moment.

"He's helping us with a handover and transition, we've replaced him on our management committee so he'll probably sit on for another two or three months with the management committee before he phases out.

"He's always in the background if we need to bounce anything off him."

Despite the major loss of Bennett, Mitchell is confident in his committee, which has recently been boosted by the inclusions of Cricket North stalwart David Fry and well-known North-West identity Shane Wootton.

The pair, alongside the remainder of the committee, will share a slice of Bennett's former role to "cover all bases".

Winning four matches last season, the on-field results are coming slowly for the Greater Northern side but Mitchell believes the future of the program is bright.

"At the end of the day, if we don't have this program for Northern cricketers, I don't know what the next best step is.

"It's going to take four or five years before the benefits are seen and the benefits will probably be reaped by the 13-14-15-year-olds that are playing now but it's the right move.

"This team is the right move in the right direction, it's just going to take a few years to get embedded so we've just got to stay the journey."