Give us your leftovers
NEW LEAGUE: AFL Barwon to set up comp for growing clubs
AFL Barwon is on the verge of creating a new league that will serve as a fifth grade for GFL and BFL teams with surplus players.
The move comes on the back of a Geelong Advertiser story this month that Barwon Heads was exploring entering a fifth team outside the BFL due to its participation numbers overflowing.
Netball clubs generally field four senior teams in their respective competitions.
AFL Barwon netball manager Sarah Scott said plans were in place for the new league to go ahead as soon as this year, provided at least four clubs could guarantee they could fill a team each week.
Barwon Heads and Leopold have already responded to say they would field a fifth side, and Scott said she was confident there could be up to 10 clubs willing to enter a team for 2017.
“It’s just in the planning stages at the moment, we’re just waiting on confirmation from teams, but as long as we get more than four teams on board we’ll run something,” Scott said. “We’ve asked clubs to confirm with us by March 6, but from our interest on Monday night (at the AFL Barwon presidents meeting) it seems like it will (go ahead).”
Scott said fixturing would work in a similar fashion to the Colts, the junior football competition that has teams entered from various leagues across the region.
Matches would then be scheduled to follow club’s sen- ior grade sides as often as possible.
“We’ll try to play them at home with their club as much as possible and try to follow the senior fixture if we can to have the same clubs there, but obviously there will be times when the team is not playing with their club on Saturday,” Scott said. “That is going to be tricky if there’s only four, but if it is four then that’s 40 more girls or women playing netball, so I guess that’s enough for us to try and put something together.
“I think with the interest that we’ve got we could put one (a competition) together at the moment, with nothing definite we’re hoping for maybe 10 teams this year.”