A NEW VFA DAWN

Let's not cry - Let's be bold

In last week's inside Football I began with the following paragraph:

What do Jarrod Waite, Setanta O’hAilpin, Andrew Carrazzo, Jordan Bannister, Ryan Houlihan, Jason Winderlich. Henry Slattery, Lance Franklin, Brad Sewell, Chance Bateman, Lindsay Gilbee and Brian Harris have in common? Every one of them played well with their AFL club on the weekend and each began his senior career in the VFL. From Franklin, who at the start of season 2007 had six VFL games under his belt, to Bannister, who’d amassed 72 games, not one has suffered because of his time in the VFL.

I ended with the following words:

If the rumours are true that Carlton, Collingwood and the Kangaroos (and maybe some others) are set to pull the pin on their alignments, the VFL faces some major challenges. Might it unwittingly force the old VFA clubs to take hold of their fate? And what will happen to the Bullants, who don’t have the resources to go alone? When the VFA succumbed in the mid 90s the clubs were on their knees. Now we have four clubs - Port, Williamstown, Frankston and North Ballarat - capable of standing alone and recruiting quality players. Might this group form the rump of a semi-independent VFA - existing within the VFL - and playing off for a separate premiership?

Why not consider having two premierships, one for the stand-alone AFL reserves teams and one for the VFA clubs. The AFL reserves sides could play off for the Victorian Reserves Grand Final, leaving the top stand-alone and aligned teams (a top five?) to play off for the VFL or VFA premiership. I’d revert to VFA! The AFL reserves finals could be scheduled as curtain-raisers or played at a VFA ground, such as Coburg. If the VFL were really bold it would explore ways of further reducing the number of AFL players in aligned teams during the finals. Given the AFL clubs say the VFL premiership doesn’t really matter to them, they would surely accept a proposal modelled on this two-tier approach!

Port flys the flag

On Saturday 16 June I went to Port to see the old enemy destroy Werribee, Despite Werribee having I think 12 AFL players, the stand-alone Port was just too good. This bodes well for the old VFA clubs, once we cast off some of the alignments. Yes, my old side will have to stick with an alignment - no disrepect to Richmond. However the sad truth is that Coburg is no longer my football home.

Below are some photos from Saturday's game.