BY MICHAEL ESPOSITO
THE gap between the best and worst sides will only get bigger if the WRFL senior competition goes to three divisions, according to North Footscray’s new president Ashleigh Guest.
The Devils, along with Sunshine Heights, are in danger of being demoted to Division Two if a proposed restructure goes ahead.
The WRFL has for the second year in a row put the restructure to a club vote. The restructure would involve cutting the Division One competition to eight teams, meaning Sunshine Heights and North Footscray would go down to second division and Deer Park would go up. The proposal was rejected last year and is likely to be rejected again, but it is yet to be ruled out. Guest said his club could be competitive in Division One, and cutting it back to eight clubs would only widen the gap between the haves and have-nots.
“No matter how many teams you have there is always going to be a gap between the top team and the bottom team, this happens in all sports at all levels,” Guest said.
“Having less teams just means clubs will spend more money to make themselves even stronger. That would then make the gap from Division One to Division Two impossible to make for other clubs.
A WRFL discussion paper and survey sent to senior clubs stated: “Experience in the 2011 season revealed that the bottom teams in both Division One and Division Two were not competitive in their respective grades.”
But Guest believes this is only half true, and was confident his side could improve greatly on this, its first season in Division One.
“We understand that the top three teams may have beaten us by a large margin this year. We were competitive for most of the games, but couldn’t keep up to their standards for the full four quarters,” he said.
“We have now tasted and know how important a massive pre-season and recruiting is for us to make that next step. We also think we will be better off for having a year under our belts up in Division One. We think that we will be very competitive in the up and coming season.”
Guest said getting pushed back to Division Two would have an adverse affect on the club’s development.
“We have worked really hard to get back up to Division One and if was to be taken off us, not on our terms, it would be really disappointing, We are a club of a lot of young kids that want to play Division One. If we went back down I think we would lose some of these young kids as they want to challenge themselves with Division One football. As a club we have worked hard to get back up to Division One and our plans are to become a force in Division One.”
Sunshine Heights football operations manager Michael Grima said heading back to Division Two would have devastating consequences. Grima said his club’s search for a new coach has been hampered by the uncertainty about which division Sunshine Heights will be competing in next season.
