Onus on clubs to even up lopsided contests
AFL Cairns cops plenty of heat for being a lopsided competition, with only a few genuine premiership hopes every year.
That is all correct, but as AFL Cairns staff have noted over the journey, they can’t fix the bottom clubs, they need to do it themselves. I’ll give an example why some clubs battle.
When coronavirus stopped the competition, one club decided to slow down its spending on recruits and just go with what it had for the rest of the year. Following Round 1, its hierarchy decided to splash the cash and wanted to chase quality players from down south.
Clubs like Port, South and Saints spend months trying to identify recruits, get them jobs locally and help them settle in.
One of the competition’s also-rans wanted blokes here straight away out of the blue – and people wonder why games aren’t competitive most weeks.
■THE Manunda Hawks have picked up a son of a gun that is desperate to play some footy in 2020.
Jett Bewick recently completed his transfer from the Kyabram District Football Netball League to the Cazalys Stadium-based club.
Bewick, son of Darren, who played in two flags for the
Bombers and over 200 games, has played at a high level around suburban Melbourne over the last few years.
With many leagues cancelled down south, Jett’s parents paid for his quarantine in Cairns so he would have some kind of footy to play this year, to keep his development progressing.
Bewick was solid in Hawks’ defeat to Saints on Saturday.
Saints junior Jack Bowes played his 50th game at the highest evening.
The Gold Coast Suns utility has a lot more ahead of him and is likely to still be in the system for another decade.
His Suns were brave on Thursday evening against the Bulldogs and could have easily got the four points. He goes good, does “Bowesy”. level on
Thursday
CTB football manager Sam Blease is not far away from being back on the ground in FNQ.
In his first year running the show at Crathern Park, the former Melbourne Demon headed back to Victoria when the local competition shut down earlier this year.
Late last week, Blease was getting himself back to Cairns and dealing with an isolation period, before attacking the job at the Bulldogs as they look to make the finals later in 2020.
North Cairns are in the same boat, as Peter German headed back to Victoria earlier this year.