THE VCFL has tried a number of initiatives in recent years to boost interest in representative football.
Lightning premiership-style carnivals were held for a short time, while an emphasis on local derbies, involving full-length games played between neighbouring leagues, was also trialled.
"The mini-carnivals had merit, but the cost of putting teams up for a couple of nights became prohibitive," VCFL chief executive Glenn Scott explained this week. "Then we realised the danger with the local derbies was they were just going to become too repetitive. Interest would drop off if you were playing the team on a regular basis."
But an idea put forward last year by the VCFL's training and education manager, Dean Rice (the former St Kilda and Carlton utility), might just have done the trick.
Rice's proposal involved ranking the best leagues in Victoria and using those standings to determine who they played in one-off games each season. Under the system, the top two teams would meet, then the third-ranked side would take on No. 4, and so on. The winners of the matches would be promoted, the losers demoted.
"We thought it had real merit from the outset," Scott said. "In our organisation we now call it 'the Rice model'." Last weekend, ''the Rice model'' became reality when 18 leagues played at various venues around Victoria. There were plenty of interesting results, the most notable being Goulburn Valley snatching the No. 1 ranking by toppling Ovens and Murray. And the feedback in the days since has suggested that while crowds at many of the games remained low, the level of interest among players was greatly increased.
"It was awesome. I've been involved for seven years and I've never seen our side play so well," said Rod Ward, chief executive of the Ballarat league, whose team elevated itself to No. 2 by defeating a highly fancied combination from Geelong. "I think the ranking system helped us because Geelong seemed to have one eye on next year already. They were thinking about being No. 1 and we caught them off guard."
The BFL boys, whose 12-point win was set up by a seven-goal first quarter, will now have the chance to take the No. 1 ranking when they tackle Goulburn Valley next season.
"The great thing about our league is that the boys are so committed to inter-league footy," Ward added. "Our best players, guys like Redan's Jarrod Edwards and East Point's full-forward Dan Jordan, all want to be involved, so the other players in the league want to play with them. It's wonderful."
The GVFL's 24-point win over Ovens and Murray was particularly impressive for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, the league has been embroiled in turmoil since its chairman resigned two months ago. And secondly, none of the ex-AFL players currently running around in the league - a group that includes Russell Robertson, Adem Yze and Kayne Pettifer - opted to take part.
"It means a lot to us to be No. 1," admitted GVFL administrator Keith Wellman.
"People probably viewed us from the outside as having our eyes off the ball. But the dramas we've had only made us more determined to succeed. Right from the first training run at Seymour four weeks ago, the enthusiasm among the fellas who put their hands up to play was very high. We've always been very positive about the introduction of the ranking system. ''It brings in some real incentive, as you don't want to fall off the perch and end up down the bottom. To be initially ranked No. 2, behind Ovens and Murray, was a bit of a smack in the eye for us, so we were determined to be full-on about it."
The big talking point now is whether ''the Rice model'' can return inter-league football to the heights of the 1970s and '80s, when huge crowds turned out to watch matches in the Country Championships.
"I don't think our players actually knew much about the ranking system, to be totally honest," admitted Mornington Peninsula Nepean league coach Paul Kennedy, who led his team to a 49-point victory over the Hampden league in Camperdown. "But on the bus ride from Camperdown back to the Mornington Peninsula, the players were pretty excited when they were informed we've moved up to No. 4 and we get to play the Ovens and Murray next year.
"Our preparations for inter-league games have become a lot smoother in the past couple of seasons. We've been concentrating on getting players that want to be involved and building a good team plan around those blokes, rather than trying to force it down players' throats and spending time convincing them to play. So I don't think the new system had a bearing on how we approached this year's game but it might be a selling point in 12 months.
''Now that we're in the top four, we're super-interested in being ranked No. 1 in another couple of years. Mind you, had we lost to the Hampden league we probably would've tried to forget about the rankings until we got back up there."
Kennedy believes participation in future inter-league games will also be driven by the impending admission of Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney into the AFL.
"The 21 and 22-year-olds are really interested. Chris Irving, who I coached at Seaford, is a great example for them to follow. He was best on ground for Mornington Peninsula last year, then best on ground for Vic Country and now he's playing in the VFL with Sandringham.
"For every Michael Barlow and Alex Silvagni, there's 10 or 15 other blokes making small steps towards what those two have done. I think the recruiters are going to start paying really close attention to inter-league matches and the national country footy championships in the future."
But for Kennedy, while developing a new generation of footballers is part of the attraction that led him to take the MPNFL's inter-league coaching job, the rankings system has thrown up another interesting quirk.
"My in-laws are heavily involved with Wangaratta Rovers and when you talk about bragging rights, well, if we beat Ovens and Murray next year I'll have bragging rights at every family Christmas until I die!"
By Adam McNicol
Article first appeared The Sunday Age, May 30 2010
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