Weekly Times | WOOMELANG-LASCELLES members have voted not to field football and netball teams next year, less than two weeks out from the final Mallee league match.
On Wednesday night the clubs’ members voted with a “vast majority” to remain as the Woomelang-Lascelles Combined Sporting Club, but not field any teams next season.
Only two senior matches remain in the Mallee league before it is wound up under the recommendations of the North West Structural Review completed earlier this year.
Club president Shane Michael admitted he could not see the club fielding teams again in the future.
“I would not have thought so. Our players have
The five Mallee clubs will be distributed to nearby leagues after this season, with the review panel hoping the Cats would merge with Sea Lake-Nandaly and join the Central Murray league.
Failing that preferred option, the panel also said they could separately join the Golden Rivers or North Central competitions.
The Cats discussed the possibility of alliances with the Tigers, North Central league club Birchip-Watchem and Golden Rivers league club Nullawil.
But Michael said none of the options “suited all our club as a whole”, and the club’s constitution demanded a 66 per cent majority of members’ votes to go down any of those paths.
The “uncertainty” of the North Central league also made it hard for members to vote for those options, according to Michael.
Sea Lake-Nandaly hoped to play in the North Central league next season, but is yet to be cleared to do so by the region commissions.
“It is a sad time for our club really. This is the end it as we know it,” Michael said.
“There were, not too many options, but we were split because we come from such a large area on where we wanted to go.”
Michael said the club did not want to fold, and it hoped to continue to run Auskick programs and keep its facilities functional.
“We feel like we’ve been let down by the review and all that, the way it’s been handled has been terrible really,” he said.
“The fact it was supposed to be a review of the whole northwest Victoria or whatever it was, but the only change that was made was in the Mallee.”
But AFL Wimmera Mallee region general manager Bruce Petering defended the process, saying all the stakeholders were kept informed throughout the review and, except for one alternative proposal from the Cats, the stakeholders “did not bring much to the table at all”.
“The last six months have all been about negotiating change,” Petering said.
“If we broadened it out even further for whatever reasons people think, I’m not sure how far and long people wanted us to work on this for, because it’s extremely difficult to give change to people who may not agree 100 per cent.”
