AFL Outer East: Titans shift focus to junior development following season cancellation
It was weeks out from its first foray into senior football, but now AFL Outer East’s newest club will shift its focus to under-18 development as it prepares to attack 2021.
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It’s game-over for the senior men’s after AFL Outer East called it quits on its season, but attention now turns to developing youth for new open-age club, Berwick Springs.
The league had announced a shortened senior men’s season on Sunday, but the ever-changing coronavirus restrictions on crowds left it no other option but to backflip on its decision on Thursday.
Junior and under-18s footy is still on the cards however, slated to kick off across July 25 and 26.
Berwick Springs was just weeks away from its first foray into senior football after being accepted into Division 1 for this season, having fielded under-18s last year. It had been one of up to 10 clubs which had opted in to the league’s truncated season which was set to begin August 1.
But for club president Ashley Allison, while disappointed at Thursday’s announcement, a new opportunity arises.
“It’s disappointing for us all, a lot of hard work’s gone in to try and get a season up, from everybody, the league,” he said.
“We’re pinning our hopes on the under-18s comp … and trying to blood some kids in that from the 17s perhaps as well, (and) also play a couple of 19-year-olds down, if that’s allowed.”
Allison said his club would continue to work on developing the relationship between the newly-formed senior arm and the junior ranks.
“From a footy point of view, we’ll be in our new club rooms next year and we’ll use some of those seniors to come back in the junior comp and get the connection going, particularly across our 17s group,” he said.
“We’ve got in excess of 44 players in the 17s that we’re going to push through next year.
“We’ll use that (senior player availability) to our advantage now that they’ve got a bit of free time.”
Despite the shifted focus, Allison lamented the lost opportunity for senior development this season.
“From our point of view, obviously we had quite good recruiting, and getting a lot of new players to the club and they had some experience behind them,” he said.
“This was always getting those new players in with experience and getting around the players coming through … we’ve lost a year doing that now, but it is what it is.”
The future of local football salary caps have been a hot topic of discussion through the coronavirus crisis, with AFL Victoria expected to reduce caps to $100,000 for the next three years for five metropolitan leagues including Eastern, Essendon District, Northern, Southern and Western Region.
While it’s unclear what total player payments for Outer East will look like next year, 100 per cent of clubs this year supported the reduction of the cap, along with 88 per cent in favour of a cut for 2021.
“On the bright side, I think we’ll see a lot of clubs far more financial than what they’ve ever been, for next year,” Allison said.
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