By Luke D’Anello
ESSENDON District Football League (EDFL) will move to three divisions in 2012 after the move was rubber-stamped at the league’s season launch.
League general manager Marc Turri said the new structure did not accelerate the need for expansion and the focus would remain on the existing 24 clubs.
But areas such as Hillside, Craigieburn and Greenvale are on the radar.
“We are keen to expand, there’s no doubt about that. But our number one priority must be to make sure the 24 clubs we’ve got are viable moving forward,” Turri said. “But if there was an opportunity to add more clubs to the competition to build it up, we’ll certainly look at each club who may be interested in applying.”
Turri cited the population growth in Craigieburn and the number of junior sides in Hillside as reasons why those areas remain attractive.
“There are no timelines as yet (to expand), but we are certainly keen to get to a minimum of 28 clubs in time,” Turri said. “But that would include some growth areas that at this point in time aren’t ready for a football club.
“We are keen to capture some of those growth areas because they are within our boundaries, so we’re always going to have one eye on a potential club from a growth area which we think could develop into another stronger club.”
After round 13 next year, the top eight teams from B Grade will remain and play the rest of the season under the normal home-and-away format followed by a finals series.
The bottom six teams will then form the new C Grade competition and play out the remainder of the season.
There is likely to be a top four finals system in each division but there will be no promotion and relegation at the end of next season between the second and third tier.
The model is identical to that adopted by the Northern Football League (NFL) in 2009.
If the EDFL was to house less than 24 clubs in 2012, the move would not go ahead.
Turri said there was majority support from clubs, but it was not overwhelming.
“With a change as big as this, I don’t think you’ll get every one of your 24 clubs agreeing to every single component that we put in place.
“But I think the important thing is that all the clubs understand why we’re doing it, but the implementation process is always going to be the most difficult thing to satisfy the majority.
“The number one aim for the three divisions is to create more competitive matches, more often. We think by separating the B Grade competition as it currently stands we can allocate clubs into a division they will be more competitive in.”
Turri said the league’s decision was influenced by its member clubs and the success of the structure in the NFL.
Clubs also expressed concern over the original plan to place the six worst performing B Grade clubs across 2009, ’10 and ’11 into division three.
“We looked at a few different models, but the clubs were more keen to go on a system where we incorporate one season as opposed to multiple seasons because they thought that was more fair for everyone to have an opportunity to remain in the second tier competition.”
Meanwhile, NFL football operations manager Jarrad Carey said his league’s move to three divisions had been an “enormous benefit”.
“It was met with a little bit of concern from some of our clubs to begin with, but overall I think the evenness of both division two and division three since the introduction of the third division has just provided us with so much more better football played,” Carey said.
“Those clubs who had struggled in a stand-alone division two are now finding it a lot easier to attract sponsors and supporters to the games because they know they’re not going to get pumped by 100 points every second week.”
St Mary’s is the only new club to join the NFL since it moved to a three-tiered competition and Carey said finding new clubs was the biggest challenge.
Carey believes the EDFL could grow to 28 or 30 teams within five years. He also confirmed the NFL would investigate new teams in Craigieburn and Greenvale but conceded the EDFL had a “stranglehold” in those areas.
“That’s not to say that we’re not interested in getting someone from over that way because we aren’t really represented that far across and it’s certainly something we’d be keen to look into.”
