During Gather Round I had a chat with a West Adelaide fan who was telling me about how he never embraced the Crows and that West Adelaide is the team he actually cares about, while also taking a secondary interest in Essendon in the AFL.
It got me to thinking how you could make the state leagues, particularly the SANFL and WAFL but also the VFA and NTFL, TFL relevant again. I think the main factor that made these leagues irrelevant aside from the introduction of a national league is the tying of them to reserves teams in each region. If you were to make a national reserves league to operate alongside the AFL season, you could potentially move all the state leagues to the summer and have most of the games at night to avoid heat being too much of an issue.
We would be able to enjoy some footy over the winter which is always a pain for me and others who don't enjoy any other sport anywhere near as much as footy. I know people will say it is against tradition to not have those leagues in winter but isn't it better for tradition to have a relevant league that people pay attention to and which is actually focused on having teams win rather than being a developmental league for the AFL teams?
You could also have the old VFA teams come in along with some teams based in areas of Melbourne that aren't represented by the location of teams (which are based on the tiny area Melbourne covered 125 years ago). Areas like Tarneit, Dandenong, etc could have a team that represents their area. It would also be great to see grounds like Moorabin back in use and people able to enjoy suburban footy.
You could have the winners of each competition play off in a national championships at the end.
It would additionally make more chances to develop late blooming players. With the mid season draft, we've seen increasingly that many players don't develop at 18 and that we are missing out on heaps of potential good players due to the obsession with drafting at that age. This type of structure would provide one more exposure opportunity for players to be on TV and in front of recruiters.
It got me to thinking how you could make the state leagues, particularly the SANFL and WAFL but also the VFA and NTFL, TFL relevant again. I think the main factor that made these leagues irrelevant aside from the introduction of a national league is the tying of them to reserves teams in each region. If you were to make a national reserves league to operate alongside the AFL season, you could potentially move all the state leagues to the summer and have most of the games at night to avoid heat being too much of an issue.
We would be able to enjoy some footy over the winter which is always a pain for me and others who don't enjoy any other sport anywhere near as much as footy. I know people will say it is against tradition to not have those leagues in winter but isn't it better for tradition to have a relevant league that people pay attention to and which is actually focused on having teams win rather than being a developmental league for the AFL teams?
You could also have the old VFA teams come in along with some teams based in areas of Melbourne that aren't represented by the location of teams (which are based on the tiny area Melbourne covered 125 years ago). Areas like Tarneit, Dandenong, etc could have a team that represents their area. It would also be great to see grounds like Moorabin back in use and people able to enjoy suburban footy.
You could have the winners of each competition play off in a national championships at the end.
It would additionally make more chances to develop late blooming players. With the mid season draft, we've seen increasingly that many players don't develop at 18 and that we are missing out on heaps of potential good players due to the obsession with drafting at that age. This type of structure would provide one more exposure opportunity for players to be on TV and in front of recruiters.
