No doubt country footy is struggling. Problem is that alot of these country towns / areas within our league are also struggling. Have a look at the league. Pyramid, Miti, Calivil, Inglewood, Bridgewater, Newbridge, Serp all have populations that are reducing not growing. They just don't have the populations to provide the numbers required. The Bendigo based clubs are in competition with alot of other clubs and find it difficult to attract players.
So what do they do to attract players? Offer money. So the league starts to be made up of the have's and the have not's. I am aware that Calivil buck this trend. They have been hugely successful whilst not paying alot of money however they have been lucky in a way that they just seemed to have a lot of locals over the past years who don't get paid much and have been able to top up with class players. However these local are getting older and there is not necessarily a new batch coming through.
The vast majority of top sides in the LVFL will have less than 25% local players in their senior sides. Sad but true.
One way I have heard of that teams are using to attract a steady stream of young players to the league is to offer U17 players $20-30 per week to play. It may be rumour but I understand Calivil did this last year.
Personally I don't agree with paying under aged players to play footy. It may be just me but I think it sends exactly the wrong message to young footballers.
I suggest the league adopts a "Player Points System" such as that introduced to the Central Murray Football league. The main objectives of the system are to:You would need to tinker with the system to get it to work for the LVFL but at least the system works to make the league stronger and more healthy as apposed to slowly running it down like the current one.
- Encourage clubs to develop and promote their junior players
- Encourage clubs to recruit new players from outside the league
- Better manage increasing player payments and improve the financial stability of clubs.
I would be keen to hear from anyone who has first hand experience with the points system to give us some information on how it has worked and if it would help the LVFL.
Points system does not work. I am originally from Central Murray Footy League and it is a perfect of example of how it does not work. The rich and strong clubs are getting stronger and the weaker and poorer are getting weaker. The gap is widening. The rich clubs target one or 2 of the best players from the other teams in the comp (worth max points) offer them ridiculous amounts that the weak club cannot match. They then go further away from the league and offer gun players (worth less points ridiculous amounts of money to travel to come and play. Balranald and even Tooleybuc to a lesser extent are examples of this