Bendigo Advertiser | FOR a year clubs have been told by AFL Victoria a state-wide player points system in conjunction with a salary cap will be officially introduced in 2016.
Clubs have patiently waited for plans to be unveiled and at last, some clarity is imminent, with AFL Victoria on Thursday to detail what it’s calling its Community Club Sustainability Program ahead of a June-July trial period in which clubs can gauge the impact and provide feedback.
How the league-specific salary caps will be policed will be a key point of interest as it has been tried in country footy in the past without success, while the introduction of the long-debated player points system as part of the CCSP lends itself to so many questions and scenarios, outside of the obvious starting point of determining the ranking points of a player.
When the Heathcote District Football League investigated the merits of such a system in 2007, a complex proposal was put to the clubs that featured 18 different ratings of players based on their footballing history of the previous five years.
The Bendigo Football League also had a look at it in 2010 and the message from then CEO Steven Oliver was it’s anything but black or white.
Which is no doubt why the AFL Victoria equalisation working party – which includes AFL Central Victoria regional manager Paul Hamilton – has taken so long to determine a structure given there had been an initial timeframe set of October last year.
Hamilton has constantly said there’s a “strong appetite” for change from clubs in regards to “club equalisation and trying to build sustainable competitions.”
The pressure on volunteers to continue to raise the money to not only keep their club alive, but field a competitive team each Saturday is constantly growing, while a look at results across the Bendigo, Heathcote District, Loddon Valley and North Central leagues using a sample size of 1933 senior matches show an average margin of a one-sided 53 points across the AFLCV region since 2009.
A player points system is all about bringing your locals through and thus, reducing the need to poach from rival clubs and spend big dollars on recruits.
Yet the HDFL, for example, is growing in status each year thanks to the calibre of recruits from higher competitions, while a club like Elmore that has won just one game the past two years finally has some renewed hope this year thanks to the new players it has attracted, just like former long-time easybeats Huntly experienced three years ago when it made a recruiting splash.
But with a focus on playing local talent, how must clubs like Mitiamo, Huntly and Wycheproof-Narraport that don’t have the numbers this year for under-age teams – and plenty of other clubs, particularly those in shrinking communities, that are under pressure each week to get an under-18 or 17 side on the field - be feeling about the imminent player points change next year, for without a supply of juniors, there’s only one way of bringing in new players, and that’s by recruiting.
As one coach told me this week: “We would be lost without our recruits… the locals aren't there anymore.”
However, is there also the chance a player points system, while trying to curb excessive senior spending and player movement, could open the door to another potential issue underneath?
With junior players worth their weight in gold in terms of being ranked at a minimum, could it open up the prospect at under-age level where clubs looking at ways to keep ahead of the game start trying to poach highly-rated youngsters to get them from a rival and through their doors at under-18 or 17 level so they later have home club senior status and therefore, potentially placing more pressure on those battling clubs who are already having a tough time as is with their junior numbers?
Hopefully, measures will also be put in place by AFL Victoria under these new changes to guard against such a scenario, for that would be a major concern.
