Coach urges restructure

AS the coronavirus pandemic impacts the makeup of the North Queensland football season, a Townsville premier league coach believes it could pave the way for future restructuring.

Ingham senior coach Bruno Casale is in favour of a shortened local competition and believes it would create more representative outlets for aspiring footballers.

In a regional centre such as

Ingham, the search for higher honours is harder to come by than in metropolitan areas such as Brisbane.

Casale said regional sport was losing numbers – something the COVID-19 pandemic could impact further – and concepts needed to be put in place to keep players engaged.

These could include a concise premier league to enable more representative pathways for athletes.

“I don’t think a shorter season altogether is the way to go but we need to add a little bit more representative stuff for the better players,” Casale said.

“We’re in a unique situation here.

“I know we’re far away from Brisbane but we can start locally doing representative stuff against other centres such as Cairns and Mackay, and maybe Mt Isa and Rocky.

“I think it makes it a little more exciting for clubs; they’ll follow their representative players so for those players who have a drive to get to the next level, they’ve got somewhere to go.”

North Queensland Football general manager Declan Carnes has pitched ideas to Football Queensland for how a representative scene in the northern regions could work.

The pandemic has forced organisations to reconsider how their codes look beyond 2020, but Carnes said they had already shaken things up.

The annual Crad Evans Shield – typically played between the Townsville and

Cairns premiership winners from the under-16s and up – will now feature the winners from under-12s and up.

Other changes are also afoot. Carnes said some ideas, such as a City v Country competition, had been floated.

His vision was to have a separate representative season running in the off-season for players who were eager to play throughout the year and aspired to higher levels.

He said with elite Queensland competitions largely taking place in the southeast corner, it became a financial conflict for parents and players to expose themselves to greater competition – something the health crisis was only going to highlight more.

“Now’s the time to restructure what’s happened in the past and come up with a model that is more user-friendly and economically viable for everyone,” Carnes said.

“These are the times to make the changes, but there needs to be collaboration.”