League to stick with two divisions
By Michael Esposito
The Western Region Football League will remain a two-tiered competition
next year after clubs on Wednesday voted against a proposal to split the
senior competition into three divisions.
Instead, the first division will stay a 10-team competition and the
second division will only be split when that division has 15 teams.
The motion to restructure the competition was the only contentious
component of the league’s strategic plan, which was otherwise adopted
unchanged at Wednesday’s committee meeting.
WRFL CEO Bob Tregear said the clubs were overwhelmingly in favour of
keeping the first division as is, despite the clear imbalance between
the top and bottom teams.
“That was one of the key things that came out of it, the first division
clubs were pretty keen to protect the brand of first division, and make
sure of the integrity of the competition.” Tregear said.
“Even though there are some weak clubs there, they just felt a perfect
draw with 10 clubs was important to them and it’s right for the image.
“It perhaps hasn’t quite addressed the imbalance issues we were looking
at, but it does at least give us a framework to expand the senior
competition.”
That expansion will happen through the second division, with new senior
club Caroline Springs to field a Division Two side next season. That
means four more senior teams will have to join the league before it
expands to three divisions.
Caroline Springs president Dean Ellis supported the move to leave the
makeup of the senior competition as it was.
“We thought about it long and hard, and not enough clubs would be in
Division Three,” Ellis said.
“Trying to attract players for us would have been pretty hard if we were
in Division Three, in a five or six team competition, it would have been
really tough so we’re quite happy with the decision.”
Ellis said it would have been particularly difficult to recruit young
players as parents would have concerns about their children playing
football in a less skilful, and therefore potentially more dangerous,
environment, and having to play teams three times in the home-and-away
season.
He also said a 10team first division was the only way to make the
competition fair.
“They’re playing 18 rounds so it’s not fair that some teams play each
other two and some three times. At the end of the day you want your
premiership division to be as even as possible.”
West Footscray will drop down to Division Two next year, something the
club wanted to do this year, while second division premiers North
Footscray will be promoted to the top division.
The positive for the competition is that both teams are in the division
they want to be in.
West Footscray, which has been win¬less for two seasons in a row, was
trapped in Division One because 2009 Division Two premiers Deer Park
decided to remain in Division Two, something Tregear disagrees with.
“It’s an anomaly in our rules I think, and it’s one that we will address
as time goes on. I think they should have to go up, and that’s
definitely one we will be having a very close look at.”
West Footscray president Peter Speakman said keeping 10-team Division
One would do nothing to solve issues of unevenness, but agreed that
cutting it back to eight teams would compromise the fairness of the draw.
Tregear said: “Our issue up to date is that we know we’re going to get
new clubs, just evolving from some of our junior clubs, but that happens
relatively slowly over time, over the next five or six years it will be
new junior clubs coming in as a result of the population boom, rather
than senior clubs, they will then start to evolve into senior clubs as well.
“But in the meantime there are some existing senior clubs in the region
who have made informal approaches to some of our people, we just haven’t
had a product to offer to them up until now. It’s too late this year to
talk to them about that. They would have all made their plans for next
year already. At least we’re in a position to say this is what the
structure will be.”
Last Modified on 08/10/2010 14:46