Football Queensland under fire for policies alleged to be harming Whitsunday Coast and Mackay participation

Lopsided scorelines, forfeited matchups and depleting numbers. Football teams in Mackay and surrounds are struggling, and they’re putting a Football Queensland policy firmly in the firing line.

FQPL Whitsunday Coast Women, 2024 premiers

Mackay football clubs are facing the threat of closure as participants continue to leave the game in droves due a policy they believe is hurting the sport.

Under Football Queensland’s 2025 Statewide Rules of Competition, rules 2.3.3 (c) and 2.3.3 (d) state that all teams in both men's and women’s Regional FQPL competitions “are required to field a ‘First Grade’ team.”

It’s a policy designed to ensure the top line talent in each league plays at the highest level on offer.

But a number of clubs in the Whitsunday Coast league, which encompasses Mackay and surrounding regions, are saying the rule is costing them significantly in participation as they find themselves unable to field a competitive side in Mackay’s top grades.

FQPL Whitsunday Coast Men, 2024 premiers.

“The way the competition is set up, there’s a requirement to have a pretty high number of players,” Sarina FC president Aaron Jensen told this masthead.

“Ourselves and other clubs such as Dolphins who have a lot of players on shift work, it takes a big lift from the rest of the club to keep these teams going.”

Jensen said while FQ has existed as an organisation since 2021, prior to 2023 the league had been able to set its own policy in regard to rules around competition structure.

But since those powers transferred to FQ, he said his club has seen its senior teams drop from two men’s teams and two women’s teams to just one men’s team.

“There’s clearly something not right about the policy from our perspective. In 2023 we had two women’s teams going after only getting a women’s team back in 2022,” he said.

“But we started having to have players play two games a day, they started getting injured and fatigued. Plus they were getting flogged, we were losing games 25-0. That’s not an enjoyable experience for people.

U23 FQPL Whitsunday Coast Women's Champions

“(No more senior teams) spells the end of our club. A club that’s been running for close to 100 years.

“As soon as we lose our senior team, within the next couple of years our juniors will be gone as well.

“We just won’t have the funding to continue the club, the majority of it comes from our senior teams.”

Jensen said clubs and the Whitsunday Coast league itself have tried to go through the “proper channels” to find a resolution to their concerns, but that this attempts have largely “fallen on deaf ears.”

“What we’re finding is that the people who organise the competition are primarily Brisbane or Townsville based. They can afford to have a hard line on (the bigger) competitions, but it’s not something that works for our competition.”

An experienced women’s coach in the Pioneer Valley region revealed his club is also struggling as a result of the policy, saying they’re barely managing to scrape together a women’s team after previously having a burgeoning women’s soccer program.

In response to the concerns expressed by the community, Football Queensland said in a statement that it “has considered the feedback of our clubs in the region and is working on solutions to support community participation in Whitsunday Coast competitions in 2025.”

The organisation stopped short of opening the door to policy adjustments being made, saying they remained focused on “ensuring FQPL Whitsunday Coast clubs can maintain the standards required for participation in the region’s premier league.”