Norwood's move to Windsor Gardens

[Sojourner]

I think that one of the reasons that the SANFL are struggling to maintain crowd numbers is that there is literaly a black out of local footy in both the North Eastern suburbs and the Adelaide Hills - Mt Barker areas.

Most SANFL grounds are located in suburbs close to the city, the Bay, Elizabeth & Noarlunga being the exceptions. Since Adelaide Oval, Prospect, Woodville - Thebarton, Alberton, Parade, Richmond, Unley were founded, Urban Sprawl has spread out and there are a large percentage of the population that are not in the areas of these anymore.

Please dont take offence if you are a supporter of the mighty Redlegs, yet there is not a strong connection with Norwood in the Modbury, Tea Tree Gully, Golden Grove areas. Norwood woould do well to play some of there games on the Ridgehaven oval where Modbury play in order to make that connection with the area. In the same way, Sturt might have some success in gaining new members by playing some games at either Uraidla or Mt Barker.

In Perth none of the WAFL clubs wanted to move to a burgeioning new area, so the WAFL set up a new side - Mandurah, I think that there is a strong case for redistributon of areas to keep local footy local. Modbury or Mt Barker could well have a case for being the next sides into the SANFL.

[Snaggletooth Tiger]

Carlton, North Melbourne, Collingwood, Richmond & Fitzroy Football Clubs were all in close proximity
to each other (pracically streets apart) & Melbourne's CBD.
In fact the only footy club in the old VFL which was a considerable distance away was Geelong!

[Wedgie]

I personally don't think the area an oval is in has a lot do with getting people to the footy these days.
A lot different in the olden days when just about everyone in a certain area used to follow the club in proximity.
How long have South been at Noarlunga for now? And IMHO the southern suburbs folk don't take any ownership of them. Most South fans I know live nowhere near the Southern suburbs.

[mal]

I personally don't think the area an oval is in has a lot do with getting people to the footy these days.
A lot different in the olden days when just about everyone in a certain area used to follow the club in proximity.
How long have South been at Noarlunga for now? And IMHO the southern suburbs folk don't take any ownership of them. Most South fans I know live nowhere near the Southern suburbs.

Worked at Elizabeth.

[Wedgie]

I personally don't think the area an oval is in has a lot do with getting people to the footy these days.
A lot different in the olden days when just about everyone in a certain area used to follow the club in proximity.
How long have South been at Noarlunga for now? And IMHO the southern suburbs folk don't take any ownership of them. Most South fans I know live nowhere near the Southern suburbs.

Worked at Elizabeth.

"these days" is a bit different to 1963 mal and Centrals was helped formed by the Football League out there unlike down South.

If you created a team out of the Southern League at Noarlunga in 1963 Im sure they too would have been a success by now.

[Sojourner]

South Adelaide have no real connection with the Noarlunga area, I grew up in Morphett Vale and in our Primary and High School, the majority of people went for either Glenelg or Port Adelaide.

South's lack of success resulted in few new supporters being won to the club along with their political instability inside the club. The club was moved from St Marys and placed there, yet there was no instant take up of new supporters and to be blunt the move was somewhat of a failure. I love South Adelaide, yet the club is struggling and I think has gone past the stage where success may have regenerated the club.

I think that the location of an Oval could well play a part when you consider how many kids at the local primary schools in the Golden Grove, Tea Tree Gully, Modbury areas have had a chance to see Norwood play a game. Bring Norwood onto the Ridgehaven Oval, promote the event through the local schools in the area and that could well change somewhat.

I am told that the Mini League is finishing this year, if that is the case, that is going to be another major blow for getting kids from the North Eastern Suburbs down to the Parade to watch SANFL footy.

[stan]

South Adelaide have no real connection with the Noarlunga area, I grew up in Morphett Vale and in our Primary and High School, the majority of people went for either Glenelg or Port Adelaide.

South's lack of success resulted in few new supporters being won to the club along with their political instability inside the club. The club was moved from St Marys and placed there, yet there was no instant take up of new supporters and to be blunt the move was somewhat of a failure. I love South Adelaide, yet the club is struggling and I think has gone past the stage where success may have regenerated the club.

I think that the location of an Oval could well play a part when you consider how many kids at the local primary schools in the Golden Grove, Tea Tree Gully, Modbury areas have had a chance to see Norwood play a game. Bring Norwood onto the Ridgehaven Oval, promote the event through the local schools in the area and that could well change somewhat.

I am told that the Mini League is finishing this year, if that is the case, that is going to be another major blow for getting kids from the North Eastern Suburbs down to the Parade to watch SANFL footy.

I would be dissapointed if that was true. Probably not the most productive thing to do.

[Sojourner]

What I was told by a chap who is involved with the Sturt Football Club is that they are struggling to find enough schools that have football teams for kids of that age. Apparantly there are plenty of soccer teams, yet not so many football teams anymore.

When I was in Primary School, I cant think of a school in the area that did not participate in school footy, yet times are changing I suppose.

[westside]

What I was told by a chap who is involved with the Sturt Football Club is that they are struggling to find enough schools that have football teams for kids of that age. Apparantly there are plenty of soccer teams, yet not so many football teams anymore.

When I was in Primary School, I cant think of a school in the area that did not participate in school footy, yet times are changing I suppose.

But the AFL is putting a million kids through a 2 week auskick clinic so footy participation is booooooming!

[Dissident]

What I was told by a chap who is involved with the Sturt Football Club is that they are struggling to find enough schools that have football teams for kids of that age. Apparantly there are plenty of soccer teams, yet not so many football teams anymore.

When I was in Primary School, I cant think of a school in the area that did not participate in school footy, yet times are changing I suppose.

I think it is to do with Coke pulling out of the sponsorship?

[Wedgie]

What I was told by a chap who is involved with the Sturt Football Club is that they are struggling to find enough schools that have football teams for kids of that age. Apparantly there are plenty of soccer teams, yet not so many football teams anymore.

When I was in Primary School, I cant think of a school in the area that did not participate in school footy, yet times are changing I suppose.

But the AFL is putting a million kids through a 2 week auskick clinic so footy participation is booooooming!

Auskick usually goes for about 2 months.

[Ian]

I am told that the Mini League is finishing this year, if that is the case, that is going to be another major blow for getting kids from the North Eastern Suburbs down to the Parade to watch SANFL footy.

I would be dissapointed if that was true. Probably not the most productive thing to do.

Take a look at this thread, unfortunatly it is true.

http://safootycentral.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5003&start=0

[RustyCage]

What I was told by a chap who is involved with the Sturt Football Club is that they are struggling to find enough schools that have football teams for kids of that age. Apparantly there are plenty of soccer teams, yet not so many football teams anymore.

When I was in Primary School, I cant think of a school in the area that did not participate in school footy, yet times are changing I suppose.

School footy started to die off when I was in primary school. I played for my school (Ingle Farm) for one season, but only finished off the year because my mates dad was the coach. It was really boring to play compared to playing with Broadview, which I was also doing at the time. The modified rules didn't interest me, no tackling, no sheppards, no bumps, could only bounce the ball once then had to kick it, could drop the ball but if you put in an effort it was still called a mark, it was everything football isn't.

It also died off because of lack of people willing to give up their time on a saturday morning to run the games.

School footy may have died off, but in no way is there any shortage of people playing the game at that age level, they all just play for the club. When there are carnivals during the year, there is no shortage of players, and a huge amount of females playing.

Soccer is doing well in the schools because it is easy to set up, requires no skills, the kids sorta know what their doing, and the huge amount of lazy teachers there are dont have to do anything. Also the media overkill of the world cup got people interested in the game because Australia were playing, and it gave a lot of people the chance to pretend to like what everyone else seemed to like.

What the SANFL is saying is just an excuse to get rid of the mini league. There are a lot of options open to them to keep it going, but they don't want to.

[SimonH]

Tragedy about mini-League. Kids are more likely to get excited enough about a team to follow them through thick & thin, if they've played in their colours in front of a crowd.

Back on the first spin-off from the original topic: Norwood is well aware that to a large extent its future lies in the NE. It estimates that 30% of its city juniors come from the Norwood area, from which I guess we can deduce that 70% come from the NE suburbs. As a result it has established coaches et al up there to train juniors, rather than making the kids travel. This has made a real difference to participation rates of quality kids in the U/17s.

Adelaide actually has much less of a problem with huge pockets of population not 'covered' by any team, than Melbourne does. It's a standard problem where the comp was established decades before the city grew to its present size; confronted by Sydney rugby league as well, among others. Some Melbourne clubs have moved since being established (e.g. St Kilda to Moorabbin, and the population-shy South Melbourne moved about 900km!), but by and large, with the exception of Essendon, they all cluster in what are now very much inner-suburbs. Given that zones have been long-abolished in Melbourne as well, I guess that large parts of Melbourne (i.e. most of the middle and outer suburbs) are a chaotic mix of fans of a number of Victorian teams, rather than solid geographical blocks of support.

[Pseudo]

It also died off because of lack of people willing to give up their time on a saturday morning to run the games.

Now that is a sign of the times. When I was a kid, parents at the primary school were falling over themselves to help out in sports teams, serve on comittees, serve on the tuckshop. These days there seems to be a lot of parents who are happy to roll up in their freshly-waxed 4 wheel drive, let out little Caitlin and Joshua onto the sports field, then piss off and let someone else babysit their kids for the next few hours.

[rod_rooster]

What the SANFL is saying is just an excuse to get rid of the mini league. There are a lot of options open to them to keep it going, but they don't want to.

Think you will find the decision wasn't made by the SANFL rather the majority of club General Manager's voted to scrap the mini league and the SANFL didn't want to overrule that decision.

[Pag]

Kids associated with the North-Eastern clubs (Modbury, Tee Tree Gully, Golden Grove etc) have North Adelaide connections from the time they take up footy. The clubs have been part of the North Adelaide Junior League, with all prelimiary and grand finals being played at Prospect, until the name was changed a couple of years a couple of years ago to the North Eastern Metropolitan Junior Football League. So even clubs close to Norwood like Payneham, Walkerville and Athelstone have been affiliated with North Adelaide for as long as I can remember. It doesn't help that Prospect and Norwood are so close and both ovals are at the very south of their respective zones.

[Barto]

The club that really missed the boat in the NE suburbs was West Torrens. IIRC, they actually had a fair chunk of the NE suburbs in their recruiting zone in the late 70's - early 80's. I remember discussion of them even moving to play their home games and moving the club to Modbury, although that died in the arse pretty quick.

[Dissident]

The club that really missed the boat in the NE suburbs was West Torrens. IIRC, they actually had a fair chunk of the NE suburbs in their recruiting zone in the late 70's - early 80's. I remember discussion of them even moving to play their home games and moving the club to Modbury, although that died in the arse pretty quick.

Yeah my Dad remembers!

My Dad grew up in Renown Park - Torrens area.
When he married Mum they bought land and built a house in Modbury Heights in 1977, Torrens area!


Then it changed

[BPBRB]

The club that really missed the boat in the NE suburbs was West Torrens. IIRC, they actually had a fair chunk of the NE suburbs in their recruiting zone in the late 70's - early 80's. I remember discussion of them even moving to play their home games and moving the club to Modbury, although that died in the arse pretty quick.

Yeah my Dad remembers!

My Dad grew up in Renown Park - Torrens area.
When he married Mum they bought land and built a house in Modbury Heights in 1977, Torrens area!


Then it changed

You can blame the then "Power" clubs e.g. Port and Norwood for selfishly pushing the zone changes back then. With no real regard for the rest of the comp and the arrogance displayed they both seemed to get larger chunks of outer areas in the zone re-shuffles over the years - something that the other 8 clubs would never have got. The worst "re-zoning" decision would be taking most of Salisbury from the Centrals zone and giving it to Port.