THE Western Region Football League is not putting a time-frame on its desire to become a three-tier senior competition.
After welcoming two new clubs in the off-season, bringing the total number of senior clubs to 22, league football operations manager David Newton said the competition is working hard to develop new teams in growth areas.
“It is difficult to put a time on it,” Newton said.
“We have been successful in getting two clubs up and going this year. Unfortunately we lost Coburg Districts. If they had remained, the likelihood of it occurring in 2014 would have been greater than what it is now.”
Meanwhile, Laverton president Matthew Pratt said he would welcome the league’s split into a three division competition.
Pratt said that some of the high profile recruiting by Division Two clubs during the off-season will most likely lead to blowouts, a problem that would be fixed with a third tier.
“If clubs are good enough to get those sort of players to want to play this standard of football and they have them under the right pretences and the right circumstances, then that is great for the competition,” Pratt said.
“It leads to a better standard of football and hopefully more people come to watch.
“You are going to get blowouts though and you are going to get some really big scores this year.”
Laverton won just two games during the 2012 season.
“I think it is going to be really tough while there is two divisions and obviously that comes down to the competition needing more clubs,” Pratt said.
In the battle to adjust some of the lopsided results in the WRFL, a number of Division Two clubs have also called for a player points system to be looked at more closely.
The League has discussed the measure with clubs in the past but as Newton explains, the final decision goes beyond just football in the West.
“As part of our ongoing review into senior competition structures, we meet generally two or three times with senior presidents and coaches,” he said.
“It is a difficult one with the points system as to how it will work. If we were to do something like that and the EDFL wasn’t, what affect would that have on our competition or vice versa?
“It is something that has been discussed at AFL Victoria.
“Although it would be good to have something like that in place, if it wasn’t done across the whole of community football in Melbourne it could be detrimental to one league over the other.”
