Weekly Times |WOOMELANG Lascelles will pursue a move into the Golden Rivers Football League.
The Cats are one of five teams remaining in the Mallee Football League, which will disband at the end of the season under the North West Structural review’s final recommendations released last month.
Both Sea Lake Nandaly and Woomelang Lascelles have shrugged off the review panel’s preference for the two to merge and join the Central Murray league and have chosen the alternative options of joining other competitions as stand-alones.
The Tigers are pursuing a move to the North Central league, while the Cats, after receiving feedback from its members through a club survey, will head northeast.
If successful the move will make the Golden Rivers league a 10-club competition. The review also recommended Golden Rivers club Wakool merge with Central Murray club, Koondrook Barham, and compete in the Central Murray competition.
Wakool club president Blair Flight said although the clubs have “left it open for discussion” Wakool would “go around again for 2016”.
Woomelang Lascelles president Shane Michael said the club decided to pursue the option of joining the Golden Rivers league because it felt it was important to “keep footy in our own town” and the competition was a better fit with having a recruiting base of Swan Hill than the North Central league.
Michael said he informed AFL Central Murray, Sunraysia and Wimmera Mallee region general manager Bruce Petering this morning, and it’s understood representatives from the club and league board will meet tomorrow night.
“We’ve got a lot of water to go under the bridge before we can actually say we’re going to make it, but at least we know what direction we’re heading and if it doesn’t work then we know we’ve done everything we can,” Michael said.
Golden Rivers league chairman Philip Symes acknowledged having the Cats join the league would make it the “biggest trip in country football” — the distance from Woomelang to Hay in New South Wales is approximately 300km.
“I really don’t know (if Woomelang Lascelles would be accepted in), although when we had a meeting about the review the clubs encouraged us to make actually contact with Woomelang Lascelles and Sea Lake,” he said.
“I think it will be a positive move and accepted by our league.”
Flight, who saw the Cats joining Golden Rivers as a “great thing for the league”, said the community wanted Wakool to remain a stand-alone.
“I see it as we could keep strong for another probably five years and then have a look at it then again then,” he said.
“It will never be out of the question, it will always be there, which is good.”
Petering was happy the Cats had made a decision on the direction they would pursue, and believed both the North Central and Golden Rivers leagues “will get strengthened” as a result of having an additional club each.
He said a merger would not be enforced on Wakool next year.
