Community Football Sustainability – What’s the Point?

Michael Sholly

AFL Victoria have spent the past year investigating the growing discrepancies in results across all leagues in Victoria. A committee was appointed to find a solution to this and the draft document was released last week, which includes both a Player Points system and Salary Cap Provisions.

If approved it will be the biggest structural reform in community football history in Victoria and it’s important that we allow testing to occur to provide feedback. The proposed points system remains in a testing phase and the VAFA will participate during this period, however, no decision has been made by the Board as to whether we will implement this into our senior sections.

The program includes options that we can include at our discretion, which allows us to cater for the various clubs we have in our competition. This includes university and old school boy players who will come under a different category that is not included in the general system. In our system, I have allocated one point to these players. The program is designed to promote player loyalty and the establishment of suitable pathways and junior structures where appropriate.

Whilst the system is robust enough to deal with the huge number of variables and elements in our association, we will place a strong focus on not increasing the burden on volunteers during this testing period.

The draft allocation points are as follows:

We understand that many have the view that there is no need for us to contribute to the exercise as we don’t have the player payments issue that other leagues have and we have a relegation and promotion system that has serviced our association for nearly 100 years. However we are part of the larger football community and it is important that we contribute to such programs to ensure the game thrives at all levels.

If you are interested to read more of the program here is a copy of the draft Community-Club-Sustainability-Program-Media-Briefing is available for you to read.

You can also watch the AFL Victoria Media conference discussing the program here.