By LIAM DURKIN AND BLAKE METCALF-HOLT
THE word gullible is not in the dictionary.
Much as AFL officials sitting behind desks in the city keep releasing reports saying participation rates are healthy, anyone with skin in the game locally will tell you just how far removed from reality that is.
Across the weekend just gone, a host of Gippsland football-netball clubs faced existential threats.
Traralgon Tyers United, premiers in the North Gippsland Football-Netball League reserves competition last season, forfeited the same grade last Saturday.
League counterpart Yarram has scored a total of nine points for the entire reserves season across five games.
Yarram also forfeited its under 18s at the weekend. TTU withdrew its under 18s before the season.
North Gippsland FNL officials confirmed with the Express that neither club would be fined for the forfeits.
The situation meant a diabolical availability of players for TTU’s senior team. In a quite farcical outcome, the grand final rematch between TTU and Woodside saw the latter win by more than 200 points. The margin created what is surely an unwanted record for a grand final rematch.
Following this, it was revealed that a planned meeting between all Gippsland football leagues would be held on Tuesday night, May 19 alongside representatives from AFL Gippsland and AFL Victoria.
AFL Gippsland Regional Manager, Tim Cotter confirmed with the Express that the meeting had been worked towards since October last year in conjunction with its yearly planning, cited as a “two-year program of work”.
The meeting is said to take the first steps to develop better avenues for the game’s future in the larger region and implement a “shared blueprint for local football” over the next decade.
Local league presidents, AFL Gippsland and Head of AFL Victoria, Greg Madigan will share the room to discuss the current situation and forge ideas.
The issue is not just confined to Gippsland.
City-based club Doncaster was forced to forfeit its senior match at the weekend due to an injury crisis.
It is understood the club had no option to play its reserves in the senior grade, owing to a cap on player points. In amateur football, every registered player is assigned a point based on their playing history. Each club must select a team where the total number of player points fits within its allowance.
The system is designed to provide competitive balance, as stronger teams are given less points.
There are complications however. Players recruited from another club for instance are automatically assigned more than one point, to discourage money-fuelled recruiting drives.
For Doncaster, if most of its reserves team had been recruited from elsewhere over the offseason, it is entirely plausible they would have exceeded the player points cap (there is no player points cap in reserves).
Back in Gippsland, clubs are feeling the pinch on and off the field.
Recent statistics published by The Weekly Times showed the Gippsland League used, on average, the most reserves players per team, of any major league across the state.
“We would have been no different to anyone else on a Friday night scrambling for players,” former Sale reserves coach, Peter Morrison, who also played close to 100 VFL games for South Melbourne said.
“When COVID happened, those good, honest twos boys who played reserves footy to help the club suddenly weren’t playing.
“They didn’t have the hangover the next day after playing in the reserves.
“They were feeling a bit healthier, they had some more money in their pocket.
“They disappeared off the scene and it’s been a massive contributing factor to the issue.”
Most reserves teams across Gippsland would use at least 40 players per season.
Ideas floated to help the turnover include playing games of 16-a-side, while many clubs have rebranded, calling the reserves ‘development’, in an effort to gift wrap what’s on offer.
The purpose of keeping reserves at Gippsland League level has often been debated.
There is some argument that the major league could do away with reserves, and players not selected in the seniors go back and play for an aligned minor league club.
This arrangement would immediately prop up numbers at surrounding clubs already forced to recruit players out of the pub on a Friday night.
Morrison, who coached East Gippsland club Stratford to multiple premierships, believes reserves is the most important grade.
“Because if you’ve got no underbelly, you’ve got no hope,” he said.
“When the underbelly gets ripped out it’s hard to get it back in.”
Sale is experiencing this at present.
Its senior team is last by some distance, and the club has no under 18s.
For a town the size of Sale (population 15,000) to not have under 18s, would surely be setting off sirens in certain offices.
Crosstown club Sale City is also currently last in North Gippsland, which might just reiterate a view many share about the sustainability of two club towns.
Like it or not, there will probably come a day when Moe and Newborough will have to merge, as will Morwell and Morwell East.
If this writer can be permitted to editorialise for a moment – you would be delusional if you thought otherwise.
Divisional football has been touted as a realistic solution to save the game, and the current climate may well put its implementation into overdrive.
Other sports have seen the benefits of divisions, where teams are more closely matched based on ability and chances of winning.
Cricket Latrobe Valley has a two-divisional structure, and has seen teams that would otherwise have no chance of winning premierships based purely on recruiting power and finances, have an opportunity to succeed.
Strzelecki Bowls Region also plays promotion/relegation. The stronger clubs, most of whom have poker machines at their venues, tend to dominate Division 1 for obvious reasons, while the rest are not subjected to such mismatches.
Local football could benefit from a similar model, where the poorest clubs do not have to try and compete with the big players in town.
Currently, some of the poorest on-field clubs are being forced to be the richest off-field just to be competitive.
But even that is creating issues, not just financially but performatively, with some clubs forced to pay run-of-the-mill players decent sums just to make up enough numbers.
The sugar hit can only last so long. The money is going to dry up eventually.
And what money is not being used in the salary cap is being used to put volunteers through compliance courses on food handling, traffic management and data security.
Is it any wonder volunteers are feeling stretched beyond limit?
Far from the bright lights of primetime television, real footy and netball, being played by real people in the real world, is clearly struggling.
