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eclipse said:
Yea Broadford and Thornton was due to location as much as anything else. The travel played a heavy toll and players left in mass. Powelltown as far as I can tell have no junior alliance and basically followed a short term path. No juniors is not a sustainable model for any club.
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Powelly isn’t exactly Burke street either. I don’t totally agree with the club’s recent strategies but having a junior club there is unrealistic.
 

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With what is going on in the football landscape, at some stage we could well end up "going back to the 1950s" where it was not compulsory to field a reserves team and those clubs will in essence become "Club 18" teams.

Naturally, that could mean the club would become weaker and start a slide into disbandment, but in some cases it will allow clubs to consolidate and rejuvenate and eventually field a reserves side again.

Depending on the number of clubs geographically, you may end up in a situation whereby the VAFA, EFNL, SFNL and EDFL cater for these types of clubs in a Club 18/Open Grade/Single Team division or divisions. In the future, the OEFL may even end up with a Premier Division and a Single Team Division.

Unfortunately, it is the way of the world in Victorian grassroots football. It is bizarre looking on from WA at what is happening in Victoria as WA grassroots football has suffered very few of the issues Victoria has in the past five years, which all points towards covid and the way it has changed lives.
 
Voice of the G said:
Would think with a 1 team policy a club would be expected to have 30 players.As I have said in other posts we have small country towns like Powelly,Yarra Junction,Yea etc up against towns with bigger populations closer to metro Melbourne.
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Wasn’t an issue the previous two seasons and beyond that.
 
eclipse said:
Having an alliance with one is still realistic.
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I played all my juniors at Wesburn 2000-07. At that time the natural progression was toward Warby’s U/18’s as Powelly didn’t field them. Powelltown was kind of the alternate option for anyone and I feel like it has continued along that path essentially. I’m not sure how striking up a secondary or manufactured “alliance” would help much. Not many kids player footy anywhere at the moment.
 
Tommyk27 said:
Not many kids player footy anywhere at the moment.
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Which is the crux of my previous post about there being half as many teams/clubs in 50 years.
If less and less people are playing each year in certain areas it stands to reason that at some point in time the total number of people playing won’t be enough to support the pre-existing clubs.
 
Out of curiosity, of the 2023 Division 1 and 2 clubs what percentage of players were local and what percentage of players came from "down the hill"?

If a club is primarily comprised of travellers and they go from two teams to one, then the attraction of playing could be less for some unless there is good dosh on offer.
 
10571z said:
Is reserves football required for some tiny towns? Maybe a league requiring 1 side could be attractive for many small town clubs. Seems most clubs in these tiny towns just beg blokes to play.
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It could give towns like Marysville and Thornton-Eildon a chance of reviving their clubs in a Single Team Division. It would definitely make a few of the old folk glad in those towns if that happened.
 
The other issue impacting country clubs is that regional areas themselves (not just sports wise) are changing. Our metro areas are enormous and growing like mad but regional areas aren’t. There is little work in regional areas, farming and agriculture used to employ many but technology advances mean those jobs aren’t there any more. Enormous farms are run by half a dozen people and advanced equipment.

There’s huge employment in the massive civil infrastructure jobs but they’re all in the city, not the country.

Young people simply move away to the city and they don’t come back because there’s no work.

Between 2015 and 2020 Melbourne’s population grew by about 800k or 18%.

Even a big regional city like Albury-Wodonga was half that. For small towns it’s tiny or even going backwards.

It’s reflected in the quality of footy. There was a time when the top country leagues were of supreme quality. There was a lot more money in the regions (relatively) and they attracted a lot of talent. 30 years ago my uncle was recruited to play O&M footy full-time. Every club had a few, some of them worked a few days a week anyway for more money, but they could afford to bring players in on a full time basis if they chose.

Now (just don’t try to tell them as they still have their pride) even those top country leagues are nowhere near the quality of the top metro divisions (the demise of the VFA is also a contributor). They can’t compete in recruiting and those they can get are often FIFO and don’t train at the club at all.

The quality has dropped right off as the relative money and population just isn’t there. The country, incl the big towns, has been left to rot to varying degrees. No jobs, no population, no money. For the smallest towns it’s not just a quality thing, many are pretty much dead entirely.

Anyway I’m rambling!
 

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So we have had 26 players that have left or not playing and only 5 in.
We had 9 games last year where guys had to double up.
Yes we are fighting tooth and nail to get this happening but it’s lies from above that have us questioning are we wasting our time.
There are so many doubts now with the season only 2 weeks away.
 
As I understand it Wesburn have been absorbed (or taken over - depending how you look at it) by Warburton. Yarra Junction are trying to keep their juniors going, but only have younger grades. Where do the above posters think Powelltown would find juniors? A town of less than 200 competing with Junction & Warburton for players of all ages?
Maybe the above posters who keep banging on Powelltown only having themselves to blame for not having juniors have never been there?
 
Doggies22 said:
As I understand it Wesburn have been absorbed (or taken over - depending how you look at it) by Warburton. Yarra Junction are trying to keep their juniors going, but only have younger grades. Where do the above posters think Powelltown would find juniors? A town of less than 200 competing with Junction & Warburton for players of all ages?
Maybe the above posters who keep banging on Powelltown only having themselves to blame for not having juniors have never been there?
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What do you mean taken over?
Tommyk himself said he played at Wesburn then went to Powelltown.
 
Probably not as much "taken over" but I think you'll find that most Wesburn juniors live quite close to Warby. It's just a natural alignment with most of the kids wanting to play closer to home and Warby being the final destination for most of them. Any kids living near Junction are choosing between Woori or Wesburn. And sadly nobody seems to live in Powelly.
 
Doggies22 said:
As I understand it Wesburn have been absorbed (or taken over - depending how you look at it) by Warburton. Yarra Junction are trying to keep their juniors going, but only have younger grades. Where do the above posters think Powelltown would find juniors? A town of less than 200 competing with Junction & Warburton for players of all ages?
Maybe the above posters who keep banging on Powelltown only having themselves to blame for not having juniors have never been there?
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Well if you have a look also at the players that we have recruited over the last 3-4 years they are mostly 30 plus. maybe our recruiting staff should’ve spent more money on younger players instead of all our stars.
The management of our leaders and committee have let all us players down.
Now they want us to play 2 games a week but kept using us when the stars couldn’t show up with terrible excuses they had one thing on there mind and not the longevity of our once loved club.
 
Powelltown would seem to have every natural diasvantage so it feels a bit like they've been just marking time as a club over recent years. In the sense of, they've done well to get this far.

Could anything have been done to have given them a better footing and extend it further? I don't know.

But questions have to be asked. Flags are nice but as a senior coach at a local club, if you leave and the club folds then you on face value you have done a horrific job and deserve more than a fair share of the blame. As a senior figure at the club you have a responsibility to leave it better than you found it.

Maybe there's more to it regarding the committee etc, who knows.
 
I have always said (from an employment perspective) that the true worth of a person is often best measured once they've retired or resigned. Things can run really well once they're there but they've only done a really good job if they can leave and the place still runs really well. If it falls apart, then they probably haven't really done their job well.

In terms of giving Powelly a leg up to offset their difficulties in terms of distance / recruiting, etc. it's a hard one because they snagged 2 flags with a level playing ground. Can you see any other comp saying they would give a 2 time premier special consideration with extended salary cap or points "cos they're doing it tough"?
 
Tommyk27 said:
And sadly Wesburn couldn’t field under 17’s last year. There is scarcity of young men wanting to play footy
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Any historians up that way tell me a bit about Wesburn,did they have a senior club at any stage.I can remember a guy called George Dounan who formed the club but only around the early 60,s due to the Yarra Valley Boys league played on Sundays.
 
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