No-one posts here anymore...

[Pekay]

As an outsider looking in I have to agree with the early poster who put forward the idea of the relegation system. Having being involved with the BDAFL previously as a player and administrator, sending your firsts off on a 2 hour drive in one direction and your seconds and 18s in the other direction, does little for club spirit and unity. The best days are when everyone is together at the same ground. Some clubs will get smacked around at first, but it will even out eventually. The issue I see is the amount of clubs and teams to contend with. I hope they get it right because the SFL is a proud competition with a long history. Obviously, something needs to change otherwise there wouldn't be as much interest in this thread.

No, they didn't in the past. Manly used to be in the old Div 1 with Southern Power, Nor-West, Penrith, Moorebank etc. I've been playing in that grade since I was 17 (now 31) and can only remember beating Manly once, maybe twice in that time. They had to go up, we couldn't compete against them. Divisionalisation has SAVED the lower grades of Sydney footy. Look at Sydney Uni now. They used to dominate the SFA until they were promoted in 07, and look at them now! They play in the NEAFL! This change was for the better. penrith are quite strong these days and couldn't get within 10 goals the first time, 30 the second. The gap is too big to go back to what it was.

[Mug Punter]

Their crowds are no worse than what the Swans were getting when they were uncompetitive 20 years ago, and look at them now.

Thankfully the AFL possess some foresight.

So, which team do you support DLH? Because no Swans supporter worth his salt would change their colours. You must have some allegiances to an interstate team and have therefore adopted the bogans as your second team. And that's fair enough. But basically this club have to build a new supporter base from scratch when they really aren't even in the district they claim to represent - have far is it from your gaff to Brekky point DLH? Plus the Swans have had a 30 year crack at the city before.

My impressions are that at least half if not more of the crowds are away fans and that the home fans are largely giving them a chance but are very very lukewarm. Fair dinkum, I thought I was in a bleeding creche when I was there, little rugrats running around out of control abnd certainly not watching the game. I would suspect a fair few freebies are being given away

I expect that the Western Sydney Wanderers, with only a farction of the budget and time, will blow the bogans out of the water when it comes to crowds and commecting with the local community

[Mug Punter]

Did notice that the crowd at Skoda Stadium on Sat arvo was bigger than at the Panthers game that night....I think crowds are down everywhere....only 40odd thousand at Carlton vs Richmond...in the past this has drawn 60k+.....

Yeah and the rabbits and Tigers got 30,000 on Sunday, I really think they have gotten a lot of day trippers this year both locally and interstate. Next season could well see them flatline to about 5,000 which to be fair probably reflects the grassroots interest in this team that was created with no plan, no foresight and no community consultation as to whether it would be a success

[DLH]

So, which team do you support DLH? Because no Swans supporter worth his salt would change their colours. You must have some allegiances to an interstate team and have therefore adopted the bogans as your second team. And that's fair enough. But basically this club have to build a new supporter base from scratch when they really aren't even in the district they claim to represent - have far is it from your gaff to Brekky point DLH? Plus the Swans have had a 30 year crack at the city before.

My impressions are that at least half if not more of the crowds are away fans and that the home fans are largely giving them a chance but are very very lukewarm. Fair dinkum, I thought I was in a bleeding creche when I was there, little rugrats running around out of control abnd certainly not watching the game. I would suspect a fair few freebies are being given away

I expect that the Western Sydney Wanderers, with only a farction of the budget and time, will blow the bogans out of the water when it comes to crowds and commecting with the local community

I'm a North supporter so you're right, I've adopted the Giants as my second team.

I think you've got to bear in mind that those who turn up at this stage are doing so to support a concept, not to see a contest, as they generally know the result before they head out. It's pretty hard to get those who are lukewarm or even slightly curious to turn up under those circumstances I would have thought. I must admit even I had second thoughts about going on Saturday given it's a 50 minute trip from the Blue Mountains, but the kids wanted to go so what can you do.

In my experience their crowds have been about 50-50, with the opposition making much more noise because they have more to cheer about. The last quarter of the Richmond game when the Giants had a chance to win saw plenty of noise being made by both sets of supporters. I do fear for what the crowd might be this week against a team that will have very few supporters present, especially if the weather's poor, although at least it should be a competitive game.

I disagree that there was no foresight, in fact it was quite the opposite, because if you relied on community consultation to tell you when western Sydney was ready for an AFL team, it would never happen.

[DLH]

No, they didn't in the past. Manly used to be in the old Div 1 with Southern Power, Nor-West, Penrith, Moorebank etc. I've been playing in that grade since I was 17 (now 31) and can only remember beating Manly once, maybe twice in that time. They had to go up, we couldn't compete against them. Divisionalisation has SAVED the lower grades of Sydney footy. Look at Sydney Uni now. They used to dominate the SFA until they were promoted in 07, and look at them now! They play in the NEAFL! This change was for the better. penrith are quite strong these days and couldn't get within 10 goals the first time, 30 the second. The gap is too big to go back to what it was.

Get your facts right Pete, Manly only beat us the second time by 29 goals........ : )

Your point is a valid one though, clearly it depends on where you're viewing it from as to how you see this issue.

I must admit though, I find the whole splitting up the club thing a bit much, surely most clubs have the vast majority of their home games together which is the main thing.

[justabaraker]

Divisionalisation has SAVED the lower grades of Sydney footy. Look at Sydney Uni now. They used to dominate the SFA until they were promoted in 07, and look at them now! They play in the NEAFL! This change was for the better. penrith are quite strong these days and couldn't get within 10 goals the first time, 30 the second. The gap is too big to go back to what it was.

This divisionalsiation is quite a hot topic at the moment, both in the SFL and in the BDAFL - Gosford's success in Sydney footy has given people reason to stop and think.
The topic comes up a bit - one side of the argument says that teams can be matched against other teams of similar level (and that's true), the other argument is that it fragments the club, the volunteer base, the spectator base, the tribal togetherness (and that's true too).There's no final right/wrong answer but we have to decide whether the loss is better than the gain.

The closest I can see to a "Midpoint/compromise" is those magical days when all teams in the club play together on the same day....some days, all teams are cast to all points of the compass, some days can be treasured because everyone comes together.
I'm no Hills Eagles lover (far from it !!) but I sympathise with the strain it puts on the club to have to play from Darwin, Sunshine coast, Canberra, Wollongong to Penrith. But then there are days like next Saturday when everyone is together....I'm sure they will have a real carnival that day !

[tara]

Jb gimme a break the eagles wanted to be in neafl and knew what they were getting into plus since when are they playing in darwin n the sunshine coast. Other than that I tend to agree a happy medium needs to be met however a mechanism that rewards clubs by promotion whilst stopping others playing well below the standards they should

[justabaraker]

Jb gimme a break the eagles wanted to be in neafl and knew what they were getting into plus since when are they playing in darwin n the sunshine coast. Other than that I tend to agree a happy medium needs to be met however a mechanism that rewards clubs by promotion whilst stopping others playing well below the standards they should

Tara,
Notice a few familiar faces missing from Purser last weekend ? - That's because the NEAFL Eagles were playing on the Sunshine Coast. But I got it wrong about them having to go to Darwin this year sorry.
Yes they wanted to be in NEAFL and they knew what they were signing up for, but it's still the fact that they pay a mighty price for it. And all clubs in the SFL have to work out whether the benefit of more even competition is worth the travel and fragmentation.
It's swings and roundabouts isn't it.

[mountainsofpain]

This divisionalsiation is quite a hot topic at the moment, both in the SFL and in the BDAFL - Gosford's success in Sydney footy has given people reason to stop and think.
The topic comes up a bit - one side of the argument says that teams can be matched against other teams of similar level (and that's true), the other argument is that it fragments the club, the volunteer base, the spectator base, the tribal togetherness (and that's true too).There's no final right/wrong answer but we have to decide whether the loss is better than the gain.

The system as it was had to change if clubs were to survive and the game to grow. It was inflexible and the competitions (Division 1 in particular) lopsided.

From about 2006-2008, all the Div 1 Western Suburbs clubs were either forfeiting games, dropping divisions and possibly on the verge of folding. I'm talking about clubs like N-W Jets, Penrith, S-W Sydney and even the once strong Parramatta.

Now, if it was just one club, you could point the finger at the club. But when it was so many, there was clearly a problem with the competition structure itself. These clubs just got sick of banging their heads up against a brick wall year in, year out.

And then you had the further problem that when a club like Nor-West Jets decided it couldn't compete in Div 1 and went back to Div 2, they dominated.

As I said, the old Div 1 was lopsided. The clubs with the access to the stronger player bases (with more depth as well) tended to be in the upper levels of the competition. I am talking about clubs like Manly, Sydney Uni, Uni of NSW (later UNSW/ES), in later years UTS. Clubs like Penrith and Nor-West Jets simply didn't have the playing resources to match them. And even the stronger Western Suburbs clubs like Holroyd-Parramatta and S-W Sydney were competitive often, but couldn't translate that into premiership success.

Off the top of my head, only one Western Suburbs club made the Div 1 Senior Grade grand final in the period 1994 (when Div 1 merged with the old Div 2) to 2008. That was Parra in 2001 (?), which they won. Reserve Grade saw the old Liverpool/S-W Sydney make the GF a couple of times in the early days (94-96ish?), I don't know if they won them. After that, Div 1 Reserve Grade became pretty much a Sydney Uni/UTS benefit competition.

I think Penrith scraped into the Senior finals a few times, Nor-West Jets I doubt it.

It's simply not a matter of saying that the clubs out in the west just had to lift their games. You can't compete when you don't have the playing resources to do so. And history showed that. The problem wasn't with the clubs, it was with the competition structure.

And changing the system hasn't just benefited those clubs. The stronger old Div 1 sides have been able to move up a grade. New clubs have been able to come in with a chance of finding their niche. Clubs now have the flexibility to add further sides. And having a strong senior presence in population bases like the west benefits the game overall.

And to the poster earlier in the thread who was talking about the strong surviving and the weak clubs going by the wayside (I can't be bothered finding exactly what he said), that will still be the case under the new system. Clubs will still struggle if they have issues or are poorly run (eg Auburn). So the new structure isn't propping up clubs or providing support to the weak clubs, it is simply providing them with a fairer structure in which to compete and grow. Whilst giving the stronger clubs the means to advance - and also grow.

The new system isn't perfect. But it is a damn sight better and more flexible than its predecessor, that's for sure. If someone can suggest a better option - which allows clubs to field more than two senior sides I might add - I'd be interested to hear it.

[Pekay]

The system as it was had to change if clubs were to survive and the game to grow. It was inflexible and the competitions (Division 1 in particular) lopsided.

From about 2006-2008, all the Div 1 Western Suburbs clubs were either forfeiting games, dropping divisions and possibly on the verge of folding. I'm talking about clubs like N-W Jets, Penrith, S-W Sydney and even the once strong Parramatta.

Now, if it was just one club, you could point the finger at the club. But when it was so many, there was clearly a problem with the competition structure itself. These clubs just got sick of banging their heads up against a brick wall year in, year out.

And then you had the further problem that when a club like Nor-West Jets decided it couldn't compete in Div 1 and went back to Div 2, they dominated.

As I said, the old Div 1 was lopsided. The clubs with the access to the stronger player bases (with more depth as well) tended to be in the upper levels of the competition. I am talking about clubs like Manly, Sydney Uni, Uni of NSW (later UNSW/ES), in later years UTS. Clubs like Penrith and Nor-West Jets simply didn't have the playing resources to match them. And even the stronger Western Suburbs clubs like Holroyd-Parramatta and S-W Sydney were competitive often, but couldn't translate that into premiership success.

Off the top of my head, only one Western Suburbs club made the Div 1 Senior Grade grand final in the period 1994 (when Div 1 merged with the old Div 2) to 2008. That was Parra in 2001 (?), which they won. Reserve Grade saw the old Liverpool/S-W Sydney make the GF a couple of times in the early days (94-96ish?), I don't know if they won them. After that, Div 1 Reserve Grade became pretty much a Sydney Uni/UTS benefit competition.

I think Penrith scraped into the Senior finals a few times, Nor-West Jets I doubt it.

It's simply not a matter of saying that the clubs out in the west just had to lift their games. You can't compete when you don't have the playing resources to do so. And history showed that. The problem wasn't with the clubs, it was with the competition structure.

And changing the system hasn't just benefited those clubs. The stronger old Div 1 sides have been able to move up a grade. New clubs have been able to come in with a chance of finding their niche. Clubs now have the flexibility to add further sides. And having a strong senior presence in population bases like the west benefits the game overall.

And to the poster earlier in the thread who was talking about the strong surviving and the weak clubs going by the wayside (I can't be bothered finding exactly what he said), that will still be the case under the new system. Clubs will still struggle if they have issues or are poorly run (eg Auburn). So the new structure isn't propping up clubs or providing support to the weak clubs, it is simply providing them with a fairer structure in which to compete and grow. Whilst giving the stronger clubs the means to advance - and also grow.

The new system isn't perfect. But it is a damn sight better and more flexible than its predecessor, that's for sure. If someone can suggest a better option - which allows clubs to field more than two senior sides I might add - I'd be interested to hear it.

I take great offence at the first comment I bolded, but I put that down to you not knowing what you're on about.

At that time, (End 2004) we finished 5th in the SFA, only falling to Cronulla in the last round. We had a strong ones, an improving twos and still had an 18s with the Riff for memory.. However, overseas deployments to the desert, Solomon Islands among other places had us lose well in excess of 40 players. From our Seniors, we lost 9 to Balmain, 2 to Sydney Uni, 1 to Penno. All in the space of Sept to November. Then the committee folded. I was 23 and left with the club in my lap to either keep afloat or leave to die.

I pleaded with Simon Laughton, Brett Pettersen and Anthony Dignan for weeks, even months to let us rebuild, towards Xmas 04 and into 05 I only had 19 players to cover 2 grades. It was at the point of non existence for us until Pettersen saw the light and let us play in the old 2nd Division. Yes, we dominated it, no doubt. But only with a squad of 28. It attracted players back to the club and we are stronger than ever. It also set the template for South West to rebuild, as I was in constant contact with Colesy on what they should do, how to approach the league for help etc. And they are stronger than us (Not this weekend however!) Yes, the Rams made finals in 05 or 06, or both. We never made finals in the SFA, 04 was the closest we came.

So, please, facts on this matter are very important to me, and I put it down to you not having the whole facts on why we dropped down. If we had the numbers to field two teams in 05, we wouldn't have been allowed to drop.

[ShortHalfHead]

Bit touchy there Pete.

With 19 players for two grades, it seems the Jets couldn't compete, so dropped back a Div...and dominated. Appreciate you giving the full story, but to be be taking "great offence" seems a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

Personally, I thought MOP's post was pretty well on the money and was not offensive to Nor-West

[Pekay]

I'll take that as a pisstake Greg. The wording 'decided they couldn't compete' is a fallacy and needed to be corrected. You wouldn't find it offensive to Nor-West, as you don't represent Nor-West. No knee jerk reaction, it was suggested in his wording that we decided we couldn't compete so we took the easy option. That I took offence to.

[mountainsofpain]

I take great offence at the first comment I bolded, but I put that down to you not knowing what you're on about.

At that time, (End 2004) we finished 5th in the SFA, only falling to Cronulla in the last round. We had a strong ones, an improving twos and still had an 18s with the Riff for memory.. However, overseas deployments to the desert, Solomon Islands among other places had us lose well in excess of 40 players. From our Seniors, we lost 9 to Balmain, 2 to Sydney Uni, 1 to Penno. All in the space of Sept to November. Then the committee folded. I was 23 and left with the club in my lap to either keep afloat or leave to die.

I pleaded with Simon Laughton, Brett Pettersen and Anthony Dignan for weeks, even months to let us rebuild, towards Xmas 04 and into 05 I only had 19 players to cover 2 grades. It was at the point of non existence for us until Pettersen saw the light and let us play in the old 2nd Division. Yes, we dominated it, no doubt. But only with a squad of 28. It attracted players back to the club and we are stronger than ever. It also set the template for South West to rebuild, as I was in constant contact with Colesy on what they should do, how to approach the league for help etc. And they are stronger than us (Not this weekend however!) Yes, the Rams made finals in 05 or 06, or both. We never made finals in the SFA, 04 was the closest we came.

So, please, facts on this matter are very important to me, and I put it down to you not having the whole facts on why we dropped down. If we had the numbers to field two teams in 05, we wouldn't have been allowed to drop.

Actually, despite your assumption, I have a pretty fair understanding of the reasons behind Nor-West Jets dropping a division.

The comment you took offence to was only secondary to the point I was making, which was the disparity between the competitions and the inflexibility of the whole structure. Hence that is why I didn't expand on the reasons for the Jets going down to Div 2, nor did I feel it was my place to do so anyway.

I am aware that the club lost many of its players and much of its administration. This left you only able to field the one side. Due to the AFL policy at the time, as I understand it (be it written or unwritten), you couldn't stay in Div 1 (as that required a First and Reserve Grade side), leaving the only option to drop down to Div 2.

Hence my comment - you decided you couldn't compete in Div 1. That is correct, because at some stage clearly the decision was taken that you couldn't any longer compete in Div 1, based on circumstances and AFL policy, otherwise you would have stayed there.

I certainly was not trying to give the impression that the club decided to take the easy route by dropping a division. Or that the move was based on lack of competitiveness. And I certainly wasn't having a shot at the club for being too good for Div 2. You couldn't go anywhere else.

Having said all that, I didn't mean to cause any offence and apologize if I did. I will stick by the accuracy of my comment, and the context in which it was used, but will admit it was poorly worded and left the door open for the wrong interpretation.

Now that you have explained the reasons behind the move, it only backs up the point I was trying to make anyway. Which was the lack of flexibility in the old structure. A Div 1 side had to drop its second (Reserve) side, so it had to drop back an entire division - and a resultant big gulf in class. And despite it losing a heap of players, I would assume many first grade quality, it still dominated. Then when the move was made back to Div 1, nothing much had changed in terms of competitiveness against the usual suspects.

Under the new setup, if a club found itself in that position again, it could simply drop its second side out of whichever division it was in. And perhaps the capacity to apply to drop the remaining side down a division may also exist if the circumstances were dire enough.

[Pekay]

I appreciate your reply. Yes it was worded differently to how you wanted it interpreted. Thanks mate. Very sensitive issue for me, I'm quite passionate about that. Was a tough time for both footy and away from the club personally.

[Mug Punter]

In an ideal world we would have a three division comp with two teams and automatic promotion in ALL divisions (one up, one down) plus special dispensation for clubs in trouble. Also with a couple of one team divisions below for thrids and fifths and new/battling clubs.

This would be the best of both worlds. At the moment we are a couple of teams short of this so in the short term divionalisation has slightly more plusses than minuses but surely in the long term we have to have clubs staying together and playing their games as a club not being scattered to all parts...