By LIAM TWOMEY
TARNEIT Football Club has officially been accepted into the Western Region Football League.
The announcement came at a special general meeting of all WRFL club delegates last week after a unanimous vote.
“The reaction was pretty positive,” WRFL CEO Bob Tregear said.
“There were questions asked from the floor about would they have seniors or wouldn’t they and what sort of facilities they would have.
“It all went down pretty well.”
Tregear added that he was hopeful the club would enter senior sides next season.
However, the league isn’t expecting Tarneit to enter as many junior teams as last year’s new clubs Manor Lakes and Sanctuary Lakes.
Limits have now been placed on the number of juniors who can switch clubs.
“They probably won’t have the number of junior teams that the other two started with,” Tregear said.
“A lot of that was achieved out of moving them from one club to another. Out of that we introduced a new by-law to limit the number of junior players who can move.
“They can’t leave a team in one club and go to the same age group in a team at another club.
“We will be slowing down that movement so they will have to get more organic growth themselves from the local area rather than pinching them from other clubs.
“Our junior board has been looking at that all year. It was on their recommendation that we adopted the new by-law.”
The addition of Tarneit as well as the potential crossover of Werribee Districts from the VAFA brings the league’s three division split even closer.
“If both of them get up and we keep everyone else it is almost certain we would have three divisions next year,” Tregear said.
“We won’t know until probably mid-October.”
