Salisbury West Football Club asks amateur league to drop two grades amid financial problems

A FOOTY club in Adelaide’s north wants the amateur football league to drop two grades next season. Here’s why ...

SALISBURY West will ask the amateur football league to drop two grades next season after being ravaged by financial problems and players leaving the club for cash.

Tigers chairman Bob Campbell said the club stopped paying players after running out of money in July this year — two months before it finished runner-up in division four to earn promotion to division three next season.

More than half of the club’s A-grade have since walked out.

Campbell said the Tigers could not compete with cashed-up clubs and would not pay players next season.

“We’ll come up with a system with beer tickets or something like that — it will not be money, that’s for certain,” Campbell said.

“We were playing the players too much this year.

“We ran out of money and we could only pay the players up to the 12th game.

“We couldn’t afford to pay the footballers any more after that game — it was either them or we couldn’t pay the bills for the club.

“We notified them at a meeting ... and of course after the season they’ve thought ‘we’ll go get money some place else’.”

The Tigers had a crisis meeting on Sunday, which about 45 people attended.

Campbell said the club would this week ask the league to play in division five, believing it would struggle in the higher grade.

“We reckon we’ll get two sides ... but they’re not going to be very good, strong teams.”

Campbell said the club would pay the players what it owed over the next 12 months.

“The football committee made a mistake this year.

“They thought they could raise the money (to pay the players) and they couldn’t.”

Amateur league chief executive John Kernahan said the Tigers could only drop to a lower grade if a division four club was willing to replace them in the third tier.

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