Victorian Country Football - Problems and Solutions

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Contributed by Forum Member Derek Mott

“The Decline in Fortunes for Victorian Country Football – The Problems and Potential Solutions”
By Derek Mott

(This was an assignment that I wrote in October 2004 as part of a Sports Administration course that I did at Victoria University. It was done for my Football Studies unit - yes, it was as good as it sounds! - and my aim was to look at issues involving country football as I have felt that it has been neglected by the footballing authorities for too long. I found it when going through some stuff on my computer recently and had a chuckle that some of what I wrote has actually occurred in the five years since.)



Australian Rules Football is an important part of our sporting culture, whether you live in the heart of suburbia in places such as Taylors Lakes and Templestowe, or in small country towns like Tallygaroopna and Tatong. In recent years, there has been a perception that country football is dying, which is an issue worth investigating. We will aim to find out the reasons why Australian Rules Football is important to community life, why country football is important to the sport, what has caused the decline in the sport’s fortunes in country areas, how they can be reversed, as well as other potential solutions.

There are five key reasons why Australian Rules Football is an important part of community life. Probably the greatest benefit of playing sport is improved personal health. People who participate in sports gain the necessary exercise for a healthy body and reduce the chances of becoming overweight or obese, which helps to reduce the health burden on Governments through reduced spending in the health budget. They also develop life skills and self-discipline, in that they are involved in situations which require communication, problem solving, leadership, teamwork, motivation, social and practical skills and discipline, as opposed to people who prefer to be on their own and are isolated from the community and cannot learn from role models (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004). Having no football club could see a rise in crime, as the younger members of the community could be out “looking for trouble” as they would have more time on their hands. (Barnes, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

Australian Rules Football also brings out a community spirit. People show pride in a team that represents their suburb, town or region by following their fortunes and getting involved in social events, which helps to bring the people together in a sense of belonging, unity and friendship. In country areas, there is also a chance for people from different towns in the same region to share their experiences. Football allows these people to come together to connect and learn from them, for example what farmers are doing in order to cope in times of drought (Niemann, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

Finally, Australian Rules Football can provide towns with an economic boost. Teams need to purchase supplies such as alcohol, food, equipment and stationery from shops in towns in order to earn revenue at matches and functions. This money flows through the local economy which benefits the town and the region (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

Having seen how beneficial football is to community life, we can now look to see what role country football in Victoria plays in the sport overall. In recent years, around 30% of players on the lists of Australian Football League clubs originate from country Victoria (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004). Some of these current players are high-profile players such as Jonathan Brown from South Warrnambool, former Broadford player Barry Hall, Chris Tarrant from South Mildura and Nick Dal Santo, who learnt his trade with Sandhurst (Lovett (ed.), AFL 2004, 2004). When you add such legendary names as Gary Ablett senior (ex-Drouin), Greg Williams (ex-Golden Square) and John Coleman (ex-Hastings) to the mix, then you can see the extent to which country football has made its mark on the game. There have also been coaches such as Michael Malthouse, Leigh Matthews, Bob Davis and Tom Hafey who have country origins and reached the game’s highest level (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).


If we see that there are so many people involved at the game’s highest level, they why is there a problem? The greatest problem has been a shift in population from smaller towns to larger centres, with people either in search of work or teenagers moving away from home to study. The number of farming families living in rural Victoria fell by around 24% between 1986 and 2002. As people move away, the chances of these people returning home are minimal as they have better prospects in the larger population centres. With this exodus occurring, services such as hospitals, businesses and industry are affected and in some cases, close (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

An example of this is Korong Vale, a Loddon Valley Football League club which folded in 1992. Since then, the town has lost their senior cricket side and has suffered a decline in their
facilities (Niemann, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football). The Hindmarsh Shire in the state’s west has just three clubs (Dimboola, Nhill and Rainbow/Jeparit), when once there were teams in each locality and a twelve-team Lowan Star League. There was also a time when there were 10 clubs within a 25-mile radius of Nhill, now there is just one (Jacobs, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

Another factor is the improvement in farming technology which has seen smaller farms merging with others. The result is larger farms with less people managing them, resulting in less people in the area as they move away to find work (Hirth, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football). Areas such as the Hindmarsh Shire are also aging in population, with 27% of the population over the age of 60 and just 5.5% between 18 and 24 (Bourke, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

In regional centres, there are now more businesses opening on weekends, which means that senior and junior footballers have to decide between employment or recreation, with employment being regarded as more important due to the remuneration factor, the traveling costs to training and matches. There has also been an increase in workload for volunteers to fulfill with such changes as the G.S.T., accreditation programmes for alcohol serving, food handling and smoke-free environments and even police checks for coaches and officials of under-age teams. This results in fewer of the 30,000 volunteers willing to continue to give up their time due to the fact that they have increased amounts of paperwork to fill out just so that they can help out their community for “the love of the game” (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

The cost of operating a club in a small country town, with football and netball teams, is approximately $91,300 per season (or $15,000 per month) whilst clubs in the leading major leagues in the state are closer to $182,400 per season (or $30,000 per month). The majority of the costs come from player payments, bar and canteen purchases, coaches, medical supplies, power/water and ground charges and also operating costs. The clubs generate revenue from bar takings, canteen and catering, sponsorship, fundraising and major events and functions. These operating costs would be larger than some of the businesses that operate in their towns (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004). The Cavendish Football Club, in the South West District Football League, require forty-four volunteers and $35,000 to operate the club with its two senior teams and four netball teams – and that is before the players and coaches are paid (Barnes, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

The TAC Cup Under 18 competition has also caused a lot of angst in the rural community as teenagers who try out for the various teams and fail to make the cut leave the game, with a drop off rate of up to 20% in some cases (Hayes, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football). The money spent on teams such as Bendigo Pioneers, Gippsland Power and North Ballarat Rebels could be much better spent on assisting the clubs and leagues in these regions. The players with the potential to make it at higher levels will still get the opportunities through invitations to play at VFL and AFL, as they did in the pre-TAC Cup days, especially if AFL clubs employed scouts to watch promising players again (Victorian Country Football League, 2003, pp. 20-21). It would prevent the problems faced by clubs such as Nullawil, where players never seem to return once they play for the Bendigo Pioneers (Daffey, “A look at country footy”).

The Victorian State Government is in the process of conducting an inquiry as to how they can
help and some of the ways that they can assist include making utilities more accessible for country areas. The costs of services such as power, water and ground usage charges hurt small clubs and some clubs have to water grounds just so that they are fit to stage matches. Areas of the state frequently suffer from drought conditions and with water restrictions in force, increasing pressure is placed on clubs to have grounds ready for play (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

There have been calls for an increased emphasis of sport in schools so that children gain
necessary exercise, which helps lead to a healthy lifestyle, improved life skills and social interaction. Playing sports such as football will give children a chance to play sport and may lead to them playing for their local club into their teenage years and beyond (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

The State Government established a Community Support Fund which generates revenue from poker machines. One problem is that revenue from this fund doesn’t flow through to regional sporting groups. The money flows into community programmes, as well as the Arts, but as the VCFL Parliamentary Submission states “it is totally incongruous that nothing is spent on the biggest community activity of all” (Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website, 2004).

Some of the facilities at grounds are spartan to say the least. Watchers of The Footy Show
would have seen the conditions of the Natimuk clubrooms in 2004, which resulted them in winning a $20,000 prize towards improving their facilities. The fact is that there are many clubs with similar facilities statewide and require capital works funding for projects such as lighting and improved netball facilities to improve the quality of their training and matches. Some teams, such as Cavendish, have to wait up to seven years to receive Government grants to have improved facilities built (Barnes, Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football).

There are a number of ways in which Governments and the sport can improve the fortunes of
country football. In order to assist clubs directly, it is imperative for the State Government to give assistance to sporting clubs in regional areas. They should be looking at giving a percentage rebate for the power, water and ground charges that they incur due to the fact that they are providing an important service for their local community. They should also give sporting communities a chance to receive funding from the Community Support Fund (aimed towards the smaller towns and areas) to be directed to specific projects such as capital works. The service that these clubs provide aim to provide residents with a chance to improve their health, to allow people to promote their life skills, to enhance community spirit and to help maintain an economic flow in their region, and they should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

Funds could also be diverted away from elite systems such as the TAC Cup by dismantling
some or all of the country clubs, and direct them towards the clubs and the Leagues in these regions. AFL clubs could employ scouts (as they did in the pre-AFL days) to track talented youngsters who could “make the grade”, which would be more cost-effective for the game overall than to fund these elite country teams.

The Victorian Country Football League, as the peak body for football in country Victoria, need
to closely monitor situations in each of their designated regions. They need to ensure that they work proactively with clubs and leagues to ensure that any problems that they encounter (and can solve) are dealt with quickly to prevent any situations worsening. If they are unable to resolve certain situations, then they should actively seek State or Local Government assistance to help their cause and help the community.

One major area that could assist in reducing costs in country football is to centralise the
administration for Leagues into regions, possibly under the V.C.F.L. Region structure. For example, the Ballarat Region could administer the Ballarat Football League, the Central Highlands Football League, the Lexton Plains Football League and the Maryborough Castlemaine District Football League, as well as the Golden Plains Junior Football League (Victorian Country Football League, 2003, p. 27). This will help to reduce costs by streamlining operations and prevent the duplication of work in the region for things such as permits and clearances, tribunals and general operations.

At playing level, Leagues (especially smaller Leagues) could help ease the financial burden on clubs by making it optional to field a reserves side, which was the status quo until the 1960s. This could allow some clubs that had no alternative but to merge (e.g. Upwey and Tecoma, and Gembrook and Cockatoo in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League) a chance to “get their club back” and represent their town again, restore their independence and pride, as well as giving the local community a chance to benefit economically through the purchases that a football club makes – at places such as pubs, bakeries and chemists (Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, 2004, pp. 22, 35). Another benefit is that it would help to reduce the costs of running a club by half and making it possible for these teams to re-form in their own right.

Rugby League in country areas of New South Wales operates in this kind of climate and allows towns even smaller than Binalong, Narellan and Narwan to put a team onto the field. Their system involves most of the Group competitions comprising of First Grade, Reserve Grade and also a Second Division for one-team towns (Country Scoreboard, Rugby League Review, p. 17).

It could also help to reduce the reliance on older players being lured out of retirement “to make up the numbers”. As an example, of the twenty-four players in the Glenthompson-Dunkeld Reserves line-up for their Mininera & District League Second Semi Final, ten were 32 years of age or over (Mininera & District Football League, 2004, p. 14).

Many players, like their predecessors, seek to play football for the love of the game, for the
exercise, the sense of community and for the camaraderie associated with the game. More prevalent nowadays is the concept of remuneration for players. One way to allow the smaller clubs to survive without the threat of being forced into recess due to lack of funds from paying players could be to set up regional clubs in specific areas, where a district could be represented by a club which could compete in one of the major competitions.

One such proposal that is being mooted as part of the ongoing Gippsland restructure is a
combined East Gippsland Football League side (“East Coast”), which would play in Division One of a two-division “North Gippsland Football Netball League”. Should this come to fruition, there could be some benefits come out of a combined team with a Seniors, Reserves and an underage side as well as the current member clubs (and former EGFL and Riviera League clubs coming out of recess) operating with one senior team as well as either an Under 16, Under 18 or Under 21 side. Another such club could be a “Mallee Football Club”, which would operate under similar terms in the Sunraysia Football League (Rogers, “Restructure reconstruction”, p. 24).

This would allow the smaller towns in a region a chance to reduce their operating costs, stay
viable and compete on more even terms, whilst allowing the more ambitious players in the country to continue living in a region, seek remuneration to play and offer them a chance to rise to higher levels, such as the major country leagues or the VFL.

Australian Rules Football is an important part of the health and wellbeing of the people and
townships of country Victoria, and the major uniting bond in most of these places is the local football club. By acting on the problems identified, the people in our rural communities will have a better chance to keep the bonds between the townfolk and their neighbouring communities alive, whilst at the same time being able to display their community spirit.


Bibliography

Books
Lovett, Michael (ed.), AFL 2004 : The official statistical history of the AFL, AFL Publishing, Melbourne, 2004.

Victorian Country Football League, Worksafe Victorian Country Football League Inc. Handbook, 2003.


Newspapers & Periodicals
Mininera & District Football League, 2nd Semi Final (Official Programme), Saturday August 28, 2004.

Rogers, Leigh, “Restructure reconstruction”, Times-Spectator, July 30, 2004, p. 24.

Rugby League Review, Issue 17, July 2004.

Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, YVMDFL Record, Round 9/10, Saturday June 19, 2004, Commodore Press, Lilydale.


Websites
Daffey, Paul, “A look at country footy”, AustralianRules Website (http://www.australianrules.com.au/2004s ... mment.html). Viewed on September 10, 2004.

Parliamentary Inquiry into Country Football (http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/rrsdc/ ... sions.html). Viewed on November 1, 2004.

Including submissions from:-
* Barnes, Wendy, President, Cavendish Football Club.
* Hayes, Noel, Individual, Snake Valley.
* Hirth, Glenda, Individual, Panmure.
* Jacobs, Neil, Chief Executive Officer, Hindmarsh Shire Council.
* Niemann, Craig, Chief Executive Officer, Loddon Shire Council.

Victorian Country Football League Parliamentary Review Website (http://www.vcfl.com.au/_uploads/res/2_2005.pdf). Viewed on October 15, 2004.

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That's an interesting and well thought out piece, DM.