By Nick Creely
As the merger between the SEFNL and AFL Yarra Ranges starts to take shape for 2019, growing football and netball and creating opportunities for clubs to be successful is of paramount importance to region general manager Aaron Bailey.
Speaking at a recent function at the Officer Football Club, Bailey provided some key updates on how the merger is tracking, and spoke of how the Yarra Ranges will seek to bring some new senior clubs into the growing Casey region, in order to allow more clubs to build sustainable success.
“Casey is where we want to grow football – at the moment, there’s about 20,000 people per club, so our job is to grow that region and put more clubs there to get that down to 6,000 to 10,000 mark, so it will balance football out,” Bailey said.
“One of the things this region clearly needs is growth in terms of new clubs – the lack of levels, and the lack of divisions have meant no new senior clubs have emerged, and as a result, lacks opportunity.
“I’m pleased to say Berwick Springs will start next year as an Under 19s and netball club, so already with us going to divisional football, we’ve already got a new club which is fantastic.
“We’re already working on another, which we hope will come up in the next 24 months.
“Over the next five years we want this region to represent the Yarra Ranges.”
Travel has been one of the lingering concerns for the SEFNL clubs as they move towards divisional football in 2019, but Bailey reiterated the importance of local rivalries, and said that the six clubs joining will not venture too far to play football.
“One of the things that is exciting is that we’re going to have some more local derby’s, with more Cardinia teams in the competition, which is being embraced by the clubs in the Yarra Ranges such as Gembrook and Emerald,” he said.
“For us, it’s fantastic, it gives us the opportunity to build something we think can work going forward – next year we will definitely go to three divisions, but we’re still working on getting the structure of this right.
“Year one there will be three divisions, a Premier Division, a Division One and a Division Two – the Division Two will be our northern clubs and the smaller Yarra Ranges clubs.
“But the two other divisions will be the remaining Yarra Ranges clubs and the six SEFNL clubs that are coming across.
“We do have four clubs in the north that we need to find a solution for – they are Alexandra, Yea, Thornton Eildon and Kinglake. We are working through that and we’re confident we’ll have a solution by 2020.”
Bailey said that they are also working through the netball structure, but said they have some work to do to find a way to cater for the growth of the south-east region.
“We share a very similar structure in our netball – we have four divisions, and it’s very strong,” he said.
“But one of the areas we need to grow is junior netball, so we’ll work on where we need to be with that – but we have a clear plan and we’ll release that over the next few months.”
And as for the competition’s name in 2019, Bailey said they’re still working through that process, but hope to have something in concrete soon.
“In regards to our name, we’ve got a competition to find the name and we’re working through that – we’ll work that and hopefully make an announcement soon,” he said.
