With all due respect, the make-up at the time of the SFL is similar to what the Hills FL is now with Sedan-Cambrai & Milang the only genuine country teams left.
The Hills region is as much Adelaide metro as areas like Aldinga and McLaren Flat were at the time I was referring to (remembering also Kangarilla & Meadows were part of the equation). Hills is effectively a Metro league these days, with a few outlying towns.
It is certainly the most comparable recent example and a lot of lessons can be taken from it.
Thanks for the geography lesson - I'm sure the good folk of Macclesfield, Meadows, Kersbrook, Sedan, Milang, Mt Torrens, Mt Pleasant, Birdwood and Gumeracha will be pleased to know they're now in the metropolitan area.
Point remains the same, the smaller clubs will have no option but to consider a merging, or sign up for the C grade comp.
Maccy, Meadows, Mt Torrens & Birdwood are all similar distances from the CBD as Aldinga & Gawler
Kersbrook and Gumeracha are closer
I talked about Sedan & Milang as being genuine country
When was the last time Mount Pleasant was used, isn't Torrens Valley based at Mount Torrens?
Dismiss the points I have made if you really believe SFL was a fully metropolitan league in the late nineties, even one of your "country" teams you mentioned above (Meadows) was playing in that Metropolitan league at that time.
The relevant experience I was trying to get across was:
Up until the mid 90s the SFL Div2 comp was quite competitive. In 1995 Mitchell Park joined Div1 making it 11 teams in Div1 & 8 in Div2 (similar to what is being suggested for next season in hills). 1997 went crazy, Brighton joined Div1 and entered their C & D grade in the Div2 comp (made a 12-9 split). Coming from the Amateurs they had underestimated the strength of Div2 and there were a number of record scores against them. The Div2 was also starting to see a divide with some reasonably strong teams and some very weak teams. A number of very high margins were occurring at that stage.
The decline progressed in 1998 when McLaren Vale and McLaren Flat merged making a 12-8 split. Meadows went the season without a win and left at the end of the season making it a 12-7 split. The second division by this stage was a very unattractive proposition for the lower Div1 clubs with 3 strong teams (Kangarilla, Aldinga, McLaren), 2 half competitive teams (Lonsdale & Mitchell Park) and 2 very weak teams (Cove & Brighton thirds).
In 2000 the Brighton experiment was brought to a halt (after a number of 40 goal losses), being left with only 6 teams and McLaren wanting out, the league pushed two sides down to balance it better making it 10-8, the damage had been done however.
Mitchell Park and McLaren left at the end of the season reducing it to a 6 team competition. This lasted one season until it was determined to be unviable (4 team U/18 comp, 5 team U/16 & U/14 comps). At the end of the 2001 season, the two divisions were combined to form one 16 team competition (based on the AFL at that time). As a result of this the Lonsdale & O'Sullivan Beach teams merged to make it 15 teams.
Of the 6 teams of that final Div2 season, 2 have become strong clubs (Cove & Flagstaff Hill), 1 left (Kangarilla) and the other two have struggled (Aldinga & the combined OSB/Lonsdale team).
The Saturday juniors have been impacted severely as the Div2 comp traditionally failed to match the junior structure of Div1. This season has seen it hit a low with only 10 teams fielded in the U/16 & U/14 competitions and down to only 8 clubs fielding a full set of teams in their own right in all the 5 Saturday grades.