Country football is alive and kicking in SA, but what does the future hold?
COUNTRY South Australia still loves its football, but many fear money pressures are threatening the future of community involvement. SPECIAL REPORT
WALKING across Berri Memorial Oval, Roger Nettle pointed to a near-empty heritage grandstand and said that “when we played, that stand and the terraces were full”.
While it’s true that the Berri Demon fans of today tend to watch from the newer social club on the other side of the ground, or from cars around the boundary, the club legend was using the scene to make a simple point. Country football is not what it used to be.
Then again, neither is the country, nor the game.
Mr Nettle was among former Demons to return to the club last weekend to remember a golden era of success that claimed premierships in 1966, ‘67 and ‘68, a period when the Riverland itself was at the top of its economic game and just about everybody in every River Murray town would roll up to Saturday’s match.
But times are tougher now, both for rural economies and footy clubs. Berri, a club that relies entirely on community sponsorships and the work of dedicated volunteers, and which has shunned the temptation of poker machines, made the finals last year.
But some of its young stars moved on to university and employment elsewhere, and it doesn’t have the funds to compete with richer clubs for recruits and it is putting the next crop of youngsters into the A and B Grade senior sides to develop them for the future.
The price is the bottom rung on the Riverland Football League ladder and, if many of those kids also have to move on, things may stay tough.
Berri is just one club of many in SA country football that president Brenton Fenwick fears will suffer as “have nots” in a game that’s becoming increasingly professional and expensive.
Gun players have always shopped themselves around the bush, but in the 1960s they might have asked for petrol money. These days, they can ask for more than a thousand dollars a game.
Mr Fenwick, a passionate believer in the philosophy that country football is more about community than silver cups in the cupboard, says his club would rather promote its juniors, not just to save a quid but to rebuild something of what was there in the past.
“The whole town got around football. There was a big community atmosphere and everybody was part of it. That’s what we’d love to bring back here,” he said, clearly proud of the youngsters playing above themselves in the As and the old stalwarts who have come out of retirement to get the Bs on the field.
“You see the kids walking around the street in their club colours ... what you’re seeing is a culture of support, you belong to something. That’s important for the kids. They all go to school together and they come out and they play with their mates and they enjoy what they’re doing.”
All the same, he worries about the future. “There are some clubs that have the money and some clubs who don’t, and the gap will get wider and wider and wider,” he said.
“Participation rates (in all sports) are getting lower and lower, so to get people to be involved gets harder and harder.
“What I think country sport does, though, is build a sense of community, and if you’ve got a good sense of community then you’re probably going to be successful.
“Country footy is perhaps not what used to be, but there’s still a lot of good people involved, a lot of kids and families.
“We’ve been poker machine free. We’ve never had them. We rely solely on our community to support us through sponsors. Our whole club is run by volunteers, no one gets paid.
“When we come up against clubs that have got significant cash income through poker machines and other avenues, we can’t compete financially. Where we can compete is our spirit and our togetherness as a club.
“If you build a premiership on something other than community spirit and looking after your mates and doing everything for each other, if you build it on buying players and money and all that sort of stuff, it doesn’t mean the same.”
Berri football royalty Malcolm Hill, a member of the triple-premiership squad and who also won flags with Sturt and Hawthorn’s first in the old VFL in 1961, believes money “is ruining country football” and that the AFL has failed both the bush and suburban footy.
“When I played for Sturt, we’d get 13,000 people at the Unley ground. Now they get two or three thousand and its just so disappointing that’s been destroyed because of the AFL,” he said.
He says the big league’s Auskick junior program is “not fair dinkum” and that if it is serious about nurturing the game, it should put expertise into training coaches who are often volunteers. “Football’s changed so much that they (the volunteers) have got to be taught how to coach. If they can get the fundamentals right, the kids (they coach) will go on to bigger and better things,” he said.
“Football is the life and soul of country regions. If it wasn’t for the footy ... they might die. I think it’s still very important. It’s sort of the fabric that brings together the community.”
“I can see problems because the Riverland has lost a lot of its population in the past few years because of the economic downturn. We’re struggling to field teams. Clubs are having to import players into the competition, which costs money.
“The Riverland economy is not strong because of the farmgate prices, particularly for wine grapes and citrus. And we’ve seen a lot of corporations come into the Riverland, like Coles and woolworths, that don’t contribute a lot to the region.”
Long-serving SA Football Commissioner David Shipway, who this weekend will travel to the tiny Eyre Peninsula township of Minnipa to help celebrate 100 years of a club that gave the game Port Adelaide and Collingwood champ Greg Phillips, is also troubled by money pressures in small competitions. He believes country football’s points-based salary cap system will even things out.
He accepts that some clubs will always find ways around such rules, but warns them not to buy themselves into oblivion by sending rivals broke in bidding wars. “They still need an opposition to play against,” he said.
“Wealthy clubs have an obligation to help keep their leagues viable”
While times are tough in the country, there is real hope for a renewal of that community fabric and it comes from a direction no one would have predicted when Mr Nettle and Mr Hill were winning their trophies. The rise of women in football adds a whole new dimension to the notion of a family game.
Kiara Hoffmann is the coach of Berri’s Under 15 boys and her sister, Tekira, has twice represented the state. She is watching the women’s game grow rapidly at a national level and has been deeply involved in promoting it locally.
“Once you bring a woman in, that’s extra families that are coming to the football that would have never come here before,” she said.
“(In the past) it was the people with boys in the family and that was it. And it was really hard to break into.
“If you can actually make your club open and allow anyone to feel comfortable to come in ... I think you’re heading in the right direction.”
